Unmade Men

Like pretty much every city of any size in the Northeast (and the Midwest, for that matter), my hometown of Worcester had it's share of organized crime. Cosa Nostra, it was called then, and Raymond Patriarca, who ran the Providence mob and had his hand in the Worcester mob as well, was Worcester-born.

But most of what I knew about gangsters came from watching The Untouchables. (Rico! Youngfellow!) I loved the show, but wasn't always able to see it, as my mother thought it was too explicit and violent for a ten year old. Somehow, though, I guess when she was distracted, I was able to watch. My father enjoyed it, and I became a fan, too.)

I also knew about organized crime from reading the newspapers and magazines like Newsweek, and from watching the televised news as well. (I was an avid consumer of the news pretty much from the time I could read.)

Once I reached the age of reason and moved to Boston, I became more aware of the Mafia, which had a major local presence. The Irish mob - Winter Hill Gang, Whitey Bulger - did, too. (That's a Whitey Bulger mug shot.)

The mobs were big news, so I learned plenty about the local gangs. 

In addition to reading about organized crime in the Boston Globe, there was plenty of popular culture to consume. 

Despite the sometimes terrible Boston accents, I loved The Departed, which was loosely based on the life and times of Whitey Bulger. And although they were not Massachusetts-mobbed up related, I also loved the Godfather movies (the first two, anyway), Married to the Mob, Wise Guys, etc. And I adored The Sopranos.

In terms of knowing much about the gangs, it was the Boston Mafia and the adjacent Irish mob that I knew most about. And I grew to understand that - as the wire taps and other surveillance methods worked, as the head guys went to prison and/or died, as the underlings decided that omerta wasn't worth it if you could acquire a get-out-of-jail-free card for ratting out the top dogs - organized crime in Boston wasn't what it used to be. 

(Steven O'Donnell, the former head of the RI State Police has recently "estimated there are currently only about 30 “made” members of the New England Mafia, compared to hundreds during its heyday decades ago.")

The local FBI has apparently come to the same understanding about the local branches of the mob dying out. 

So much so that the FBI’s Boston office, which oversees much of New England, quietly disbanded its organized crime squad recently and re-assigned agents to other priorities, according to several people familiar with the move.

The agency will still monitor any organized crime groups, as needed. But the disbandment of a unit that was largely built to target the Mafia signaled a death notice of sorts — an end of a dark era — for what was once one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the region, as well as the storied unit that was built to combat it.

“I don’t think there’s much of anything left with traditional organized crime,” said Fred Wyshak, a former federal prosecutor who won the convictions of local Italian and Irish organized crime figures, including the late former Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, notorious gangster Stephen Flemmi, and South Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger. “I think the leadership was destroyed and nobody really has the strength to step in and fill that void. I don’t think there’s a lot of desire to do so.” (Source: Boston Globe)

That these ruthless hoods are out of business is certainly for the better. While they were in their shoot-'em-up prime, there were plenty of stories in The Globe about cold blooded mob hits - often in broad daylight- and about mysterious disappearances. 

Organized crime may be romantic when the bad guys are played by Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. It may provide some comic relief like the episode of The Sopranos when Christopher Moltisanti and Paulie Walnuts are stranded overnight in the NJ Pine Barrens with nothing to eat but the dried up contents of a ketchup packet, found in the glove compartment. 

But in real life, organized crime is bloody, violent, sickening, and really, really stupid.

And there's no forgetting that some of G-men in the local Boston FBI office were pretty much running a Whitey Bulger protection racket out of said office. (FBI Agent John "Zip" Connolly went to prison for his involvement. He  had, like Whitey, grown up in South Boston. And, hey, what are friends for?)

In any event, it's good to see that the FBI will be focusing on terrorism, cybercrime, and other dangers that are clearer and more present than the old school mob. After all:

...the New England Mafia is now “a shell of itself,” said Steve Johnson, a retired Massachusetts State Police detective lieutenant and longtime organized crime investigator.

“It’s mostly figurehead people and wannabes ... people pretending they are doing their best Sopranos act,” he said. “It’s mostly just in name. They are certainly not what they used to be.”

I'm happy to see that fewer of these men, both made and unmade, remain in our midst. But they live on within a few degrees of separation.

My cousin's grandson had a classmate/teammate who was the grandson of the man who was responsible for 20 or so murders while he served as Whitey Bulger's trigger man. Another classmate/teammate was the great-nephew of another member of Whitey's gang. The uncle was a member in good standing until he pissed Whitey off. Bad move! The man who finished the uncle off was none other than Whitey's trigger man, who was just following orders. 

Good riddance to them all. (The hoods, not the classmates/teammates.)