Richard "Richie" Fitzpatrick (1880-1904) was a top gunman in the Monk Eastman

Monk Eastman

Edward "Monk" Eastman was a New York City Gangster who founded and led one of the most powerful street gangs in New York City at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the Eastman Gang. His other aliases included Joseph "Joe" Morris, Joe Marvin, William "Bill" Delaney, and Edward "Eddie" Delaney...

 gang, as well as a former member of the Five Points Gang

Five Points Gang

Five Points Gang was a 19th-century and early 20th-century criminal organization, primarily of Italian-American origins, based in the Sixth Ward of Manhattan, New York City. Since the early 19th century, the area was first known for gangs of Irish immigrants...

, during the late 1890s until his death in 1904. He is best known however for the method of eliminating an Eastman rival where he would meet with the person in question and, after being searched, would inform them that he would not follow Eastman's orders instead seeking to defect to the rival gang and as he excused himself to use the bathroom he would retrieve a planted gun and return surprising the person shooting the victim down. This would later inspire the famous scene in The Godfather

The Godfather

The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...

Saga.

Joining the Five Points Gang under Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly (criminal)

Paul Kelly was an Italian immigrant who founded the Five Points Gang in New York City after starting some brothels with prize monies earned in boxing...

 in the late 1890s, Fitzpatrick defected to the Monk Eastman Gang along with "Kid Twist" Max Zwerbach

Max Zwerbach

Max "Kid Twist" Zweifach occasionally referred to as Zwerbach was an American gangster who, during the turn of the century, belonged to the Eastman Gang and later succeeded the New York gang leader following his arrest in 1904.-Biography:Born Maxwell Zweifach in Austria on March 14, 1884, to...

 during the Kelly-Eastman gang war in 1903 becoming a top lieutenant. After Monk Eastman's arrest in 1904, Fitzpatrick began fighting over leadership of the Eastman gang with Zwerbach, eventually splitting the gang into separate factions. On November 1, 1904 while attending a peace conference at a Sheriff Street saloon in the New York Chrystie Street

Chrystie Street

Chrystie Street is a street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It runs for about seven blocks, from Canal Street to East Houston Street. Chrystie Street extends northward to become Second Avenue....

 neighborhood, Fitzpatrick was shot to death before the peace talks began. His killer was suspected of being Harris Dahl, aka Kid Dahl, friend of arch-rival Kid Twist. Several weeks later "Kid Twist" lieutenant Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis

Vach Lewis

Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis was an early New York gangster and member of the Eastman Gang under Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach.-Biography:...

led an attack murdering the remainder of the Fitzpatrick faction.

Further reading

• Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. ISBN 978-0-231-09683-6
• O'Kane, James M. The Crooked Ladder. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994. ISBN 978-0-7658-0994-0