He was convicted, together with Andrew "Squint" Sheridan, of the 1947 murder of Greenwich Village hiring stevedore Anthony "Andy" Hintz, and executed by electric chair on July 7, 1949, aged 38.
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 West Side.
[citation needed] At 7:40 a.m. on January 8, 1947, Andrew "Andy" Hintz, hiring boss on Pier Fifty-One, was shot six times on the stairs just outside his apartment when leaving for work.
Due to both the extensive press coverage of the event and Dunn's underworld connections, there was concern that the state's star witness, the deceased's widow Maisie Hintz, might be in danger and she was forced to go into hiding until the start of the trial.
On the day before his scheduled execution, Gentile's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, supported by a favorable letter from D.A.