Boston Gang Wars- Read the Clues to the Murders

Clues hide in the murders.  I suggest the clues are significant in ascertaining the party that committed the murder. The McLeans were not in the murdering business in their early years. Later, when the McLean gang became the Winter Hill gang and murderers joined, the gang started murdering by shooting. But the Winter Hill other clues beyond a straightforward shooting often belie Winter Hill or the McLeans’ involvement in a murder.

When Harold Hannon”s dead body was pulled out of the water, he had been garroted in what is sometimes referred to as a Chinese strangle knot or Chinese torture knot. One end of a rope was tied around his neck; the other was tied around his feet which had been bent from the knees and brought up behind his backside close to his neck. It was a particularly horrible way to die. The victim could keep himself alive by holding his feet up behind him. As time passed his strength would fail, his knees would send forth excruciating pains demanding to be loosed from their strictures, he would struggle against the pain but eventually would lose the battle and choke himself to death.

There were different forms of garroting.  One form was called “the Italian rope trick.” Even though Irish gangsters in America used this method for many years prior to the arrival of the Mafiosi.  the Mafia adopted it and found it very useful. The Italian rope trick was executed by one person holding a victim while another person wrapped a rope around the victim’s neck.  One executioner held one end of the rope while another executioner held the other end.  Each executioner slowly pulled the rope tightening the rope around the neck and soon strangling the victim.  California gangster Frank Borgia was a victim of the Italian rope trick.  One writer noted, “Like all the other victims of the Italian rope trick, Frank Borgia dies with a surprised expression on his face.” The feet to neck type murder is just an extension of the Italian rope trick but a little more cruel because a person becomes the immediate cause of one’s own death.

A variation of both rope murders was the execution of Puggy Feinstein on September 5, 1939, in Brooklyn. His head was pushed forward into and his knees drawn up to his chest and a rope put around his neck and connected to his feet. When he moved, the rope slowly tightened. This murder was carried out at the direction of Albert Anastasia.

Like Harold Hannon, another victim during the Boston Gang War, Philip “Goldie” Goldstein, was found in the trunk of a car similarly bound. He was one of the biggest bookies in Boston. Also garroted was Vincent “Bittie” Vazza, a former boxer who was known as a high-pressure loan shark. The question in Boston would be who used that type of knot to murder people.

This cruel type of murder points the finger away from the McLean gangs.  As you will see in various murders attributed to the Irish gangs, many victims had no connection to the Irish groups but they had ties to the North End.  We will also look at other clues that can be picked up by the statements or testimony by others involved in these murders to find culprits.  The more clues we can stack, the more certain we can become about the perpetrator or perpetrating group.

It is important to know who oversaw certain areas of Boston during these times. During much of these two decades, Wimpy Bennett controlled Roxbury and the South End.  To avoid confusion, know that the South End is a distinct section of Boston from South Boston. The South End was highly mixed ethnically and somewhat racially during these days. South Boston was almost all white and mostly Irish Catholic or other Catholic ethnic groups.

Wimpy Bennet seems to have some type of hand in the first few gangland killings which convinced me to start in 1956. I could have started this book in 1953 with the murder of Morris “Whitey” Hurwitz and some others or continued it beyond 1976 with the Winter Hill murders. Rather, I decided to concentrate on a 21-year-period during what is now labeled the Irish Gang War.  The idea of labelling this period the Irish Gang Wars was done for the sole purpose of manufacturing James “Whitey” Bulger into the top criminal in the Boston area.

There were over 100 people murdered during the Boston criminal gang wars between June 1956 and December 1976. I’ve not included some murders in the count but discuss them at the end including those of Tommy Sperrazza and Toby and Mark Wagner  Nor have I included in the list the people who were murdered by either James “Whitey” Bulger, John Martorano, Steve Flemmi or anyone after 1976 through the 1980s.

My motivation to write this book was to form a proper background for my forthcoming book, Why Whitey, a book examining the myth of James “Whitey” Bulger. The massive exaggeration of Whitey took such hold that we became number 2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, only behind Osama Bin Laden.. To rebut this characterization, I believed it necessary to show the murders in the Boston area by gangsters leading up to the time of Whitey. Only with this view are we able to understand what a small role Whitey actually played on the Boston criminal scene.

In the 1960s alone there were 58 gangster related murders. The first murder of a Mclaughlin gang member was on October 31, 1961. The last member of the McLaughlin gang was over twelve years after that on December 1, 1973. Between those murders there were 64 other murders. Less than five can be linked to any Irish gang war.

There are other lists that set out the identities of those murdered during this time. A list published in the Boston Globe in March 1963 noted that there were 12 gangland style killings in four years (1958 to 1962) with ten of them being connected to loan sharks. The Massachusetts State Police had a list of 35 unsolved gangland slayings from 1956 up through January 25, 1965. Life Magazine had a list with photographs of forty individuals it alleged were murdered in the Boston gang war between 1962 and 1967.  Another Boston Globe’ list runs from May 4, 1964 up until February 2, 1967, with 39 individuals. The persons murdered on those lists along with others have been included on my list.

What happened during this period is there were murders committed by rival gangs on the others, murders within gangs, murders of those who may threaten gangs, and murders for personal reasons, such as eliminating witnesses. Almost all the people murdered were involved in criminal activities although there were always some unlucky people in the wrong place at the wrong time, who got murdered along with the target, through mistaken identity, or seen as easy victims to prey upon.