Irish Mob
Winter was the right-hand man to the originator of the gang Buddy McLean and took over the rackets when Buddy was killed during the Irish Mob Wars in 1966. In 1979 Winter and members of the Winter Hill Gang were arrested and indicted on federal "horse race fixing" charges. James "Whitey" Bulger then replaced Winter as leader of the gang. Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi were on the original indictment, but FBI agents John Morris and the later disgraced John Connolly convinced federal prosecutor Jeremiah O'Sullivan to remove Bulger and Flemmi from the indictment because they were informants.
Winter was released from prison in 1987. In 1993, he was caught dealing cocaine. When the FBI informed him that Whitey had been a snitch all those years and offered Winter a deal if he would inform on Bulger, Winter refused the deal telling the FBI he was no "rat", despite facing another decade behind bars, which he would serve, being released from prison in July 2002.
Read more about this topic: Howie Winter
Famous quotes containing the words irish and/or mob:
“We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)