The killing of Chiampa was especially ominous. There'd been no signs of robbery, and his murderer hadn't even bothered to remove an expensive diamond ring from his hand; he was killed solely to shut him up, to keep him from talking in court. It was an event described in one newspaper as “the first real introduction of Chicago gang warfare into Boston.”
But it was the ambush of Frankie Gustin that was drilled into the minds of rough kids who grew up in the post-Depression neighborhoods of the North End and East Boston, which were predominantly Italian, and South Boston and Charlestown, which were mostly Irish. Those neighborhoods, wrote the Globe more than six decades later, “spawned most of the city's gangsters, who carried ethnic-based animosities like chips on their shoulders.”
Simultaneously, Gustin's murder was part of a second story playing out, that of a boxer being murdered in Boston. It is an unusual status to claim, but few cities can match Boston for its number of slain fighters. Of the more than three hundred and fifty professional and amateur fighters murdered worldwide since Gustin's death in 1931, a shocking amount of those killings took place in Boston and its neighboring towns. Most were gang related. Many were unsolved.
Frankie's brother Stevie stepped in as the gang's new leader, but within ten years the Gustins were considered relics of the Prohibition age. However, their work was already done. They had established a criminal archetype. Cocky, brash, and daring, they were forerunners of the South Boston criminals to come, the poor, scrappy Irish boys who emerged from the worst parts of Southie to embark on unlawful careers. The most notorious, of course, was James “Whitey” Bulger, who in his early days was simply another Southie hood following the template of the Gustins. Yet he would become America's most famous criminal and turn the Boston FBI into his partners. When the FBI eventually brought down the city's Italian Mob in the 1980s, it was with Whitey's help. Before he was done, Bulger would wield a kind of influence that would've been unimaginable to the boys on Gustin Street.
And fifty years after the Gustins, boxers were still playing a part in the Boston crime scene. Bulger never had more than a passing interest in boxing, but he certainly used local fighters as henchmen. More than one of his boxing flunkies landed in prison for an extended stay. In 1975, Bulger and an accomplice decided they couldn't trust a retired local middleweight named Eddie Connors. They shot him to bits in a phone booth and created a scene as gory as anything from the old Hanover Street shooting gallery. Connors, who had boxed many times at the Boston Garden, made the mistake of getting too familiar with his criminal pals. For his trouble, he was cut nearly in half by a carbine and left to soak in his own blood.
As for Joseph Lombardo, he was acquitted in connection to the Gustin murder and went on for many years as the North End's underboss. During the 1950s and 60s, Lombardo served as consigliere for a new generation of mobsters, namely the Patriarca crime family in Providence, and was a mentor to Boston's new underboss, Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo. In the years before his death in 1969, when he was an elderly restaurant owner, Lombardo still commanded respect. Even the craziest young soldiers of the city's new Mafia knew that “J. L.” had stopped the Gustins.
The murder of Frankie Gustin established a long-term understanding that the Irish crooks and the Mafia would coexist in the city as separate but not quite equal entities. At times they'd work together. At times they would be at war. Boston's criminal world was complicated, always evolving, often confusing. And Frankie, the failed flyweight, wouldn't be the last fighter caught in the crossfire.
Boston was on its way to becoming boxing's murder capital.
Chapter 2
Phil Buccola: Boston's Beloved Mob Boss
The Only Thing He Loved More Than Boxing Was Crime . . .
Phil Buccola.
According to local gangster lore, the murder of Frankie Gustin had been ordered by Boston's top Italian crime boss, Filippo “Phil” Buccola (aka “Bruccola” or “Buccalo”). Quiet and pleasant, Buccola was one of the Mafia's best-kept secrets. He'd come to America from Palermo, and with the stealth of a small jungle lizard managed to stay invisible, even in plain sight. Rather than do business in some badly lit waterfront shack, he was out among the people. With his thinning hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked more like a pharmacist than a mobster.
The 1933 killing of Jewish bootlegger and drug trafficker Charles “King” Solomon was also attributed to Buccola. A compelling version of the story has Buccola hiring the remaining members of the Gustins to kill Solomon, though some believe Solomon's death was just a robbery gone wrong. Then again, the murder of Solomon took place at a nightclub owned by Dan Carroll, an ex-cop who happened to be Buccola's partner in many business ventures.
With the city's top Irish and Jewish gangsters bumped off, Buccola seized the Boston underworld. He wasn't as bloodthirsty as his counterparts in New York or Chicago, but his clique was clearly Mafia, with rites and roots going back to feudal Sicily. It was later revealed that Buccola was also quite friendly with Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the man who introduced America to the concept of the organized crime “family.”
Though Buccola owned shares in a popular dog-racing track in Revere and a piece of The Bostonian Hotel, his real interest was boxing. He was known as a manager of fighters, sometimes alone, sometimes with Carroll or another well-known manager, Johnny Buckley. It wasn't unusual for top gangsters to own a fighter's contract the way they might a racehorse or a restaurant, but Buccola took the fight game seriously. He had a full stable of New England fighters, most of them from the North End. At one time there were as many as twenty-five fighters under the Buccola banner, including North Ender Sammy Fuller and Ralph “The Ripper” Zannelli, a granite-faced welterweight from Providence. But despite Buccola's genuine passion for boxing, he was, according to one journalist, “rated by colleagues as one of the world's worst fight handlers.”
Like most managers in those days, Buccola's dream was to find a good heavyweight. Specifically, he wanted a heavyweight of Italian ancestry. By 1929 there were whispers out of New York that a team of mobsters and Broadway shills had purchased the contract of Primo Carnera, a former circus strongman who would, with some help behind the scenes, eventually become heavyweight champion. Perhaps not coincidentally, when Carnera came to Rhode Island in 1932 for the only time in his career, he fought one of Buccola's fighters, an aging journeyman named Jack Gagnon. Buccola's man lost at 1:35 of the first round. As was often the case with Carnera's bouts, the ending seemed highly suspicious. Gagnon went down from a tap and wouldn't move, even as the spectators hooted. According to the Associated Press, “Carnera stood with a surprised look on his face until he was announced the victor.”
Determined to find his own Carnera, Buccola began importing fighters from Italy. The most widely publicized was a hairy hulk named Riccardo Bertazzolo. But after Bertazzolo lost seven fights in a row—including a third-round knockout loss to Carnera in Atlantic City—Buccola shipped him back to Europe.
Buccola's partner in bringing Bertazzolo to America was Frank Marlow, a high-rolling New York gambler, club owner, and fight manager. Just weeks after Bertazzolo's arrival, Marlow was found shot to death in a Queens gutter. Marlow's murder went unsolved, but there were plenty of lively suspects, including New York racketeer “Joe the Boss” Masseria and former middleweight champion Johnny Wilson of Boston, allegedly angry that Marlow owed him money. Even Buccola was wanted for questioning.
Buccola's shady side wasn't a secret. His rap sheet included a 1923 weapons charge and a bust for taking part in an illegal lottery operation. In 1935, he was charged with tax fraud. By 1947, authorities suspected Buccola was not only a high-powered racketeer, but that his reach extended all the way to