Born in New Jersey on January 1, 1915, to Florence (née Kalais) and Gregory Kapatos, Greek immigrants from Karpathos, his surname derived from the Dodecanese island.

On July 9, 1962, judge Edmund L. Palmieri granted the writ of habeas corpus on the basis that the Manhattan district attorney's office had prejudiced his case in failing to disclose the existence of the witness, thus depriving him of the due process of law at his trial in 1938.

Driving a black sedan and disguised as policemen, he and another man ordered the station wagon to pull over in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan before holding the employees at gunpoint and ushering them into a following panel truck, where they were shackled and handcuffed.

[8] In early 1964, Kapatos joined a gang of would-be robbers consisting of John Pierce, Charles Roberts, Frank "Machine Gun" Campbell, and Henry "Speedy" Speditz.

[5] Callahan and Speditz attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in early January 1965 after buying new cars and going on expensive vacations in Miami.

Various items reported missing from two stolen cars used in the bank truck robbery were then discovered during a search of Speditz's apartment in the Bronx, and a streak of white paint found on the fender of one of the vehicles was traced to a scraped door in a garage owned by Pierce.

[5] In November and December 1965, the victims of the jewelry heist were taken by FBI agents to view Kapatos outside a restaurant and as he worked underneath the Williamsburg Bridge on Delancey Street on the Manhattan's Lower East Side; four of the AAA employees positively identified him as one of the robbers disguised as a policeman.

[8] A nun at St. Anthony's also recognised Kapatos as a "beggar" who had twice stopped by a convent two doors down from the church in the months before the Paterson robbery; investigators believe he may have been carrying out reconnaissance on the location.

[5] Both men were convicted of conspiracy and transporting a stolen automobile in interstate commerce, and each sentenced to ten years' imprisonment – consecutive five-year terms on each count.

During the 1970s, a conflict arose between Spillane's Irish mob and the Genovese crime family over control of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which was being built in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan just south of Hell's Kitchen.

[11][12] Spillane himself was ultimately shot dead outside his apartment in Woodside, Queens on May 13, 1977, allowing the Gambino-backed Jimmy Coonan to assume control of the Hell's Kitchen Irish mob.