Josephine Stone has lost a son, a grandson and a son-in-law to murder. She knows who the killers were. So do her neighbors.
Yet no one has even been arrested for the killings.That's the story of Charlestown, a section of the city so closed that witnesses never talk, even if a slaying occurs in plain sight.
Police say Charlestown residents - called townies - follow a code of silence that once shielded mistrustful Irish immigrants from outsiders, and later allowed all kinds of people to get away with murder.
"Most of the crime committed over there, we know who did it. But our knowing doesn't mean anything. We need a person to come forward and say, `I was there and I will testify,' " said police Capt. Edward McNelley.
Attitudes are changing.
At a trial beginning Monday, as many as 20 witnesses are set to testify against an alleged cocaine ring that includes a hit man charged with three murders and four attempted murders.
Federal agents spent two years persuading people to testify. Some of the witnesses have entered the federal Witness Protection Program. Prosecutors confirm that witnesses who remain in the neighborhood have received death threats.
One of Stone's nephews is the reputed drug kingpin at the top of the indictment.
"I was so glad when they made this drug bust. My own relatives or not, I don't give a damn," Stone said. "I'm tired of keeping quiet. I've lost too much."
Stone, a spry 76-year-old widow, lives near the Bunker Hill monument in a housing project notorious for drugs and violence.
She sleeps with a picture of Jesus hanging over her head - and a police radio crackling next to her ear to make sure her grandchildren aren't in trouble.
In 1981, her son Herbie was killed with a shotgun blast down the street. Stone says Herbie died in a family feud: The wife of Herbie's nephew had committed suicide, and the wife's family wanted revenge.
A man went to prison for murder, but Stone says the man was not the killer. Soon after Herbie's death, Stone says, she was threatened, told her "whole family would be wiped out" if she identified the real killer.
Her family had to place a black-rimmed advertisement in the local newspaper saying they would not retaliate for Herbie's death.
"It's a hard way of living, under the gun," she said. "I shouldn't even be talking now."
She started talking three years ago, when she joined the Charlestown After Murder Program, or CHAMP, a support group for families of murder victims.
Up to 20 people attend meetings; this year, about 400 attended the group's vigil for murder victims.
Charlestown natives Pam Enos and Sandy King started CHAMP in 1991 after their sons were shot. Enos lost one son. King lost two. The slayings are unsolved.
Enos carries a list of the 49 people killed in Charlestown since 1975. Next to almost every name is the name of a suspected killer. Just 26 arrests have been made.
Charlestown is an island within Boston, isolated by the harbor, a river and a highway.
Its 15,000 residents are mostly of Irish descent. Most are connected by blood or generations of friendship between families.
Boston historian Thomas O'Connor says the tradition of silence started with 19th century Irish immigrants. Armed with a distrust of authority learned at home under British rule, the Irish relied on and protected their own, including criminals.
O'Connor compares the Charlestown code of silence to the "omerta" of the Italian mob.
It's a code that Stone is sick of.
" `Keep your mouth shut.' I got too tired of hearing that," she said. "I'm 76 years old. What can they do? Stand me against the fence and shoot me? Fine. Then I'm out of it altogether."