Читать книгу Slaughter in the Streets. When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital онлайн

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The boxer gunned down by gangsters may be a fixture of old movies, but it is not a myth. The melodrama of a desperate fighter pursued by seedy killers, the crack of gunfire, the bullet-riddled corpse dumped in a secluded area; these situations were not solely the work of screenwriters during Hollywood's Golden Age. They were rooted in truth.

Of course, these murders weren't very cinematic. They rarely, if ever, had anything to do with fixed fights, and the murdered boxer would be familiar to only the most astute fans of the fight game. A famous fighter wouldn't let himself get sucked into this kind of trouble. Instead, it was the fighter on the fringe of the business, the preliminary kid, who found himself staring down a gun barrel or, as was usually the case, shot behind the ear.

Just six months before Frankie Gustin's murder, the body of East Boston pugilist Jerry DiAngelis turned up in Chelsea. He'd been shot to death and left in a wooded area known as a gangland dumping ground. Prior to that was the 1925 murder of former boxer Johnny Vito, a North Ender whose corpse was found in Braintree, face down in mud. The murderer remained unknown, though police believed Vito had been killed trying to hijack a liquor truck. In December of 1915, a shady character named Joseph Damico was found stabbed to death in an East Boston alley. The Globe savored every gash, noting Damico was “struck on the neck, the blow severing the jugular vein and nearly cutting through the spine.” Damico, who had fought more than twenty times as “Tommy Young,” turned out to be an unsavory character with gang connections in New York. Rivaling Gustin's death for coverage was the February 1929 murder of North Ender Anthony “Sparky” Chiampa. Nineteen-year-old Sparky was found dead in a Revere barn, bullet holes in the back of his head and under each eye.