Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [83]
Whatever the reason for the murder, Jimmy had no problem with the execution. His unique streak of violence, which had started when he was a kid, was simply part of his nature. He could stab people, shoot them, beat them with his bare hands or anything lying around, strangle them, hit them with his car, do whatever suited his purpose to inflict harm on someone he felt deserved it.
Paulie McGonigle was one of the victims Jimmy simply didn’t like, probably because he’d been with the Mullins gang, on the other side against Jimmy. Paulie’s was one of the many deaths that involved unsettled old scores from the gang wars. Jimmy had missed the early part of the gang wars of the 1960s in which eighty-two people died, but when he came out of prison in 1965, he aligned himself with the Killeens and Billy O’Sullivan and some other people from his past, against the Mullins gang with Tommy King, Jimmy Mantville, and Paulie McGonigle, among others. Unlike the McLaughlins and Winter Hill gangs, which were citywide and had players from all over the city, the Killeens and Mullins were South Boston gangs, and their battles from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s were basically a South Boston turf war.
The gang war between the Mullins and the Killeens erupted full-scale after a fight between Mickey Dwyer and Kenny Killeen in 1969. It was a barroom fight, and while Mickey was a boxer, Kenny was more of a barroom brawler. During the fight in the Transit Café in Southie, Kenny bit off part of Mickey’s nose. They were able to sew the nose back on, leaving Mickey with a scar on his nose, but that fight brought everything to a head between the two gangs.
Actually, when the fighting really started heating up, Kenny never came out of his house. Even though he was one of the reasons it started, he never wanted any part of the shooting. One night, however, while Kenny was sitting on the porch of his house near Columbia Road and Eighth Street, he was shot at with a rifle. The bullet hit the railing and fragmented, but Kenny got away that time. For the rest of his life, until he died of natural causes in the early 2000s, Kenny Killeen never left his house unless he was accompanied by his wife or a kid. His brother Donnie Killeen had been killed in 1972, but it was yet another lie that Jimmy did the job. Jimmy Mantville and another fellow did it.
Before peace was made between Jimmy and the Mullins gang and they combined forces, two of the Mullins were in a car when they spotted Jimmy driving in South Boston. As they chased after him on East Second and N streets, he jumped out of the passenger side of the car, where he started shooting at the guys across the hood of his car with an AR-15 assault rifle. One of the Mullins, Jerry Roake, who only had a .25-caliber pistol, had a lot of balls and shot back. But Jimmy hit him in the hand, and the bullet traveled up his arm and came out his elbow, completely mangling his arm. After a few minutes, the other guy took off and Jimmy got back in his car and got out of there, too. This was just one instance of these guys trying to kill each other.
Killing Paulie McGonigle, however, took Jimmy longer than he originally expected. Paulie talked a big game, but he wasn’t a shooter. Although he never did anything, he kept on stirring everything up with his mouth. So Jimmy decided to kill him. One day, while the gang war was still going on, Jimmy was driving down Seventh Street in South Boston when he saw Paulie driving toward him. Jimmy pulled up beside him, window to window, nose to nose, and called his name. As Paulie looked over, Jimmy shot him right between the eyes. Only at that moment, just as he pulled the trigger, Jimmy realized it wasn’t Paulie. It was Donald, the most likable of the three McGonigle brothers, the only one who wasn’t involved in anything.
Jimmy drove right over to Billy O’Sullivan’s house on Savin Hill Avenue and told Billy O, who was at the stove cooking, “I shot the wrong one. I shot Donald.”
Billy looked