Paddy Whacked

by T. J. English

  Paulie McGonigle had been a Mullin Gang member almost as long as Pat Nee. The two men were close enough that they would have died for each other. Fortunately for them, that never happened, but death did become a deciding factor in their relationship when Donnie McGonigle, Paulie’s brother, was gunned down in the street in early 1968. Donnie McGonigle had no connection to the Mullin Gang. He was harmless, a drinker and a lover, not a fighter. A crew of Southie gangsters led by Billy O’Sullivan trailed McGonigle home one night and took him out in a drive-by shooting. O’Sullivan, one of the most feared professional killers in Southie, mistook Donnie for his brother Paulie, who had been marked for death by an old-time group of neighborhood racketeers and mobsters known as the Killeen Gang.

  The Killeen Gang was led by three brothers: Donald, Kenneth, and Edward. Donald Killeen was the boss, serving basically the same function in Southie as Buddy McLean had in Charlestown. Donald’s huge head and beetle brows gave him the appearance of a brute, but he had a good head for numbers. Born in 1924, he was a bookmaker and gambling impresario from the old school, with roots going all the way back to the Gustin Gang. There had been at least five Killeen brothers; Donald’s oldest brother, George, had been murdered in 1950 after being questioned by police, following the legendary Brinks Job heist in the North End. Virtually every old-time Irish crook in South Boston was affiliated with the Killeens, as were a couple of younger gunmen—including Billy O’Sullivan, better known as Billy-O.

  The mistaken identity murder of Donnie McGonigle touched off the same kind of tit-for-tat pattern of revenge killings in Southie that had characterized Charlestown over the previous five or six years. In an act of vengeance for the McGonigle murder, a crew of Mullin Gang members shot and killed Billy-O in the street. Predictably, the Killeen Gang struck back, shooting and crippling a Mullin gangster named Buddy Roach. In late 1968, Eddie Killeen, the most well-liked of the Killeen brothers, committed suicide under mysterious circumstances that some considered murder…and on and on it went.

  To outsiders, the violence in Southie was inexplicable, but to those involved it was the natural consequence of a kind of primitive street-corner code. The Mullin Gang in particular, who had a tradition of military veterans in their ranks, prized loyalty as something worth dying for. The gang was like a platoon; assaults against one gang member were effectively assaults against the entire group. This code, when fused with ethnic identity and a general sense of Southie loyalty, would be manipulated by gangsters, politicians, and community leaders. Southie would eventually become engulfed in race wars, and gentrification wars, and a fair amount of internal self-flagellation. But in the Age of Aquarius, it was mostly Southie boys killing Southie boys, with nary a word of outrage from the police, the press, or the public at large.

  In early 1969, Pat Nee stopped into a bar near downtown Boston called the Mad Hatter. Far from Southie, Charlestown, or any of the other gangland hot spots in town, the Mad Hatter was a sort of demilitarized zone where members of various crews could drink and hang out, supposedly without having to worry about taking a bullet in the back of the head. It was on this particular night that Nee first met a well-known member of the Killeen Gang named James “Whitey” Bulger.

  Nee knew Bulger by reputation. He was just Jim Bulger back then, before his hair receded and turned prematurely silver, earning him the nickname Whitey. Raised in Southie, Bulger was a stick-up man and bank robber who had gone off to prison at a young age and missed the early years of the Boston gang wars. Nee was intrigued by the veteran bank robber who had done time at Alcatraz prison in California. Nee suspected that Bulger, as a hitman for the Killeen Gang, had taken part in the shooting of a number of Mullin Gang members. The two gangsters from opposing camps eyed each other warily and assessed each other over drinks at the bar, while chatting about growing up in Southie and other neutral subjects.

  While they were talking, a member of the Mullin Gang named Mickey Dwyer rushed into the bar. Dwyer, an ex-boxer with a harelip that made him hard to understand, was excitable in the best of times. Pat Nee looked up and did a double take at the sight of Dwyer: His nose had been completely torn off, with blood rushing down his face and all over the front of his shirt. He’d also been shot in the arm and beat up pretty badly. Dwyer was excitedly trying to explain what happened, but with the lisp, the missing nose, the bullet in the arm, and the general beating he had received, nobody could understand a word he was saying.

