Wrongly Attributed to the First Irish Gang War- Ronald Dermody (Part 4)

RONALD DERMODY, 32                                                    September 4, 1964

My gut tells me Robinson was shot because of romantic situation that he did not want to disclose to the police. I also tend to believe he was not shot walking down the street but probably in a place he was not supposed to be – like another person’s home or with a person who got angry with him. He did not want to get that person in trouble.

He very well could have been driven to the hospital and walked in with the story he told. He was shown a photo array. He picked out Dermody saying he looked like his assailant. The police then wanted Dermody brought in for questioning. Too add to all this there is an article in the Boston Globe by Ronald Wysocki.

Wysocki told how he had a conversation with a Boston lawyer that he did not identify. Earlier in the night of Dermody’s murder at 8:30 p.m., the lawyer called Wysocki asking him what he wanted. Wysocki said he did not call him. The unidentified lawyer said I have a message here that Ronnie called and the matter was urgent. He said, “you’re the only Ronnie I know.”

That lawyer would call Wysocki again. It is not clear when this call took place but probably the next day. He said that, at 10:45 p.m., Ronald Dermody called him. Dermody told the lawyer that he was the Ronny that had been trying to reach him earlier. The lawyer had met him several times since his parole from a federal prison 4 months earlier. He said he had asked him for help in getting back his driver’s license. He said he was trying to go straight.

The lawyer said he was frantic. He told him, “The cops are after me everywhere. They think that I shot a guy in Somerville. I didn’t do it. If I did, I wouldn’t even bother you. I’m levelling with you.”

The lawyer suggested to Dermody that he surrender. Dermody replied he could take care of himself, but he was worried about his wife. The cops had already hit her house. The lawyer said he should have his wife call him at a certain number which he gave him. The telephone number the lawyer gave him was on a torn piece of paper found in Dermody’s possession after he was murdered.  The lawyer then said that Dermody did not express any fear that he might be murdered.

As we know, fifteen minutes later, Dermody was planning to meet someone. Fifteen minutes later he was dead. It also should be obvious that if Dermody was looking for help from the lawyer, he was not in contact with Rico.

Here how I come down on all this weighting all the evidence and assessing the likelihood of events. It really does not matter if Dermody was going out with Dottie or her sister, although I believe it was her sister. I say that because there is no reason to believe the McLaughlins would deal with Dermody. He was not part of their group. They could have murdered Buddy if they elected to do so. O’Toole was part of their gang. He will be a force on their side in the battle with the Roxbury gang as you will see later when they tried to murder Jimmy Flemmi. He was so close to them that six months after this, on February 24, 1965, George McLaughlin, who was hiding out from a murder indictment, was captured while living with O’Toole.

There is no way that Buddy McLean could think that the shooting by Dermody of Robinson was being done as part of a plot to murder him. There is no way the person who shot Robinson wanted to murder him. One bullet fired from a .22 caliber gun into a hip was not an attempt at a hit. Robinson was covering up for whoever shot him and picked Dermody’s photo out of an array knowing he could always back off when he saw him in person.

Dermody called the lawyer earlier in the evening. He called him again 15 minutes prior to his murder. He knew the Somerville police were looking for him, but he denied any involvement in the shooting. He had set up an appointment to meet someone at the time. Whoever it was he knew because the person climbed into the car next to him.

The location where Dermody was killed is about 5 miles from Winter Hill, Somerville or Buddy’s Somerville home. Dermody knowing he had been accused of shooting someone in Somerville may have reached out to Buddy to find out what was happening and to assure him he had nothing to do with any shooting. Buddy arrived, climbed in the car, and finished Dermody off. That is the way Gaga suggests his murder happened. It had nothing to do with Dottie or the attempted killing of O’Toole.

There is support for this point of view.

Gaga said that Dermody ”wanted to be a wise guy.  . . . He come out of the can. . . .  He’s with Dottie’s younger sister. They couldn’t even afford window shades. . . .  O’Toole called where they live a dungeon. When they watched TV people going by on the street could look in and see them.”

Gaga said Dermody had been in Somerville when Buddy approached him. He asked him what he was doing there. Buddy told him that he could be with him or the McLaughlins. Dermody told him he liked the McLaughlins adding: “Georgie McLaughlin’s a good guy. Jimmy O’Toole’s a good guy. My girl is Jimmy O’Toole’s girlfriend’s sister. I don’t know why there’s all this fighting.” Gaga says that because of this Buddy killed him out of meanness and not because he did anything.

I have trouble believing that Buddy murdered Dermody. The only reason he would want to do it was to protect himself. The only murder attributed to him by then was that of Bernard McLaughlin which was for that purpose. Buddy knew Bernie put dynamite in his car endangering him, his wife, and children.

Buddy had no motive to murder Dermody. He presented no threat to him. There was no way to connect Robinson’s shooting with an attempt on Buddy. Further, Buddy was not known to be going around murdering people. He previously told his guys in Somerville who wanted him to murder George McLaughlin that he was not in the murdering business.

Could it have been anyone else? Perhaps. Dermody was an ex-con who hung around as most of them do with other former inmates. Did he reach out to one of them looking for money planning to get out of town; or did he reach out looking to buy some narcotics. Were there some guys, as the cops surmised, who had a beef with him. There are many possibilities. The accepted story by the gangsters/authors/media does not ring true upon analysis.

Dottie continued to have an exciting life with the mobsters. She would later spend time in custody in New York as a witness in the trial of Joseph M. (Crazy Joe) Donohue. She discovered the body of Henry F. Reddington in his real estate office in South Weymouth a little after 3:00 a.m. She became the girlfriend of Attorney John Fitzgerald who was O’Toole’s lawyer. He would get into his car outside his law office. It exploded when he started it up. He lost a leg in the accident, moved out west, and became a judge.

The Dermody murder needed the lengthy treatment that I gave it. It was necessary to explore it fully because it has been used as the basis for defaming FBI Agent Paul Rico who was highly effective against the Mafia. The gullibility of the media and authors accepting the story put out by the Italian gangsters without examining it is apparent.

What remains a mystery is who Dermody was going to meet that night. Suggesting he was murdered because he was in a dispute with other gangsters over money or narcotics is too mundane. It is unlikely that Ronald Dermody got murdered by falling in love with a woman who seemed to like falling in love. We know the gangster stories of his death ring false. All we can really say is he planned to meet someone who murdered him and to repeat what Feeney said to Arquilla after his failed plane hijack attempt, “that wasn’t too smart.”