found this article on houlihan, fitzgerald and their hitman nardone. Nardone was also convicted of shooting a black highschool football player when he was younger, black kid ended up in a wheel chair and nardone got 10 years for it. I think that movie monument av is based on this.
Neighborhood Finally Talks, And Loosens Crime's Grip
Published: March 26, 1995
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For decades in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood, witnesses to crimes never breathed a word, either out of loyalty or out of fear.
But on Wednesday, two leaders of a drug ring and their enforcer were convicted in Federal District Court on charges of racketeering, cocaine trafficking, murder and attempted murder, with the help of testimony from about a dozen witnesses.
The two leaders, Michael Fitzgerald and John Houlihan, were charged with running a drug ring, using Joseph Nardone as their enforcer, out of Kerrigan's Flower Shop in Charlestown, a one-mile-square neighborhood on Boston Harbor that is also the home of Old Ironsides, the frigate Constitution.
The three are to be sentenced on May 18. Prosecutors are recommending that they get life in prison without parole.
Before the convictions, the Irish, working-class neighborhood of 15,000 was well known for its residents' habit of not talking to the police, its code of silence. The situation left many police officers frustrated.
"Most of the crime committed over there, we know who did it," said Capt. Edward McNelley of the police homicide unit. "But our knowing doesn't mean anything. We need a person to come forward and say, 'I was there and I will testify.' "
The authorities managed to crack the code of silence with a three-year investigation in which the Government spent more than $1 million to protect witnesses, including a half-dozen residents who asked to be moved out of the neighborhood for fear of retribution.
About a dozen thieves and drug dealers were granted immunity from prosecution and received new identities under the Federal witness protection program.
"This has been a long time coming, and it has given families some belief in the system again, that the system can work and we don't have to accept the way things were in the past," said Sandy King, whose two sons were shot in front of witnesses who would not talk.
Five years ago, she helped found the Charlestown After Murder Program, an organization of women who meet every Sunday in a Catholic church to talk about unsolved homicides that have affected their lives. The police say that of the 50 homicides the group has tracked since 1975, arrests have been made in only about half.
Ms. King said the code of silence was started long ago by Irish immigrants who distrusted authority. A longshoreman, for example, might steal a case of tuna from the docks but give a little of the fish to his neighbors so that when the police inquired about the theft, no one knew anything.
Over time, the silence allowed criminals to thrive.
Charlestown became known by law-enforcement officials nationwide for its small-time hoodlums, thieves, drug dealers and murderers. Crime became so commonplace that arguments normally settled in a fistfight often ended in murder.
Today, the Bunker Hill Monument divides a small group of young professionals who live in renovated brownstones from a far greater number of "townies," longtime residents who live in row houses and a sprawling housing project. Ninety-six percent of Charlestown is white.
During the trial, one witness told of driving the getaway car for Mr. Nardone and hearing the squat, bull-necked hit man laugh about killing an informer. The witness said he and Mr. Nardone had split a $5,000 fee.
But not everyone is sure that things have changed.
"I got nothing to say about nothing," said a clerk in a coin-operated laundry who would give her name only as Patty.
The owner of the laundry, who refused to give his name, said he doubted that the code of silence had really been broken.
"You talk about things you're not supposed to talk about, you get killed," he said.
