abstract
| - His parents were Tom and Kitty Dunn left the west coast of Ireland in the early 1900s in search of a better life. They settled in New York. John was born in Queens, New York. He was in and out of Catholic reform schools after the death of his father, a merchant marine who was lost at sea when he was four. With arrests for robbery and assault during his teenage years, he was finally convicted of robbing a card game and sentenced to two years in Sing Sing Prison. Following his release, Dunn was hired as an enforcer for McGrath who was then a part owner of Varick Enterprises, a front company which made collections for the waterfront dock bosses of Manhattan's Westside. In 1937, he and McGrath were arrested in connection with the death of a trucker but were eventually dismissed for lack of evidence. Later he formed a labor union (Local 21510, Motor and Bus Terminal Checkers, Platform and Office Workers) associated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and eventually oversaw waterfront racketeering on Manhattan's Lower West Side by the early 1940s. He established underworld connections including Joseph P. Ryan, who had sponsored him for union membership, and Meyer Lansky who had been in discussions regarding the use of the longshoremen's union to assist in the importation of heroin and cocaine into the United States.
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