`Code Of Silence' Broken In Rough Neighborhood -- Tradition Of Not Telling Ends With Felony Convictions Of Three

BOSTON - For decades, people got shot in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood and the witnesses never breathed a word.

They didn't see anything. They didn't hear anything. That was the code: "Townies" didn't talk to the police, out of loyalty and out of fear.

But the "Code of Silence" has been broken. Townies talked, and three of the neighborhood's biggest thugs are going to prison.

Michael Fitzgerald, John Houlihan and Joseph "No Name" Nardone were convicted in federal court Wednesday of racketeering, cocaine trafficking, murder and attempted murder. Sentencing is set for May 18.

Fitzgerald and Houlihan were charged with running a drug ring, with Nardone as their enforcer, out of Kerrigan's Flower Shop in the one-mile-square neighborhood.

Despite the convictions, some of Charlestown's 15,000 residents wonder whether things will really change in the tough Irish working-class community.

"I got nothing to say about nothing," said Patty, a clerk in a coin-operated laundry along Bunker Hill Avenue.

Authorities managed to crack the Code of Silence after a three-year investigation in which the government spent more than $1 million to protect witnesses, including a half-dozen townies who asked to be moved out of the neighborhood for fear of retribution.

About a dozen thieves and drug dealers were granted immunity from prosecution and received new identities under the federal Witness Protection Program.

"This has been a long time coming, and it has given families some belief in the system again, that the system can work and we don't have to accept the way things were in the past," said Sandy King, whose two sons were shot in front of witnesses who would not talk.

Five years ago, she helped found Charlestown After Murder Program, an organization of women who meet weekly to talk about the neighborhood'sunsolved murders. Of the 50 murders the group has tracked since 1975, police say they have made arrests in only about half.

King said the Code of Silence was started centuries ago by Irish immigrants who distrusted authority.Over time, the silence allowed criminals to thrive.

Charlestown became known by law-enforcement officials nationwide for its small-time hoodlums, thieves, drug dealers and murderers. Crime became so commonplace that arguments normally settled in a fistfight often ended in murder.

Today, the Bunker Hill Monument divides a small group of young professionals who live in renovated brownstones on gas lamp-lit streets and a far greater number of townies, who live in wooden row houses and a sprawling project.

During the trial, one witness told of driving the getaway car for Nardone, and hearing the squat, bull-necked hitman laugh about killing an informer. The witness said he and Nardone split a $5,000 fee. Another witness said his friend had bragged about being able to shoot someone in the back of the head without spilling blood.

Prosecutors are recommending the defendants get life in prison without parole.