Title: Westies - Wikipedia
Headings: Westies
Westies
Contents
History
Spillane years
Irish–Italian war of the 1970s
Spillane–Coonan wars
Trouble with the Genovese family
Coonan and Featherstone
The Yugo era
See also
References
Further reading

Content: Featherstone was convicted of murder in early 1986 and began cooperating with the government in hopes of getting the conviction overturned, and because he believed the rest of the Westies had framed him for the murder. The information he and his wife Sissy provided, and the recordings they helped make, achieved this aim. In September 1986 the prosecutor who oversaw Featherstone's conviction told the presiding judge that post-conviction investigation had revealed that Featherstone was innocent. The judge overturned the verdict. At that point the information provided by the Featherstones resulted in the arrest of Coonan and several other Westies on state charges of murder and other crimes. Shortly afterward, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani announced a devastating RICO indictment against Coonan and others for criminal activities going back twenty years. Featherstone testified in open court for four weeks in the trial that began in September 1987 and concluded with major convictions in 1988. Coonan was sentenced to sixty years in prison on assorted charges. Other leading gang members were also sentenced to long prison terms, including McElroy, who was sentenced to 60 years, and Richard "Mugsy" Ritter, a career criminal sentenced to 40 years on loan-sharking and drug related charges. The Yugo era
By the early 1990s, the old demographic of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood was disappearing.