DOB 3-17-29, Roxbury MA.  1959 photo. This was taken two years before the start of the Irish Gang War against the McLaughlins of Charlestown. After the murder of Buddy McLean in 1965, he took over the Winter Hill Gang.
 

In 1962, the McLaughlins blew up Howie’s car in a housing project in Somerville. Here you can see him with a Somerville cop, retrieving some of his belongings from the burned out hulk. As the ranking non-Mafia gangster in the Boston area, Howie met with Ray Patriarca in Providence. He operated out of a garage on Marshall Street in Somerville, and maintained a Boston office at Chandler’s bar and restaurant on Columbus Ave in the South End.  Whitey joined  the Winter Hill Gang in 1972 after murdering Donnie Killeen and taking over the rackets in Southie.
 

In 1977, Howie was pinched for his role in a pinball machine extortion scheme. Soon he would be facing federal race-fixing charges, which took him and most of his buddies from Somerville off the street. Whitey and Stevie Flemmi, the only major hoods not either in prison or on the lam, thanks to the FBI agents they were already paying off, took over the non-Mafia rackets in Boston, and would soon have the Mafia back on its heels, again thanks to federal intervention.

Howie was released from prison in 1987 but never regained his former stature, in no small part thanks to Whitey. “Fuck Howie,” he was heard saying on tape. Arrested again in 1993 and offered a chance to roll over on his alleged pals Whitey and Stevie, Howie told the feds he was no rat. Now lives in Millbury; in 2003, the City of Somerville foreclosed on his old garage on Marshall Street for non-payment of $11,000 in property taxes.