Billy Beattie - Mickey Spillane & The Westies Gang

Later Days

Joe Poletto continues his conversation with Billy Beattie, founding member of the notorious Westies and Art Ruffles, FBI special agent in charge of the organized crime unit. Hell’s Kitchen of the 1970s and 80s, the long impoverished Irish slum on Manhattan’s west side, under the gloomy shadow of the Vietnam war and an economic recession, the dreamy enthusiasm of the 1960s was met by the stark reality of the 70s. The neighborhood offered few opportunities. Those who lived there were trapped by generations of poverty and low level crime, loansharking gambling and even kidnapping. During the 70s and 80s the community was navigating a particularly dangerous period. Residents faced the highest crime rates in the city’s history and the influx of lethal strains of heroin and crack cocaine, the new drug on the scene. Generations of families had grown up among the same fourteen city blocks, a hardscrabble insular population where loyalty to each other and distrust of outsiders unified the criminals and blue-collar workers that called the place home.