Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster (51 page)

At the cottage on Salisbury Beach, McLaughlin and his friends drank all day and into the evening. At some point, Georgie—who, at the age of twenty-two, was known to be an ardent imbiber—grabbed the breast of a girlfriend of a Winter Hill gangster. This act led to a heated discussion, which escalated into an argument and resulted in the two Winter Hill gang members giving Georgie McLaughlin the beating of a lifetime.

“Is he dead?” asked one of the guys looking down at Georgie, who was unconscious and covered with blood.

“I don’t know,” said the other guy. “Let’s get him out of here.”

The two men loaded McLaughlin into the back seat of their car, left their girlfriends, and drove to a nearby hospital. They dumped Georgie’s body on the front lawn of the hospital, having no idea whether he was dead or alive.

After driving away, the two gangsters stopped at a bar in Somerville and had a few more drinks, the better to absorb the nights events. Eventually, it dawned on them that they might be in a world of trouble. Georgie McLaughlin, after all, was the younger brother of Bernie McLaughlin, leader of the Charlestown gang who occasionally did hits for some of the biggest mobsters in town. Comprised of three McLaughlin brothers, Georgie, Bernie, and Edward (whom everyone knew as “Punchy”), and the Hughes brothers, Stevie and Connie, the Charlestown boys were serious players in the underworld who, again, were friendly with the Winter Hill gang. In light of all this, the two men who had just beaten Georgie McLaughlin to a bloody pulp surmised that, unless they explained their actions to their superiors, pronto, they might wind up on somebody’s hit list.

“Hey,” said one Winter Hill guy to the other, “we better get over to Somerville and tell Buddy about this.”

“Yeah,” agreed his partner. “Before the McLaughlins or Hughes brothers get over there first and tell Buddy a pack of lies.”

The “Buddy” to which the two men referred was James J. “Buddy” McLean, the unofficial Irish godfather of northern Boston. There was no more revered figure in the local underworld than Buddy McLean, originator of the Winter Hill Gang in Somerville. McLean was a longshoreman and racketeer who had built an impressive following based on his legendary toughness. But he was also believed to be a fair man, and so the two Winter Hill gangsters rushed to his home on Snow Terrace in Somerville and explained to Buddy how the McLaughlin beating had come about.

“It’s a good thing you told me,” McLean said to his Winter Hill associates when they finished their version of the story, “because I already heard all about it. Georgie’s in intensive care right now, but he’s going to make it. When he gets out, I’ll see if we can’t get you boys to bury the hatchet.”

The two Winter Hill gangsters went home. Buddy McLean had absolved them of all responsibility, and in doing so moved himself to the front and center of a dispute that, before it was over, would claim the lives of around sixty men and become one of the most violent gang wars in American history.

In the vernacular of the underworld, Buddy McLean was a tough motherfucker. His upbringing was a classic rage-to-riches waterfront saga. Born in 1930, he’d been orphaned at a young age and later adopted by immigrant Portuguese parents. By the age of eighteen, he was working the docks in Charlestown and East Boston as a card-carrying member of the ILA. He was also a close boyhood friend of William J. McCarthy, who would go on to become president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

In 1955, Buddy married a local Portuguese nurse, quickly had two children, and moved into his modest home on Snow Terrace in the Winter Hill section of Somerville. The neighborhood was mostly blue-collar Irish and Italian at the time, with many bars, lounges, and clubs along the main thoroughfare of Broadway.

McLean was medium-sized with blond hair, boyish good looks, and piercing blue eyes. He was tough and had distinguished himself in numerous labor battles and barroom disputes, one of which had left him with scars on his neck and permanent damage to his left eye. Despite his fearsome reputation, McLean was well-liked by most who knew him and his crew spanned ethnic lines, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, black, you name it. The Winter Hill Gang, as established by Buddy, dabbled in everything from numbers and loan-sharking to truck hijackings and waterfront pilferage. The gang was comprised of some of the most hardened old-school hoods in the city, including a young Howie Winter, a former cop turned gangster named Russell Nicholson, a veteran thief from Charlestown named Tommy Ballou, and Joseph “Joe Mac” McDonald, a legendary strong-arm man whom Mullin gangster Pat Nee knew as “probably the toughest guy that ever was. Joe Mac was one of those rare people who was fearless without being a psychopath. He was utterly without fear of anybody or anything or any situation, but he was also a very likable guy.”

