The Man With Nine Lives
By: Ben Kageyama
Tags: Justice, History, Weird, True Crime, Murder

The Man With Nine Lives

No coy ploy could destroy Michael Malloy

Tony Marino, Wikimedia Commons

Michael Malloy was an ex-firefighter who ended up jobless, homeless, and addicted to alcohol around January 1933. He frequented a speakeasy on Third Avenue, New York City, where he soon got acquainted with people who thought of him as a ‘good-for-nothing’.

Malloy’s acquaintances, Tony Marino, Joseph Murphy, Francis Paqua, and Daniel Kriesberg, decided that he was better off dead. They agreed on a plot to get him to drink himself to death so that they could collect insurance money on his life.

With the help of an underhanded insurance agent, the group took-on a policy against Malloy’s life, with Green fraudulently acting as Malloy’s brother. All in all, they stood to gain over $3500 (equivalent to $69,000 adjusting for inflation) if Malloy ‘accidentally’ died.

Surviving subtle murder attempts

Marino, who was the owner of the speakeasy, gave Malloy an open tab with unlimited credit. The group thought that Malloy’s alcohol addiction would get the best of him, and the man would drink himself to death. Yet, despite drinking for the majority of the day, Malloy was unharmed.

Deciding to speed up the process, Marino replaced Malloy’s liquor with antifreeze, but it did not affect him. They tried again with more toxic materials like turpentine, horse cream, and even rat poison, but all attempts left Malloy unfazed. In most instances, after drinking the poison, Malloy ended up back in the same bar the next day to fully enjoy his credit.

Pasqua then came up with the idea of serving Malloy raw oyster soaked with methanol. Note that even just 4% by volume of methanol can make people go blind. Malloy ate that up and a sandwich made with spoiled sardines, rat poison, and small rusty nails. He was, yet again, unharmed, even asking for a second serving.

Surviving overt murder attempts

The group concluded that nothing Malloy ingested would kill him, so they implemented a more direct approach. On one bitterly cold evening, the group got Malloy drunk enough to pass out on the bar. They then carried him to the park and laid him out shirtless on the snow, pouring five gallons of water on his body, hoping that the alcoholic would finally freeze to death.

Still, no coy ploy could destroy Michael Malloy. He showed up the next day for his usual drink.

Fed up, the group used Green’s taxi to run over a drunk Malloy, going at seventy-two kilometers per hour. Malloy didn’t show up the next day for his usual drink.

The group thought they had finally succeeded and tried to collect on the policy, but it turned out that Malloy was still alive and just recovering from broken bones. He returned three weeks later for his usual drink, without any memory of the incident.

The final attempt

On February 23, 1933, the group again waited for Malloy to drink himself unconscious. They took him to Murphy’s room, tied a gas line into his mouth, and covered his face with a towel. They turned it on and finally killed Michael Malloy.

The exact cause of death, according to his death certificate, was lobar pneumonia, fixed by a Doctor who became an accessory to the crime. Malloy’s body was quickly buried afterward.

Justice

Frank Pascua, Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately for the group, the insurance company discovered their plan for the murder of Malloy after they claimed the money for his death. Police also caught wind of rumors of the first few attempts on Malloy’s life and quickly exhumed his corpse for examination.

The Court convicted the group for Malloy’s murder and sentenced them to death via electric chair. Pasqua, Marino, and Kriesberg were executed on June 7, 1934, and Murphy’s execution followed about a month later.