Mullen Gang

The Mullen Gang was an Irish-American gang operating in Boston, Massachusetts. The gang derived its name from a commemorative plaque to a war hero named John Joseph Mullen, which was located on a street corner in South Boston that the gang's members frequented. After a decade-long gang war against another Irish mob group, the Killeen Gang, for control of criminal rackets in South Boston, both gangs were consolidated under the control of the Winter Hill Gang in 1972.

Paulie McGonagle (died November 1974) was a Boston mobster and onetime leader of the Mullen Gang, a South Boston street gang involved in burglary, auto theft, and armed robbery. During the war against Donald Killeen and his brothers, McGonagle successfully led the Mullens in a string of shootings which finally ended with Killeen's murder in 1972. After a truce was arranged with Whitey Bulger and the remnants of the Killeen organization, McGonagle remained angry about Bulger's accidental murder of his fraternal twin brother, Donald McGonagle. It is believed that this was one of the reasons for his disappearance in November 1974. His body was later excavated from a shallow grave on Boston's Tenean Beach.

Tommy King (died 1975) was a Boston mobster and member of the Mullens during their gang war against Donald Killeen and his lieutenants Billy O'Sullivan and James J. Bulger during the early 1970s. Following Killeen's murder in 1972, he became an associate of Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang after his alleged involvement in the death of Paul McGonagle. In 1975, he disappeared following an altercation with Bulger in a Southie watering hole. He was suspected of having been killed by hitman John Martorano.

Patrick Nee was born to an Irish-speaking family in Rosmuc, Ireland in 1944. He was brought to the US by his parents in 1952 and became a member of the Mullen Gang at the age of 14. He fought in several turf battles before joining the US Marine Corps. He arrived in Vietnam in 1965 and saw combat at Phu Bai. After his return to South Boston in October 1966, he rejoined the Mullens and became one of their leaders in the war against the Killeen brothers. Nee arranged the truce that ended the war by arranging a sit-down in Boston's South End. After being supplanted by Bulger, he moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts and switched increasingly to smuggling arms to the Provisional IRA. He currently resides in South Boston and is the author of the memoir, A Criminal and an Irishman.

James "Jimmy" Mantville

The Killeen brothers - Donald, Kenneth, George and Edward - were an Irish-American crime family which ran the bookmaking and loansharking in South Boston, Massachusetts. They used muscle to make collections, and to make examples of those who didn’t pay in a timely fashion.

The Mullens, by contrast, were a loosely organized crew of thieves. But being in Southie, it was just a matter of time before they butted heads with the Killeens. The Mullens Gang were mostly thieves who stole from the ships that brought goods into Boston Harbor and from the warehouses where they were stored. The crew was particularly talented and opportunistic, as likely to steal a truckload of Easter hams as one of televisions. They also had strength in numbers; the Boston Police Department at one time estimated there were as many as sixty members.

The turf war between the Mullens and the Killeens began in the mid-1960s. However, it was an incident in 1969 which escalated the feud. Donald Killeen's younger brother, Kenneth, bit off the nose of Mickie Dwyer, a member of the rival Mullen Gang, at the Transit Café, a South Boston bar. Paulie McGonagle, Francis (Buddy) Leonard, Thomas King, and Dennis (Buddy) Roche went to The Transit (the Killeen Gang’s main base of operations) looking to confront the Killeens who had already left the bar. The presence of the Mullens at the Killeens headquarters was viewed as a direct challenge by Donald Killeen. A gangland war soon resulted, leading to a string of slayings throughout Boston and the surrounding suburbs.