For over 40 years mobster Michael (Mickey) Bowers ranked as one of New York City’s most dangerous Irish gangsters. A vicious thug who helped his criminal organization — The Arsenal Gang — maintain their viselike grip and control over Manhattan’s West Side docks and waterfront rackets.
Given the life Mickey led, nobody was very surprised that he died violently. But his death was certainly not the one anticipated by those who knew him best and had a front row seat to his crime-ridden career through the years.
The end came suddenly — and very violently — for Bowers early one hot summer’s day at about 2:00 p.m., Saturday, June 25, 1966.
That’s the afternoon the Grim Reaper decided to snatch the aging gangster and take him straight to hell.
That’s when Bowers became one of the victims of a horrifically violent and deadly automobile crash involving more than five cars that killed 5 and injured more than a dozen others on the Northern State Parkway near the Shelter Rock Road exit in Nassau County.
New York State Troopers who responded to the crash said that Bowers died in the flames that engulfed his Buick convertible and five other cars following the impact of a multi-car collision.
At a later news conference, a spokesman for the Nassau County Police stated that the five-car accident happened after a hardtop convertible jumped a 2-foot concrete barrier on Northern State Parkway in Albertson, L.I., touching off a flaming five-car crash that took five lives and critically injured another 13 persons.
The other four victims were members of one family, including a 3-year-old boy, his grandfather, and two teenage cousins.
One motorist who was an eyewitness and who narrowly avoided crashing into the pileup himself, recounted that four of the cars exploded upon impact and were destroyed by fire. He attempted to render assistance to those stuck in their cars but as he reached into one car it exploded in flames, “My hair and my socks were aflame and my wife and I were both thrown to the ground.
Mickey was burnt to a crisp, beyond recognition, and he had to be officially identified by the coroner through dental records.
Often Imitated. Never Duplicated. Button Guys of The New York Mafia...There's Only One!