The Winter Hill Gang under Buddy McLean often gathered at a bar known as the Tap Royal, at the Winter Hill Athletic Club, or at the 318 Club (later known as Pal Joey’s), all located on Broadway. In the tradition of Irish gangs going back to the days of the Dead Rabbits and the Whyos, Buddy presided more as an equal than as a boss. His approach inspired loyalty and fear among his followers. Said one old-time Winter Hill associate of McLean

I remember his hangout, the Tap Royal on Broadway. Buddy used to have a stool in the back against the wall facing the door that was his. Even if the bar was packed and Buddy wasn’t there nobody sat on his stool. I made the mistake one time of sitting on it. Right when I did, about five guys yelled, “That’s Buddy’s stool!!” Well let me tell you, I was up and out of that stool faster than lightening. ’Cause Buddy was a real tough, tough guy. He used to fight everywhere. The bars, the streets, the nightclubs, the docks…. The thing that threw you off was his baby face. One guy summed it up perfectly when he said about Buddy, “He looks like a choir boy but fights like the devil.”

Even Raymond Patriarca, boss of the Patriarca crime family in Providence, revered Buddy McLean. One day Patriarca was caught on an FBI wiretap calling McLean “a real sweet guy” and “a facilitator.” With his most trusted associate, Howie Winter, Buddy made biweekly trips to the Federal Hill section of Providence to meet with Patriarca and discuss various deals. McLean’s ability to reconcile mobster factions of every class and ethnicity must have made him confident that he could resolve whatever hard feelings might arise from the vicious beating of Georgie McLaughlin.

On the day McLaughlin was released from the hospital—exactly one month after being admitted—his brother Bernie paid a visit to Buddy McLean at his home in Somerville. Bernie had known McLean for years; it was Buddy who usually acted as a go-between for the Charlestown boys and the Patriarca crime family, who often employed the McLaughlin and Hughes brothers for professional hits and other acts of mayhem.

With regard to the beating of Georgie McLaughlin, Buddy was disturbed to hear that the Charlestown boys were not about to let sleeping dogs lie.

“I want ’em dead,” Bernie McLaughlin said of the two men who nearly killed his brother.

“For that I can’t give you permission,” responded McLean.

“Permission?” said Bernie. “Who said anything about permission? I want you to help me set ’em up.”

McLean flatly refused. Bernie McLaughlin cursed his former friend, spat on the floor, and stormed out of the house.

Later that night, McLean awoke to the sound of dogs barking outside his home. When he looked out his window, he saw two men standing near his car, parked at the curb. He grabbed a .38 revolver, opened his front door, and fired shots at the men; they scampered away. McLean walked over to his car and examined it carefully. Underneath the hood he found a bomb made of plastique wired to the ignition.

Buddy McLean had gotten as far as he had in the underworld because he was a man of action. Instinctively, he knew who put the bomb under the hood of his car—the McLaughlin brothers. He also knew that the McLaughlins were relentless. Like many in Charlestown, the McLaughlins traced their Irish ancestry to County Donegal, bandit country in the far north of Ireland. No one held a grudge quite like the Donegal Irish; they were tough, fearless, and did not know how to back down. Knowing this, McLean did not spend much time deliberating about what needed to be done. The very next day, he began stalking Bernie McLaughlin. Then on Halloween, at twelve noon in City Square, Charlestown, in the shadow the Bunker Hill Monument, McLean shot his prey dead in front of nearly one hundred people. Not one witness would offer evidence against Buddy McLean, but he was arrested on a gun possession charge and sent away to prison for two years.

The very week McLean was released from the penitentiary, Georgie McLaughlin shot and killed a man he heard saying nice things about Buddy at a party in Roxbury. Only, Georgie shot the wrong man. When he overheard the comment, he went to get a gun, returned, and wrongfully shot Billy Sheridan, an innocent victim. Sheridan’s death was typical of the kind of killings that were to dominate the Boston underworld now that Buddy McLean was back on the street.

