Cruxy O'connor ambushed in Central Park in 1922!
A fabulous read in today's NY Times:
By Mark Bulik
April 13, 2022
Updated 9:02 a.m. ET
It was a few minutes to 8 o’clock on the evening of April 13, 1922. When Patrick Joseph O’Connor came down the steps of his apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, three of the Irish Republican Army’s top gunmen were lying in wait.
Two of them — Danny Healy and Martin Donovan — stood near the corner of 83rd and Columbus Avenue, staking out the apartment at 483 Columbus. Patrick A. Murray, an I.R.A. commander who went by “Pa,” was a block north.
Their target, known as Cruxy O’Connor, was a former comrade who switched sides repeatedly in Ireland’s fight for independence from Britain. His last change of allegiance got six I.R.A. men killed when he told the police the location of their safe house outside Cork. After the raid, O’Connor fled Ireland by boat, first to London, then to America, pursued the whole way by the I.R.A.
He knew the gunmen were out there somewhere in the mild New York night, just itching to avenge the dead. He had to quit his job as an accountant at B. Altman after he’d spotted them stalking the vast department store. That was weeks ago. Now he needed a walk and a smoke, and the spring evening beckoned.
https://nyti.ms/37KqQZn