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

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By 1950, Buccola was on the radar of Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee senator out to smash organized crime. In 1954, weary of federal investigations and the Internal Revenue Service, Buccola returned to Sicily. When Mafia rat Joe Valachi spilled his guts in 1963 about the inner workings of the Mob, he informed the FBI that Buccola had indeed been La Cosa Nostra's top man in Massachusetts, possibly in all of New England, and that his underworld resume included extortion and murder. By the time Valachi squealed, Buccola was living in Sicily as a chicken farmer. He lived to be 101 years old.

The generation of Boston boys who grew up during Buccola's reign saw an unmistakable link between boxing and crime. They saw that gangsters like Buccola were revered. Boxers had followings, but gangsters had real clout and were the unmistakable stars of the neighborhood. When North End gangster Carmelo Giuffre was slain in January of 1931, so many mourners crammed the Charter Street home where his body was on view that the second-floor hallway began collapsing; the fire department arrived to keep the stream of visitors down to groups of five.