George McLaughlin, Charleston hoodlum-drunkard
 

DOB 7-9-27. It was George McLaughlin who plunged the city’s underworld into open warfare in 1961 when he tried to pick up a girlfriend of a member of the Winter Hill Gang. His two brothers and most of their Charlestown gang ended up dead, but McLaughlin lives on, in a state prison, convicted of a murder unrelated to the Irish Gang War. On March 15, 1964, a sniper shot a young bank teller between the eyes in Roxbury. The shooter was Georgie, drunk as always. Given his rap sheet, he was quickly added to the Most Wanted List. He stayed on the lam until February 1965, when he was arrested in Dorchester, where he’d been living under the alias of “John O’Connor.” Also arrested was a hoodlum friend: Spike O’Toole. Spike would be murdered by Whitey Bulger in Savin Hill in 1973.

 

McLaughlin in custody, being led in BPD headquarters, Feb. 1965