A disabled former Con Ed worker whose mother was a mistress of notorious mob boss Vincent “The Chin’’ Gigante says he wishes the Mafioso was still around — to help him get a better workman’s comp deal.
“I guarantee you if he was around, somebody would be paid a visit and I would get a phone call from someone saying, ‘Mr. Kenny, we’ve corrected this matter for you,’ ” said ex-mechanic Thomas Kenny, 63, who was forced to retire in 1989 because of two severe line-of-duty injuries to his face.
Kenny wants a judicial hearing with the New York Workers’ Compensation Board to reconsider the paltry $541.67 a month he now gets in disability.
In recalling Gigante, who died in 2005, Kenny said that in the early 1970s, the mobster asked to borrow one of his two cars.
“So I said, ‘OK, which one of them do you want?’ He says to me, ‘Which one has the bigger trunk?’
“So, I gave him the Road Runner, and he gave me $500 for two days. I thought, ‘Somebody is gonna get stuffed in that trunk,’ ” Kenny said.
Kenny said the married Gigante took up with his mom, Marie Simeone, in 1962 and put her in a Bleecker Street apartment near the Triangle Social Club from where he operated. Gigante later became known as “the Oddfather” for walking around in his bathrobe.
Kenny lives in the Duchess County hamlet of Poughquag with his wife, Janet, and their adult son, who is disabled with epilepsy.
He started working for Con Edison as a mechanic in September 1970 but was forced to retire in December 1989 due to the injuries before he was eligible for a pension.
The first accident occurred in March 1978, when he was struck by a live cable being pulled by a winch that snapped and struck his face. The impact led to three plastic surgeries to reconstruct his nose, check bones and parts of his jaw, he said.
He was injured again in 1989 when he was hit in the face by a truck door, he said.
Several months after his second accident, representatives from Con Edison snuck into his hospital room while he was reeling from anesthesia and got him to sign papers that led to him resigning his position and giving up certain benefits, he claims.
He gets around on crutches while taking an array of prescription drugs daily, including a blood thinner, morphine for his pain, as well as anti-anxiety and anti-seizure medications, too.
He collects about $1,600 monthly in Social Security benefits in addition to his workers’ comp award, but the combined funds are barely enough for him and his family to get by.
A New York State Workers Compensation Board spokesman said the agency was unable to comment on Kenny’s case due to privacy requirements.