Boston Gang Wars- Waterfront Murders – Paul Affanato

PAUL AFFANATO, 50                                                                                                                                                                                              June 8, 1958

A little less than six months after Sullivan’s murder on June 8, 1958, , 50, was found murdered in a fourth-floor apartment at 52 Columbia Road. Dorchester, where he had lived for two years. Affanato a small-time hoodlum who hung around the bars in the South End had a criminal record dating back thirty years including offenses for gambling and “wife beating.” Affanato, like Sullivan was a former boxer. Unlike Sullivan, his record showed he was connected to illegal narcotics.

The South End had some real seedy places at this time. It jutted up against Boston’s Combat Zone.  It was surrounded by South Boston, Roxbury and the Fenway area. Back in the fifties much of it was in disrepair. The South End had the elevated train running through it that cast its shadow on Washington Street and made the many bars underneath it look too dreary to think of even entering. It would change drastically over the years but back then it was a run-down place with many boarded-up houses.

I was familiar with the South End having attended my first two years of high school there. Prior to that, I spent several years as an altar bo

y at the South End Jesuit Church, perhaps the nicest Catholic Church in Boston, the Immaculate Conception. It had a magnificent upstairs where celebratory masses were held; and more modest downstairs with a main altar and other alters off to each side. Brother Earhart would give us twenty-five cents for assisting the priests at mass in the morning before we headed off to school.

The dreariest part of serving as an altar boy was assisting during a funeral mass downstairs for one of the many homeless people. Few other people would attend the service. The mass would move quickly. The pine casket carried out as quickly as it came in. The death of Paul Affanato made me recall these quick, sparsely attended services because I could find little information about him or his death.

A few months prior to his death on January 7, 1958, the Boston police received an anonymous letter which sent them to Affanato’s apartment. The letter accused him of dealing in narcotics. His apartment was searched, no narcotics were found but a bank book showing $16,000 (2022 equivalent $143,000) in deposits was discovered along with keys that appeared to belong to safe deposit boxes. He was arrested but quickly released. That was a lot of money for a guy with a criminal record living in a back apartment in a four-story multi-family brick building on Colombia Road in Dorchester. It points to the illegal drug dealing.

When his body was discovered, he had been bound at his ankles with a necktie and gagged with a heavy towel knotted over his mouth. He had gunshot flesh wound on his belly. It was reported he had “been tortured with a knife before being shot by a .32 caliber bullet in the left temple” at close quarters.  He had $14,000 (2022 equivalent $124,000) in his bank account at the time of his murder. The police surmised that the culprits who did this were looking for some information that Affanato possessed. I would suggest the information was related to the money or drugs which he was holding.

What give the drug supposition some support is Affanato was reported to be connected to Johnny Earle and John “Fats” Buccelli in the South End. He and Buccelli hung out at the same South End spots.  The talk on the street had Buccelli leaving a large sum of money for safekeeping with a friend while he was doing his two-year sentence at Deer Island after being convicted for possession of the Brink’s money. He was released on May 19, 1958. It was rumored that he was running into trouble collecting it.

We will never know but Affanato could very well have been holding both money and drugs for Buccelli. Perhaps Buccelli approached him and wanted them back. Affanato may have balked at the request. The unmistakable thread running through these murders was Buccelli, illegal narcotics, and the waterfront. We do know that twenty days after Buccelli was released from prison, Affanato was murdered; and a month after his release, eleven days after Affanato’s murder, Buccelli himself was murdered.