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 Providence. Still, Italians throughout Boston had great admiration for Buccola. He wasn't merely a mobster; he was also available to give advice on anything from domestic problems to business investments. In the 1930s and 40s, Italians in Boston still faced prejudice and couldn't always find assistance in the accepted manner. As future welterweight champion Tony DeMarco once put it, “When we couldn't go to the police or to our local congressman, we went to someone like Phil Buccola.”
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.
The adoration of gangsters was such a growing concern that Dr. A. Z. Conrad, the powerhouse pastor at Boston's Park Street Congregational Church, addressed the issue in a March 1932 radio address on WHDH. “The reason that so many boys almost worship gangsters is because we have made heroes of the gangster and the racketeer,” Conrad said. Known for his finger-wagging sermons from Boston's “Brimstone Corner,” Conrad blamed “the infernal moving pictures” that “presented crime in an attractive form.” But Boston's kids didn't need to go to the movies to see gangsters. The bad guys were right there in the neighborhood.
By Buccola's era, the Italian American mobster was undergoing a change of image. They were no longer old-country types operating under the cloak of darkness and hiding their money in a mattress. They were increasingly Americanized. They understood the city's politics and knew how to manipulate the local power structures. If they indulged in criminal activity, the reasoning went, it was only because American society had yet to fully embrace the Italians. Legit jobs were scarce; a fellow made a buck where he could. An elegant, intelligent man such as Buccola wasn't to be lumped in with the Black Handers, narcotics dealers, or two-bit robbers. If the authorities ever accused Buccola of anything too sinister, his admirers simply wouldn't believe it.
As boxing fever swept the city in the 1930s and 40s, Boston's underworld grew as well. In this dangerously charged atmosphere, it was inevitable that the city's boxers would intertwine with gangsters. Not surprisingly, there was an uptick in the number of local fighters getting whacked. The most famous of them was Nate Siegel, a popular welterweight from Revere who had twice fought the legendary Mickey Walker. In 1934, an assassin shot Siegel to death in his own home. Siegel owned a tavern and was believed to have come between rival liquor distributors, but no one was ever charged with his murder.
There were others: George Brogna, who fought as “Johnny DeLano,” was a twenty-six-year-old East Boston featherweight with a record of 12-9-5. He'd also been deeply involved in gangland activity and had allegedly killed a local bootlegger, “Big Mike” Richardi (who had been suspected of killing Johnny Vito). In 1933, Brogna's body was found in Revere. He'd been beaten about the head and shot three times. That same year saw the murder of Joseph Wolf, a petty criminal with gang ties who fought as “Charley ‘KO’ Elkins.” His ring resume was 15-9-2, plus seventy-two
