Son of New York gangster Mickey Spillane falls to death

New York: The son of murdered Irish mobster Mickey Spillane tumbled out of the window of his sixth-floor apartment in a fatal fall on Saturday.

Robert "Bobby" Spillane, an actor who had roles on 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 had run rackets back in the 1960's and 1970's.

No criminality is suspected in his death.

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

"He was the nicest kid in the world," said McManus, a district leader of the McManus Midtown Democratic Association, a political club. "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, "The screen gave out. He only had one arm and he went out with the screen," said McManus.

The New York Police Department could not confirm that Spillane fell through a window after a screen collapsed.

Officers and medics responded to a call on Eighth Avenue in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood about 7.45am. Spillane was pronounced dead at the scene.

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

In an article about his funeral published in The New York Times, Spillane was described by a detective as "a very strong enforcer, a handsome, black-haired tough guy out of the movies".

He was often asked, even by law enforcement, if he had any relation to the crime writer of the same name.

Bobby Spillane never moved far from his family's roots in the old neighbourhood near the Broadway theatre district.

A few years ago, Spillane drew on the lore from his father's time to write an Off-Broadway play called All Dolled Up about a cross-dressing gangster in the 1960's.