Boston Gang Wars- Dearth of Information

We all have ideas about criminal activities in the decades of the fifties, sixties and seventies.  We have read news stories, books, and seen great movies depicting the times and activities.   I believed in the reports and books that I read until I began to dig deeper.  As I dug, I discovered huge falsehoods.  I realized that a fundamental problem about what we learn and read regarding crime in those decades are reconstituted gangster stories.  Reporters, authors, and screenwriters faithfully put the gangsters’ lies down on the page as fact.

Here is an example of one falsehood that persists to this day.

Most of us have heard the story about how the “Irish gang wars” started.

George McLaughlin was beaten up badly by another guy at Salisbury Beach.

Many authors who recite this tale suggest that George did not know who beat him up. George McLaughlin was a well known gang leader at this time.   The authors suggest that George’s brothers did not know who George the vicious beating.  So, in an attempt to discover who gave the thrashing, George’s brothers visited James Buddy McLean, the leader of a rival gang.  The story continues that when McLean refused to say who was responsible, the McLaughlin brothers decided they needed to go after McLean for refusing to tell.

This commonly recited version of events makes little sense. All the guys in the two gangs involved in the fight knew each other. George wasn’t dead.  Certainly, George would have known who he fought.  If for some reason he didn’t know, wouldn’t George’s friends who were with him have known? Couldn’t they easily find out?  Wouldn’t half of Salisbury Beach have known? It wasn’t a random bar fight.  News among gangs spreads as quickly as news of a fight on a playground.  Frank Salemme noted that the guys in prison often knew things sooner than the guys on the outside. Sadly, once one writer relates the nonsensical story told him, other writers blindly follow along.

The writers and reporters not only follow along blindly, but many also build their own stories and make up their own theories to support the preexisting conclusions. For instance, a tough boxer from South Boston named Tommy Sullivan, was gunned down on December 22, 1957, on East Fifth Street a few steps from his home. The theories behind his death are set forth in Wikipedia under an article on Edward McLaughlin.

These theories include: (1) he had a fight with Edward “Punchy” McLaughlin and beat him badly two weeks earlier so that Harold Hannon murdered him. (2) he was a casualty of the Irish mob wars between the McLaughlins and Patriarca crime family; (3) Whitey Bulger book writer Howie Carr claimed Harold Hannon murdered him; (4) Different Whitey book writers, Cullen and Murphy. claim Stephen Flemmi murdered him; and (5) The Boston police theory was his murder was a “hit” because he was speaking out against the union activities of the New York leaders of the International Longshoremen’s Union.

The facts support none of these theories. (1) This theory may come from a story told by Joe “The Animal” Barbosa in his book. He called Sullivan “Rocky.” Barbosa wrote that he had a fight with Punchy, and Harold Hannon murdered him. The problem with this theory is that Hannon was in state prison at the time of the murder. (2) This theory is impossible because the Irish mob war started in 1961, four years after Sullivan’s murder. Further, Sullivan had nothing to do with either the McLaughlins or Patriarca. (3) Howie Carr also fails to realize that Hannon is in prison. (4) Flemmi was 23 years old at the time with no connection to the waterfront or Sullivan; (5) There is no possibility that the New York unions would be affected by anything Sullivan could say or do in Boston.

His murder, as you will learn later in the book, probably resulted from some illegal dealings. Hoodlums out of New York may have been involved in the murder but not because of Sullivan’s relationship or actions with New York.  His murder was never solved.

So as not to get swept up in myths, I avoid guessing and do not accept uncorroborated gangster stories.  I support all my conclusions with facts from independent sources relayed contemporaneously with the events.  Where I cannot find supportive facts, I do not reach a definitive conclusion.  No one should.  I want you as a reader to reach the same objective conclusions.  Often we can connect the dots as to which group committed the murder by examining how it was done, determining a person’s associates, looking at his neighborhood. or the motive a person may have to commit the murder. One murderer, who as best I can tell was never caught, had as a trademark killing method -firing five or six shots into a victim’s head in such a proximity that all the bullet holes could all be covered with a silver dollar.  This trademark killing is a hugely difficult task that could not be performed by many.

Some of the murders are easy to attribute to a certain dispute or to a certain group.  The evidence in these murders of the victim’s associates suggest the reason for his murder; or, in other cases, someone has taken responsibility for it.  Others murders are difficult to attribute definitively to a specific group or dispute.

For instance, Harold Hannon and Wilfred Delaney, two men who met in prison and were partners, were found murdered on August 21, 1964, after being dumped into Boston Harbor on the same day. One tale is that they were members of the McLaughlin gang.  Hoodlums from the rival McLean’s gang hid in their Dorchester apartment, captured them when they came home, took them to Somerville, beat them, tortured them and dumped them into Boston Harbor. No reason is given for McLean gang torturing and murdering them except that Hannon and Delaney were allegedly with the McLaughlins. No similar type of murder was ever done by the McLeans. Nor was it clear that Hannon and Delaney were with any gang at the time. The two men appeared to be doing their own thing apart from the any gang.

A second version of events relates that the gang of Wimpy Bennett out of Roxbury wanted to extort money from them. The Bennett gang took them to an apartment where they beat them trying to find out where they had stashed money that the Bennett gang believed they had.

A third version comes from what the media reported. The police said the car that Hannon and Delaney were driving was forced off the road in Franklin Park.  Hannon and Delaney were then driven to a Mattapan apartment, only Hannon was beaten, and both men were dumped into the harbor. The motive for this was that they were holding up Mafia protected people and gambling games. In the first instance, the murders of that Hannon and Delaney are attributed to the Irish feud; in the second, to a gang from Roxbury, and, in the last, to the Boston Mafia.