For a brief time, the preeminent, if that’s the word, criminal gang in Boston was the Gustins. The Gustins had gestated in the two square mile 50,000 strong town of South Boston—a small peninsula of Boston. In the heavily Irish “Southie,” being a saint or a sinner was a career choice, with hundreds of the most promising youth becoming priests and nuns. Those less spiritually inclined blossomed into violent and daring criminals—such as the Gustins.
For a dozen years, the Gustins had cowed South Boston and other parts of the city with impunity. Through their size, boldness, and cruelty, the 30-strong Irish Gustins were as dangerous and violent as the Capone Syndicate in Chicago or the Purple Gang of Detroit, according to chroniclers. The gang’s first leader, Steve Wallace, was a vicious South Boston boxer, who’d fought under the name “Gustin,” (a South Boston street with no other distinction except it gave his gang a name).
Southie’s Original Wild Bunch
The Gustins were wild, stealing, killing and maiming as the urge arose. While a passenger in a taxi, Steve fatally shot one of his crew, in public; another Gustin killed a colleague in front of a restaurant. The gang generated 400 arrests in a decade, and representing them in court provided steady work for lawyers (include John McCormack, the future speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.)
Facing police opposition, they kept on the move—the gang currently headquartered in the South End. With the arrival of Prohibition, the Gustins had branched out from jewel thieving into bootlegging. Not content to merely import, they also masqueraded as government agents, carrying official gold badges to confiscate their rivals’ liquor and trucks.
Gustins A Family Concern
Eventually, Steve’s younger brother Frankie took over as boss. Although just over five feet tall, the “diminutive” Frankie was a “debonair and a resourceful commanding character.” The red-haired and baby-faced Frankie was soft spoken, with mild, genial manners—an ideal cover for a psychopath.
Not even 30, he’d been a suspicious person for 11 years; police had arrested him 25 times in just the prior four months. His punishments were uniformly light, so that the constabulary called him the “boy who didn’t care what happened.”
That was before he encountered the new force rising in the North End.
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