  “Mickey,” said Nee, “slow down, for Chrissake. Tell us what happened.”

  Turned out Mickey Dwyer had gotten into a brutal fight with Kenny Killeen at the Transit bar in Southie. Killeen shot Mickey in the arm and then bit his nose off.

  “He what!?” exclaimed Nee.

  “That’s right, Paddy. The bastid bit my fuckin’ nose off.”

  A couple of Mullin gangsters rushed Mickey off to the hospital, while the others said, “Fuck them Killeens. Let’s go get ’em.”

  Whitey Bulger had been quietly watching and listening to all of this. As the only member of the Killeen Gang on the premises, he was surrounded by the enemy, although no one seemed to notice.

  “You got a car?” Nee asked Bulger.

  “Sure,” said Whitey.

  “Let’s get over to the Transit.”

  Various Mullin gangsters piled into cars and raced toward the Transit bar, which was owned by Donald Killeen. It was only as they were driving there that Pat Nee realized he was with Jim Bulger, a member of the enemy camp. By the time all of them pulled up in front of the bar in Southie, the Killeen brothers were long gone. “Fuck,” mumbled the Mullin gangsters. Revenge would have to wait until another day.

  On the street outside the bar, Nee and Bulger said their good-byes. It was an odd moment: The two men from opposing sides of Southie’s underworld divide sensed that the next time they saw each other it might be from the opposite sides of a gun. But they simply shook hands and headed off in different directions.

  True to form, the Southie gang war heated up, and Nee and Bulger became enemies. Their next encounter was outside the same bar, the Mad Hatter, where they’d met and conversed on the night that Mickey Dwyer rushed in with blood all over him. This time, Pat Nee was driving by the bar when a fellow Mullin said, “Hey, there’s that prick Bulger.” There had been a number of fresh killings in recent weeks, with the requisite increase in tension.

  “Stop the car,” Nee commanded.

  It was after midnight, and the street outside the Mad Hatter was poorly lit. Nee was carrying a .38-caliber pistol. “Hey Bulger,” he cried out, then fired off a couple shots in Whitey’s direction. Bulger hit the pavement, grabbed a revolver from an ankle holster and returned fire. After exchanging a volley back and forth, Nee hopped back in his car and sped away, tires squealing.

  On other occasions, Nee hid in the shrubbery across from Bulger’s residence at the Old Harbor Housing Project, where Bulger shared an apartment with his mother. Every time Whitey stepped out the door, the Mullin leader cut loose with sniper fire in his direction, chasing the Killeen gangster back into his house. Sometimes Bulger would go weeks without ever leaving his mother’s home, for fear that he would be cut down like a dog in the street.

  The tit-for-tat Mullin-Killeen war went on for months. Meanwhile, Pat Nee sought to make a living through the usual assortment of robberies and hijackings. It was a hustle, to say the least, one that was occasionally interrupted by the vicissitudes of the gangster life—a person had be ready to avenge all slights, real or perceived.

  One act that required Pat Nee’s immediate attention was the murder of his younger brother Peter. On a night in April 1969, Peter Nee and a friend got into an altercation at the Coachman Bar with three neighborhood guys, two of whom were vets just back from Vietnam. Peter Nee was not a gangster or even much of a tough guy. He wasn’t the one who initiated the drunken argument at the Coachman. Rather, his friend had gotten into a shoving match with Kevin Daly and Daly’s two companions. From there, the fight co
ntinued throughout the night; it moved from the Coachman to Cassidy’s Bar, and finally ended up at the Iron Fort, a bar located across the street from Gate of Heaven Church. It was at the Iron Fort that Peter Nee was shot twice in the face with a .22-caliber pistol.

  Within hours of the killing, Pat Nee knew who did it. There were numerous witnesses, though none who were willing to violate the neighborhood code by fingering the assailant for the cops. The word came back to Nee: Kevin Daly had pulled the trigger, aided and abetted by two others. All three men were well-known in the neighborhood and came from established Southie families. Nee set out to avenge his brother’s murder.

