The Gustin Gang Meets the Mafia

Around noon on a bleak December 22, 1931, Gustin leader, Frank Wallace , his henchman Bernard “Dodo” Walsh and Tim Coffey went to 317 Hanover Street in the North End for a meeting. They climbed the stairs to the third floor in a building known as the Testa Building to the offices of the C.F. Importers. The police said C.F. Importers was the “headquarters of the Lombardi rum-running and wholesale bootlegging outfit” under the direction of Joe Lombardi.

Shortly after noon, people in the building heard shouting, fighting, breaking furniture coming from the third-floor offices. Gunshots then followed.  A brief quiet followed by the thunderous sound of men storming down the back stairs fleeing from the scene. Police found Frank Wallace and Dodo Walsh laying on the floor near the exit of the offices.  Both men were fatally shot in the upper body. Police searched the building and discovered Tim Coffey “cringing” behind a screen and holding a chair for protection in the office of a lawyer on the third floor.”   Whether out of fear or respect, throngs of people attended Walsh’s funeral.  More than 200 cars that took part in Frank’s funeral procession, many with out-of-state license plates.

Police surrounded the area after the shooting and interviewed scores of people at the scene. They initially had no suspects or leads from the interviews on Hanover Street.  Eventually, seven defendants were charged with the murders. At a probable cause hearing in the district court in front of Judge Francis Good, three of the seven defendants were bound over to the grand jury, four were released. The grand jury called Tim Coffey as a witness. He took the Fifth. The district attorney did not press the issue by immunizing Coffey. The case came to a screaming halt when the grand jury returned a no bill, meaning there would be no indictments. Coffey wisely never spoke publicly of what happened in the offices of C.F. Importers.

Coffey’s silence was for good reason. He knew who did the shooting. To save his own skin he felt it best not to have the North End Mafia crew hunting him down. Somehow, he passed them the word that his lips were sealed.  Coffey’s silence left a sour taste for some of the Gustins, however.

In June 1932, Coffey was “given a beating” but didn’t say by whom except that it was during a battle between gangs..   In June 1934 he was shot three times and ended up in a dangerous condition at the City Hospital. Three men were arrested for the shooting. Coffey refused to answer any questions put to him.  No charges were filed.  The police reports stated that he had “broken away” from the Gustins but also that he was going to be “put on the spot.”

The Gustin gang continued in a lesser capacity until the Wallaces’ brother, James, got caught stone cold along with Peter “Tin Can” Kelley in the middle of a robbery. James got six to ten years in State Prison in January 1950. He had a petition for a pardon filed for him by a sitting judge, William Lynch of the Dorchester District Court in December 1952. Lynch granted the pardon.  Lynch said he was doing it because he was a longtime friend of Wallace’s mother. The pardon and the reasoning was something quite unusual and raised many eyebrows.

The animosity between these ethnic gangsters continued with a weakened Gustin Gang and the emboldened North End Mafia. The ethnic rivalry probably still exists. The Boston Mafia leader Jerry Angiulo was notorious for his disdain of the Irish.

I worked in a law firm where there were two partners: Francis J. “Frank” DiMento, an Italian, and James “J.J.” Sullivan, an Irishman. One day when Jerry Angiulo, head of the Italian Mafia in Boston and his brother Nick arrived for a meeting with DiMento.  They were taken aback to see Sullivan sitting in DiMento’s office. Angiulo seeing him, indicated to DiMento he would like Sullivan to leave. Sullivan, insulted, said he was planning to go anyway because he “didn’t like guinea gangsters.”

Dimento and Sullivan split all fees. One time when DiMento got paid in cash by Angiulo, he gave Sullivan his half. The following weekend when Sullivan was on Nantucket, burglars broke into his house in Milton.  The Milton house was ransacked. The wallpaper behind the hanging pictures was cut with a razor as the burglars looked for a safe. The break-in was a real professional job.  Sullivan blamed Angiulo who he said could not stand the idea an Irishman was getting some of his money.

Another part of the Italian gangster abhorrence of the Irish stemmed from the predominance of Irish on the local police forces. Although the Irish police gave no preference to their fellow countrymen, the terms paddy wagon and paddy whacker speak to that, the Italians believed otherwise.  The Italians constantly complained that the police picked on them. Add to that the Boston FBI had many Irish agents. Recently, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reported to have said that the FBI was a better organization when “you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks but they could be trusted.”

This animosity between the Irish and Italian Gangsters would define the Boston gang relations in the middle of the Twentieth Century with the North End Italian Mafia dictating the rules.