By Kyle Kinder–
Violence and boxing are inseparable. For some fighters, the violence boxing demands is omnipresent. It already exists inside their being when they enter the ropes and remains with them when they exit the ring. It’s an unshakable part of their existence, and left unchecked, can land themselves or others in early graves.
In Slaughter in the Streets: When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital, the third offering of Hamilcar Publication’s true-crime Hamilcar Noir series, author Don Stradley unearths an astonishingly long list of 20th century Boston boxers who failed to escape the city’s long shadow of violence, each ultimately dying unnatural, gruesome deaths.
Written in sixteen brief, fast-paced chapters, Stradley highlights the tragic ends of different ex-Boston fighters in each, though murder is hardly reserved for the chapter’s main subjects. Readers begin in Prohibition-era Boston where a former South Boston flyweight-turned mob boss winds up face down in a pool of his own blood in an attorney’s office two days before Christmas, 1931. Stradley chronologically bookends his work in the final chapter where he details the 1999 killing of a former amateur standout; an unlucky recipient of a round bullets pumped into his body in broad daylight.
In between the Prohibition-era slayings and the murder near the close of the millennium, Stradley writes about the final moments of former fighters of all fistic skill levels — from regional titlists to career journeymen to amateurs. And though these Massachusetts
men willingly partook in sanctioned violence, it was their shared fate, brought on by unsanctioned, criminal violence that binds their stories together in the pages Slaughter in the Streets.
For a few fighters, their deaths were simply a matter of wrong place, wrong time. But most of
Stradley’s subjects were men who sought out a violent lifestyle, drawn to the bright lights and false promises of Boston’s underworld, but rarely ever amounted to anything more than wannabe gangsters — bodyguards, henchmen, and low-level criminals.
While there is no shortage of literature on boxing’s ties to organized crime, most stories focus on the Northeast’s other two big cities: New York and Philadelphia. In Slaughter in the Streets, Stradley uses the murders of ex-pugilists to delve into Boston’s underbelly. Readers first journey back to 1920’s Boston where they’re introduced to Southie’s ruthless “Gustin Gang” and their Italian rivals. Eventually, they wind up in Whitey Bulger’s realm and learn of connections between the sweet science and his infamous Winter Hill Gang.
The brutal stories brought forth by Stradley in Slaughter In The Streets will appeal to a broad audience, including history buffs and New Englanders. But if nowhere else, this book belongs in the hands of every boxing fan and true crime aficionado, for it’s sure to quench the primitive thirst for blood shared by both.
Slaughter in the Streets: When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital
By Don Stradley
144 pages. Hamilcar Publications. $10.99.
Publication Date: February 25, 2020
