Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Tony Marino thought that he knew what frustration was,

but no matter how hard he worked or how carefully he schemed,

his plans just kept falling apart.

It was supposed to be simple,

an easy way to get rid of a nuisance and get rich in the process.

But try as Tony might, Michael Malloy simply would not die.

The whole thing started late one night in 1933 in Tony Marino's Bronx speakeasy.

Tony was playing P-Nuckle with the boys. There was Red Murphy, Tony's bartender,

Daniel Kriegsberg, the fruit vendor, and Francis Pasqua, the undertaker. As they placed bets,

they talked business, and business was bad. It was the depths of the depression, and all of the men

were having trouble paying their bills. Wouldn't it be nice, someone said, if they had a rich

aunt or uncle who died, or even a poor one with a big fat life insurance payout. Too bad

none of them had such luck. And that's when Tony Marino first broached the idea. Maybe, he said,

they could make their own luck, pick someone expendable, someone who lived on the margins,

someone nobody would miss, someone like Michael Malloy.

Michael was a regular at the speakeasy.

In another life, he'd been a fireman in Ireland, but now he just stumbled through the Bronx looking for his next drink.

The way they saw it, he was going to drink himself to death anyway, so who would mind

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