  Throughout the summer and fall of 1969, a set of circumstances considerably shortened Nee’s three-man hit list. One of his brother’s killers went crazy and checked himself into a mental institution, where he would stay for at least the next two decades. Another killer, a neighborhood bully who had become a Boston police officer weeks after the death of Peter Nee, was murdered in a totally unrelated barroom altercation. That left Kevin Daly, whom Pat Nee held most responsible for Peter’s death.

  On a rainy night in November, Nee got a call from a friend who had sponsored a Marine Corp ball in Southie that night. Kevin Daly, like Pat Nee, had served in the Marines.

  “He’s here,” Nee’s friend told him over the phone.

  Nee could hear the music and revelry in the background. He knew Daly was a drinker and would be there until closing time. “Okay,” said Pat. “Call me back at midnight, and let me know how he’s doing.”

  At midnight, Nee’s contact called again. “He’s still here, getting drunker by the minute. We’ll be closing down here at two.”

  “Good,” said Nee. “Thanks for the info.” He hung up the phone.

  Nee knew where Kevin Daly lived. Immediately, he called two friends who were to act as his back-up. The three men drove over to Daly’s house, parked a few blocks away, and waited. Nee remembers

  The heavy rain made it difficult to see, which worked to our advantage. Me and my back-up guy waited in an alleyway, lying down behind barrels and garbage cans. We had a third guy across the street with a shotgun loaded with buck shot. Daly’s two brothers were Boston cops, living in that same house; we knew that they might come running out once they heard gunfire. When they came out our guy was supposed to spray them with buckshot, chase them back into the house.

  I heard Kevin Daly coming; he drove a Volkswagen with a bad muffler, so we heard him before we saw him. As luck would have it, there was a parking spot right there in the alleyway. I heard the engine turn off. With the rain pissing down, I crept up the alleyway. I had a .38 automatic, which turned out to be a mistake. I was more comfortable with a rifle, but that would have been too big for such tight quarters. He was locking his car with the key. When he turned and saw me, I was no more than two feet away. I simply told him, “Now it’s your turn.” And I started shooting. Hit him five times. After he went down I kicked his teeth in and spit on him in the street.

  Pat Nee went home that night thinking he had avenged his brother’s murder by killing Kevin Daly. A few days later, much to his surprise, Nee was arrested for assault with intent to kill and taken to Charles Street Jail. Daly, it seemed, had not died. “My brother got hit twice and died. I shot this guy five times—once above the heart, once below—and he lived. Go figure.” Daly had not only survived; just when he thought he was about to expire, he had identified Pat Nee as the assailant.

  Two months after the shooting, Nee was escorted into municipal court. Kevin Daly was brought in, in a wheelchair. Having miraculously and unexpectedly survived the brutal attack, Daly was now confronted with his deathbed statement, in which he had fingered Pat Nee.

  “Does your client stand by his statement?” the judge asked Kevin Daly’s attorney.

  “Your honor,” said the lawyer. “My client now believes that that statement was made under duress, in a delusionary state, and he would like to rescind that statement. The truth is he did not get a good look at whoever shot and assaulted him on the night in question.”

  The judge was dumbfounded, and the court was thrown into disarray. Not wanting to let Pat Nee go free, the judge threatened to prosecute Daly for perjury, but that was only a ruse. There was nothing anyone could do. Kevin Daly, a child of Southie, was reneging on his identification of Pat Nee, whose brother he had killed months earlier. Against the court’s wishes, Patrick Nee was set free.

  Having dodged a bullet, Nee laid low for awhile. He began to grow weary of the neighborhood’s relentless cycle of violence and revenge. He wasn’t a kid anymore. Through the news media, he began to follow the explosive political situation in the country of his birth—Ireland. There was a rebel war going on in the country’s northern counties, with British troops storming the streets and shooting Catholic citizens dead in their homes. Nee was deeply affected by what he saw and began to wonder whether there was some way to use his daring and underworld acumen for a purpose other than personal gain. More and more, these ideas began to dominate Nee’s thinking. Eventually, he would see himself less as a gangster and more as a revolutionary—a man with a higher calling.6

  Meanwhile, the Boston gang wars continued to be the biggest boon to the local funeral business since the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  Whitey Makes His Move

  Early on the evening of May 13, 1972, Donald Killeen, the Irish mob boss of Southie, celebrated his daughter’s birthday at his home in Framingham, a Boston suburb. At some point during the celebration, Donald got a call. After hanging up the phone, he told his wife and father-in-law that he needed to run a quick errand and would be right back. He left the birthday party and headed outside to his car, which was parked in front of his pleasant $70,000 brick house (it had once been featured in a national magazine as a model suburban home). A few minutes later, Killeen’s five-year-old daughter asked her mother, “Why is daddy shooting off fireworks out by his car?”

