For four decades, Michael “Mickey” Bowers was a force on Manhattan’s West Side piers and in its longshoremen’s union. A flaming pileup on a Long Island parkway killed him and four others.
Bowers died at about 2:00 p.m. on June 25, 1966, on the Northern State Parkway near the Shelter Rock Road exit in Nassau County, when his hardtop Buick convertible jumped a two-foot concrete barrier in Albertson and slammed into oncoming traffic, according to Button Guys of The New York Mafia. The impact triggered a flaming five-car crash that ultimately involved more than five vehicles in total. New York State Troopers said Bowers died in the flames that engulfed his own convertible, and the crash was so violent that his body was burnt beyond recognition — investigators had to identify him through dental records.
The crash killed five people, including three children. An explosion followed the crash and damaged two additional cars. More than a dozen people were injured in the wreck overall, with 13 people critically injured, per the same account.
A Career Built on Violence That Outlasted Prosecutors
Bowers had ranked as one of New York City’s most dangerous Irish gangsters for more than 40 years, helping the Arsenal Gang maintain its grip on Manhattan’s West Side docks and waterfront rackets. The gang controlled pier operations for major international passenger and cargo lines including Cunard, the French Line, and United States Lines, according to local history documented by Button Guys of The New York Mafia and corroborated by TIME's archival reporting.
Bowers’ power base was International Longshoremen’s Association Local 824. The nickname “Pistol Local” was used for a union local, according to research compiled by Joe Bruno on the Mob. Bowers took over the local after its previous delegate, a gangster known as Gregory the Bandit, was shot to death inside a Twelfth Avenue barroom, TIME's archives note — a grim pattern in which West Side waterfront leadership routinely changed hands through gangland assassination.
In 1944, Tommy Gleason cut Bowers’s throat and escaped; Gleason was later murdered while sitting and sleeping in an undertaking parlor, according to Joe Bruno on the Mob. John “Cockeye” Dunn was electrocuted for murder, as detailed by Cosa Nostra News.
The Exposé That Inspired a Classic Film
The Exposé Behind *On the Waterfront* The corruption on the docks didn’t stay confined to the waterfront. Journalist Malcolm Johnson of the New York Sun won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for “Crime on the Waterfront,” a 24-part investigative series exposing the extortion, murder, and mob control wielded by leaders along the New York docks, according to The Pulitzer Prizes. Johnson's reporting was adapted for the film *On the Waterfront*, while Father John Corrigan inspired Karl Malden’s character, as Commonweal Magazine has documented.
Waterfront reform included the establishment of a commission, according to the New York Waterfront Commission.
Bowers died in the highway crash, which also killed four other people.
