For decades, people got shot in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood and the witnesses never breathed a word.
Didn't see anything. Didn't hear anything. That was the code: "Townies" didn't talk to the police, out of loyalty and out of fear.But what came to be called the Code of Silence has been broken. Townies talked, and three of the neighborhood's biggest thugs are going to prison.
Michael Fitzgerald, John Houlihan and Joseph "No Name" Nardone were convicted in federal court Wednesday of racketeering, cocaine trafficking, murder and attempted murder. Their sentencing, originally set for Thursday, was postponed until May 18.
Fitzgerald and Houlihan were charged with running a drug ring, with Nardone as their enforcer, out of Kerrigan's Flower Shop in the one-mile-square neighborhood on Boston Harbor that's also home of the USS Constitution.
Despite the convictions, some of Charlestown's 15,000 residents wonder whether things will really change in the tough, Irish, working-class community.
"I got nothing to say about nothing," said Patty, a clerk in a coin-operated laundry along Bunker Hill Avenue.
Authorities managed to crack the Code of Silence after a three-year investigation in which the government spent more than $1 million to protect witnesses, including a half-dozen townies 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 Charlestown After Murder Program, an organization of women who meet every Sunday in a Catholic church to talk about Charlestown's unsolved murders. Of the 50 murders the group has tracked since 1975, police say they have made arrests in only about half.
King said the Code of Silence was started centuries 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 police inquired about the theft, no one knew.
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 on gas lamp-lit streets and a far greater number of townies, who live in wooden rowhouses and a sprawling project. Ninety-six percent of Charlestown is white.
"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 Capt. Edward McNelley of the police homicide unit.
During the trial, one witness told of driving the getaway car for Nardone, and hearing the squat, bull-necked hitman laugh about killing an informer. The witness said he and Nardone split a $5,000 fee. Another witness said his friend had bragged about being able to shoot someone in the back of the head without spilling blood.
Prosecutors are recommending the defendants get life in prison without parole.
Back on Bunker Hill Avenue, the owner of the coin-operated laundry, who refused to give his name, doubted whether the Code of Silence is really over.
"You talk about things you're not supposed to talk about, you get killed," he said.