The murders came fast and furious. On May 3, 1964, an ex-con named Frank Benjamin was heard bragging about how he was going to take out the whole Winter Hill crew, starting with McLean. A gunman loyal to Winter Hill shot Benjamin in the head. Because it happened in a bar in front of twenty witnesses, the gunman felt he needed to burn the establishment to the ground. He also talked about taking Frank Benjamin’s severed head and placing it on Punchy McLaughlin’s doorstep, but he decided against it. The day after the shooting, Benjamin’s body was found in the trunk of a stolen car in South Boston, minus its head, which had been buried in the woods.

A week later, the Charlestown boys struck back, killing Russell Nicholson, the six-foot-seven ex-cop who had been serving as Buddy McLean’s bodyguard. One month later, the Winter Hill Gang got revenge. Two Charlestown hoods were lured to an apartment by a woman friend of theirs. When they arrived at the apartment, Buddy McLean and a few of his men were there waiting. Before killing them, McLean held a blowtorch to their genitals to get information. After finding out what he needed to know, he strangled them both and dumped the bodies in Boston Harbor.

On September 4, the bullet-riddled body of Ronald Dermody was found in his car at a red light in Watertown. The case of Ronnie Dermody was a strange one. According to underworld folklore, Dermody was in love with a woman known simply as Dottie from Dorchester. Dottie, however, was in love with another guy. So Dermody approached Georgie McLaughlin with a stellar proposition. If McLaughlin would kill Dottie’s boyfriend, paving the way for Dermody to marry his truly beloved, Dermody would kill Buddy McLean. To show how sincere he was, Dermody would take the initiative and kill McLean first. On September 2, Dermody stormed into the Capitol Café on Broadway in Winter Hill and gunned down a man he thought was big bad Buddy McLean. Unfortunately for Dermody, it wasn’t; he had shot a petty thief by the name of Charlie Robinson. When McLean heard what happened and put two and two together, he ordered Dermody’s execution.

Throughout 1964 and into 1965, the war continued: gunshots, knifings, and strangulations occurred in the dead of night, as the body count grew. Some of the killings were brazen, out in the open, while others were sneaky and surreptitious. Men disappeared and were never heard from again. In Charlestown and Winter Hill, people kept their mouths shut. Many of the murders never even made the newspapers, and most of the killings were never solved or even seriously investigated. In Boston, the underworld existed far below the radar. Sports and politics were the dominant topics of the day. The country was still grieving the assassination of their beloved president, while in the city of J.F.K.’s earliest professional accomplishments, the bloodletting was unprecedented with so many dead bodies that, had they been laid out, head to toe, they might well have spanned the entire Freedom Trail.

By 1965, the Winter Hill Gang was determined to nail Punchy McLaughlin. The feeling was that, if they could eliminate Punchy and his unquenchable Irish thirst for revenge, maybe the killings would stop. To do the job, Buddy McLean turned to a Mafia hit team led by Frank “Cadillac Frank” Salemme and Joe Barboza, an Italian-Portuguese killer who would later become famous as one of the first criminals to enter the Witness Protection Program. Twice in early 1965 the Salemme-Barboza hit team ambushed Punchy McLaughlin. The first time, the killers came dressed as rabbis and shot their target in the parking lot of Beth Israel hospital. Punchy lived but lost half his jaw. The second attempt was even sloppier; they ambushed McLaughlin in a suburban neighborhood, shooting off his right hand and spraying a number of surrounding homes with gunfire.

The attempts on Punchy’s life were well-known events in the city’s underworld, and in October 1965 hitman Frank Salemme was approached by a local FBI team of Agent H. Paul Rico and Agent Dennis Condon, a veteran G-man duo who had been circulating in the Boston underworld for years. Rico, in particular, was a star in the local FBI office, well-known for his ability to turn informants. With his black hair and olive complexion, Rico looked Italian, but he was actually of Spanish and Irish descent. A scheming, Machiavellian figure, Agent Rico had a well-known animosity toward the McLaughlin-Hughes faction of the Irish Mob. Among other things, he believed that they had incriminating information on the fact that he was a closet homosexual who occasionally had dalliances with underage boys.
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After the second bungled attempt on Punchy McLaughlin, Agent Rico approached Cadillac Frank Salemme and said, “Boy, that was some sloppy work on your part. What are you guys—amateurs?”

“The problem,” said Salemme, “is that we don’t know where he’s been hiding out; we don’t know his address. If we had that we could track him from the moment he leaves his house.”

Agent Rico nodded and said nothing. Two days later, he approached Salemme at a Boston diner and handed him a slip of paper.