Stevie Hughes of Charlestown, killed Buddy McLean in front of the Peppermint Lounge, Winter Hill, October 1965

Steve Hughes, the last surviving major member of the McLaughlin gang of Charlestown, had taken to providing muscle for Sammy Lindenbaum, an elderly hustler/abortionist/loanshark. Lindenbaum was warned to stay away from Hughes, but he didn’t listen. On Sept. 23, 1966, Lindenbaum was driving with Hughes on Rte. 114 in Middleton MA when a car pulled up alongside them and a passenger opened fire with a machinegun. Read Vinnie Teresa’s account of the hit in “My Life in the Mafia,” although he gets the killer’s names wrong.

After the newspaper photographers got their pictures, the cops threw a tarp over the death car. They aren’t visible in the photo, but Lindenbaum had two of his pet Chihuahua dogs in the backseat when he was murdered. The hounds survived the shooting and the crash, and jumped out the window and were playing in the grass as the cops milled about the scene.
 

Now the car has been towed back up onto the roadway, and the State Police put the tarp, which had fallen off, back over the car to cover the bodies of Hughes and Lindenbaum.
 

Inside a garage, cops remove the bodies and place them on the floor, as gawkers gather (and obstruct our view).

After the murders of the Hughes brothers (see Connie death photos below) crooked FBI agent H. Paul Rico asked Stevie Flemmi about the hits. Rico, who died last year while under indictment for a 1981 murder Flemmi set up, apparently didn’t want to find out too much, as you can see from the reports.
 

My Life In The Mafia

FBI interview on Steve Hughes’ murder
 

June 1965: the Hughes brothers are brought in to face questioning in yet another shooting. Within 15 months, back would be shot to death in automobiles, and the Irish Gang War would be over, sort of.

 

This is the late Steve Hughes’ son, a real chip off the old block, under arrest for bank robbery in Medford in May 1973. He did a stretch, was released, and in February 1980, as he was unloading groceries at the Charlestown housing project where he lived, a sniper shot him to death with a rifle from a nearby rooftop. Any guesses as to who might be responsible? Check out the FBI report. (Hint: this is apparently the first reference to the infamous Lancaster Street garage; the FBI knew about it, and told no one, including the State Police, who were left to discover it on their own months later.)

 

Postscript: In 1980, Stevie Hughes, , Jr., age 24, had just been released from prison and was talking about avenging his father’s death. But before he could, he was shot to death by a sniper in a Charlestown housing project. According to an FBI report, one of the killers was Whitey Bulger.