The Naked City | Oct 7 2011 |
![COUPE DE VILLAIN](/images/headline/1446.png)
More from the USC digital photo archive. It looks like just another black Cadillac, but no, this one belonged to mobster par excellence Mickey Cohen and it’s parked outside the L.A. eatery Sherry’s, where he was the target of an assassination attempt in July 1949. Gunmen shot Cohen in the shoulder (or arm, depending on the telling), fatally wounded one of his friends, seriously wounded two others, and managed to hit journalist Florabel Muir in the ass with a non-penetrating ricochet. Having learned a lesson, Cohen had his next Cadillac bulletproofed (bombproofed as well, by some accounts). Below are a couple of photos of that car and the two-inch-thick glass that was installed (all well and good to be sealed inside an armored hotbox, but what if your driver ate broccoli with dinner?). Anyway, Cohen sold the Caddy in 1951 for $12,000, supposedly because it wasn’t street legal. He died of natural causes in 1976.