Mobster's son falls to his death

NEW YORK - The son of murdered Irish mobster Mickey Spillane tumbled out the window of his sixth-floor apartment in a fatal fall yesterday.

Robert "Bobby" Spillane, an actor who had roles in television's Rescue Me and Law & Order, fell from his Midtown Manhattan apartment in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood near Times Square where his father, not to be confused with the pulp fiction writer of the same name, had run rackets in the 1960s and 1970s.

No criminality was suspected in Bobby Spillane's death.

Jim McManus, Spillane's uncle and a longtime neighbourhood powerbroker, called Spillane's death a "terribly sad accident".

"He was the nicest kid in the world," said McManus, district leader of the political McManus Midtown Democratic Association. "He helped everyone."

Spillane, with one arm in a sling, had leaned on the screen of an open window to call out to his brother, Michael, who was on a street below, McManus said. The screen collapsed and Bobby Spillane fell, McManus said the brother told him.

"The screen gave out," said McManus. "He only had one arm and he went out with the screen."

Spillane's father was gunned down in 1977 by the rival "Westies", the Hell's Kitchen Irish mob.

- AP