  Donna Mae Killeen and her father rushed outside and found Donald slumped in the front seat of his car, riddled with bullets and bleeding like a sieve. By the time cops arrived, Donald Killeen, age forty-eight, was dead—the victim of a professional hit. Apparently, as soon as the Irish mob boss had settled into the front seat of his car, somebody had come up behind him with a Thompson submachine gun and opened fire. Killeen had reached for a .38 revolver that was either in the car or on his person; the revolver was found unfired on the car floorboard.

  The gangland murder of the Killeen Gang boss was a monumental event in the history of Boston’s underworld. The killing was swift and brutal, but not unexpected. The Southie gang wars had seemed to be heading in this direction. Like many famous, carefully planned hits, the murder would go unsolved, although everyone had a theory. Most neighborhood people suspected that the Mullin Gang, probably acting in consort with Howie Winter and the Winter Hill Gang, had done it

  On the surface, the man who stood to lose the most by the murder of Donald Killeen was Whitey Bulger, primary muscle for the Killeen brothers. With Donald out of the picture, it was assumed that other racketeers—most notably the Winter Hill Gang—would be moving in to pick up the pieces of Killeen’s operation. This put Bulger in a vulnerable position. Whitey did not have the manpower to stand his ground against a combination of Winter Hill and Mullin gangsters coming at him from all sides. For Bulger, the situation appeared bleak. But, as he would time and again over the following decades, Whitey Bulger demonstrated an uncanny ability to, in the vernacular of the streets, “turn chicken shit into chicken salad.” He treated the execution of his boss not as a disaster, but as an opportunity. A few weeks after the murder, he reached out to the very men who were believed to be responsible for Killeen’s death and demanded a meeting.

  It was a bold move. Aside from Kenny Killeen, Donald’s thuggish younger brother who once bit off Mickey Dwyer’s nose in a barroom brawl, the Killeen organization had been rendered moribund. Most of the city’s gunmen were of a younger generation and h
ad aligned themselves with the Winter Hill Gang or the Italians. Bulger, therefore, was not exactly dealing from a position of strength when he walked into Chandler’s, a legendary wiseguy hangout in the South End, where a meeting of the city’s reigning criminal elite was about to commence. (In the Italian American underworld, such gatherings were commonly known as sit downs, whereas the Boston Irish referred to them simply as meetings—as in, “It’s time we had a meetin’.”)

  Present at this particular get-together was Pat Nee, representing the Mullin Gang, Howie Winter of the Winter Hill Gang, numerous mafiosi including an old-time mobster from the North End named Joe Russo, and Whitey Bulger. Over the course of eight hours at Chandler’s bar and restaurant, the city’s multiethnic underworld leadership negotiated a settlement. Priority number one was that the city’s gang wars come to an end and that everyone start conducting themselves like businessmen instead of thugs. In this regard, Whitey Bulger had a card to play. It was believed that Kenny Killeen, Donald’s brother, would resist any and all encroachments on his family’s considerable rackets, which included bookmaking and gambling in the city’s southern wards. If Whitey Bulger could force Kenny Killeen to step aside without further bloodshed, he would have himself a seat at the underworld banquet table.

  A few days later, Kenny Killeen, clad in bathrobe and slippers, stepped out onto the patio of his South Boston apartment on Marine Avenue overlooking Dorchester Bay. From somewhere in the distance, a sniper fixed Killeen in his sights. At the moment the sniper fired, Killeen bent down to pick up his morning newspaper. The bullet hit the balcony’s wrought-iron railing and splintered into pieces that hit Killeen in the wrist and torso. Killeen went down, but as it turned out, the balcony’s wrought-iron railing saved his life.