Background to the Boston Gang Wars: Mythmaking

To understand the Boston Gang Wars of the 1960’s and 1970’s, you have to understand Boston.  Boston is a city of myths. Its people thrive in its mystique.  Boston calls itself the “hub of the universe.” This statement was first made by Oliver Wendel Holmes in 1858 in an essay he was writing for The Atlantic Monthly. He wrote: “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system.” Holmes was making fun of the fact that Bostonians are so full of themselves. The Bostonians, whether willfully or ignorantly, embraced the characterization.  A Boston professor of history correctly noted that people in Boston “always had, I think, an exaggerated sense of our own importance.”  This importance continues to this day.

Many in the Boston area believe that what happens in Boston has greater significance than happenings elsewhere.  Otherwise, how do you get such ludicrous statements from the authors of The Black Mass as: “In the annals of crime in the United States, Whitey Bulger today stands at the front of a line that included John Dillinger, Al Capone, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and more recently, John Gotti. His list of victims matches or exceeds that of any other crime boss . . ..”

Not only is that statement totally false and a gross exaggeration when compared to the real criminal history of the United States: just consider Murder, Inc., i.e. the New York Mafia, with its control of many unions and legitimate businesses.  But the statement is false regarding the standing of criminals in Boston itself.  Despite what you may have heard about James “Whitey” Bulger, he was not even the biggest criminal in Boston during his criminal days. At least three of his contemporaries in Boston murdered many more people with significantly more depravity. Not only does Whitey Bulger fail to compare in murders, his gang pales in size.   Murder, Inc. had hundreds working for it. Whitey’s gang consisted of three: himself, Steve Flemmi and Kevin Weeks. They were three at the top who extorted tribute from other criminals dealing in illegal drugs or gaming to allow them to continue their illegal operations.  Those they extorted were not members of their gang but their victims.

The mythmakers perpetrating the myth of Whitey Bulger as being the top criminal in the United States also concocted other myths to aid this falsehood. Two major myths pervade the criminal murders in the Boston area from 1956 through 1976.  

The first myth describes the murders of the Sixties and Seventies as an Irish gang war. At that time, two mostly Irish groups, one from Somerville, MA under James “Buddy” McLean, and the other from Charlestown, MA under the McLaughlin brothers fought against each other.  The combat was a result of Buddy McLean beating up George McLaughlin in Hampton, NH and sending him the hospital. The death total from this battle among these Irish gangsters amounted to 3. Only after an Italian gang from Roxbury, another section of Boston,  joined in the killings did the death totals of the two Irish gangs climbed to around ten to fourteen depending on how you count them.  The Roxbury gang joined the conflict for reasons totally unrelated to the Somerville/Charlestown feud. This supposed Irish Gang War was, instead, mostly an Italian led killing spree.

The second myth is that the New England Mafia family, headed by Raymond L. S. Patriarca out of Providence, Rhode Island, stayed out of the gang war. Some historians suggest that the Mafia sat back and let the Irish gangs fight among themselves while Mafia waited to pick up the spoils. The opposite happened. The Mafia, especially its Boston branch under the command of underboss, Gerard “Jerry” Angiulo, was heavily involved committing murders on its own and through the Italians in the Roxbury gang.  The Boston branch of the Mafia answered to Patriarca.

Patriarca controlled Boston. He used his right-hand man, sometimes referred to as his lieutenant, Henry Tameleo, as his liaison with Jerry Angiulo. Patriarca’s control is demonstrated in a December 1964 FBI report which states “Jerry received permission” from Patriarca to go to Florida for two days.

Jerry Angiulo had his own right-hand man, Peter Limone. Limone would pass on Jerry’s orders to others. Angiulo also had a skilled killer, a Mafia captain named Larry Zannino a/k/a Larry Baioni. He was one of the most lethal killers in the Boston area whose turpitude almost passes without notice.

When authors tell the story of Whitey Bulger and the Irish Gang wars, they include the murders committed by the Mafia or its associates. Whitey had little to do with these murders. He was in federal prison between 1956 and 1965 for having pulled off three armed robberies. There is no evidence that he was involved in any murders until the 1970s at which time he was in his forties. Most criminals would agree that forty years old is a late start for any true mobster to begin murdering people. The real killers seem to start in their early twenties, although some in New York City started in their teen years.  For context, Al Capone’s criminal reign ended when he was 33 years old and sent to prison for tax evasion. Bonnie Parker, all of four foot eleven inches tall, and her sidekick, Clyde Barrow, of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde renown, committed 13 murders.  Bonnie died at age 23 and Clyde at age 25.

In order to fully understand the Boston Gang Wars of the Sixties and Seventies, you have to let go of the myths that what has happening was an Irish Gang War and that the Mafia was not involved.  While these myths are convenient and instrumental in creating the super criminal mystique of Whitey Bulger, they are not the truth.