Last Rites by William J. Craig Page B

of the chamber. Bulger later served as president of the University of Massachusetts. The post-Alcatraz Bulger quickly realized that his brother Billy’s newly elected position could only benefit his climb to power.
    In 1972, Whitey Bulger was working as a bodyguard for Southie bookie Donald Killeen. Bulger began to have misgivings about Killeen. He decided that he would either enter into an alliance with the Italian mob, which he distrusted and hated, or forge an alliance with the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville. Bulger knew that if he did not ally himself, he may end up dead due to Killeen’s rival, the Mullin gang. Therefore, with his pride set aside, Bulger set off to see Howard “Howie” Winter. His gang was operated out of Marshall Motors in Somerville, a nondescript garage. Howie Winter associated with people like Fat Al Samenza at the Suffolk Downs Racetrack. Samenza worked in the Spit Box, which was the area of the track that tested the winning racehorse’s urine. The mob would often drug horses with speed, thus the testing requirement. Samenza would switch the dirty urine with clean urine, for a price. Sometimes the mob would also pay a jockey to run interference and box other horses out as added insurance. Shortly after Bulger sided with Howie Winter, a contract killer completed a hit on Donald Killeen outside of his home. Bulger would now have South Boston, and Winter would have Whitey.
    The Winter Hill Gang was started by Irishman James Buddy McLean. He was born in 1929 out of wedlock to a wealthy land speculator and onetime heir to the Washington Post newspaper, James McLean, in Somerville, Massachusetts. McLean was orphaned at an early age and adopted by a Portuguese family. He worked as a longshoreman on the docks of East Boston and Charlestown as a teenager. Due to his position as a longshoreman, he became a close friend of William J. McCarthy, who would later become president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In 1955, McLean married a Portuguese girl and began to slowly amass a formidable criminal organization. McLean was considered one of the toughest street fighters in Boston and was well known in underworld circles. A close friend once said, “He looks like a choir boy but fights like the devil.” Over the years, all his fighting took a toll on his body; he had several scars on his neck and a badly damaged left eye.
    A milestone in New England gang violence began with a moment of lustful misjudgment. This lapse in judgment sparked a shooting and stabbing war among the gangs that lasted for years and strongly contributed to the eventual crippling of organized crime in the Boston area. In September 1961, two Winter Hill associates and their friend, twenty-two-year-old Charlestown mobster George McLaughlin, rented a cottage on Salisbury Beach for a Labor Day party. McLaughlin was drinking heavily throughout the day. In the evening, he attempted to grope the girlfriend of Alexander “Bobo” Petricone, who later went by the name Alex Rocco when he became an actor having a bit part in the film The Godfather . This single action and lapse in judgment was the catalyst that set off one of the biggest mob wars in Boston history. The two men confronted McLaughlin and gave him a savage beating. Unsure whether he was still alive, they dumped him at a nearby hospital and left to tell their boss McLean what had transpired. McLean absolved them from any wrongdoing and informed the men that he would smooth things over with George’s brother, Bernie.
    This was not to be; Bernie wanted revenge for what had happened to his brother, and he wanted McLean to help set up the two men responsible for the near-fatal beating. McLean was outraged and told Bernie that his brother had been out of line and had the beating coming to him. McLean stormed out of the sit-down refusing to comply with the request. Later that night, McLean awoke to the sound of his dogs being aroused and