Local 25’s ‘Top Chef’ victory a throwback to the bad ol’ days
When was the last time the feds lost an organizedcrime case, which is what this trial was, pinky-ring thugs engaged in trying to shake down a legitimate business.
After the verdict, Judge Douglas Woodlock admonished the knuckledragging plug ugly defendants to “pay closer attention” to legal niceties in the future.
Didn’t mention anything about not slashing tires, apparently. Or about calling gays “pickles,” or women the c-word, or threatening to smash the beautiful TV host’s “pretty little face.”
If only the old Celtic Tavern were still open, just think what a celebration they could have had last night. It would still be going on this morning. The Celtic was in Charlestown, right around the corner from Local 25 — the first shot was on the house, and after that you had to use your own bullets.
John “Valise” Fidler could have fondly reminisced about his grandfather, the late Local 25 hitman, Suitcase Fidler, and how the local Mafia sent him and another Local 25 hood, Fat Harry Johnson, out to California to search for mob canary Joe Barboza …
Valise could have regaled the boyos with stories of his days dealing coke and stabbing people and providing weapons to an armored-car robbing crew. Local 25 president Sean O’Brien could have talked about his late old man Billy, who was once named in an indictment for renting a getaway car for a Local 25 armored-car crew that murdered two guards in a 1994 robbery in Hudson, N.H. …
Billy O’Brien was never charged, but the G-men came busting in and grabbed $50,000 from his house, the bastards.
But yesterday was payback. Take that, feds! Sure, you grabbed Billy’s 50 large, and you sent George Cashman, the last president of Local 25, to prison for extortion. His Bureau of Prisons number was 24108-038, but hey, he only did it for another gangster from Charleston, Mick Murray, the younger brother of Whitey Bulger’s drug partner. Poor Mick, he went away too — 17634038 was his BOP handle.
So “Top Chef ” was sweet payback for the Brotherhood. And it happened at a time when President O’Brien wasn’t suspended for making crude threats to a local down in Rhode Island.
“Anybody takes on my friend, they got a major problem,” this benefactor to so many female Democrat politicians in Massachusetts snarled, and you can still watch it on YouTube. “They’ll never be our friend. They need to be punished.”
The Local 25 hood I feel sorry for is Mark Harrington, who was O’Brien’s right-hand thug until he pleaded guilty to attempted extortion in this case last year in return for house arrest. He tearfully told the judge: “What I love to do I can no longer do.” He loved extortion. “That’s a sentence I will have to live with the rest of my life.”
If it makes you feel any better, Harrington, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi feel your pain. They can no longer do what they love to do either.