Potential Confrontation With Rockball O'Rourke
O'Toole and 46-year-old Joseph M. (Rockball) O'Rourke from Medford, Massachusetts were arraigned on charges in 1970 and imprisoned at the same jail while awaiting trial. O'Rourke, a powerful and loyal associate of the Charlestown Mob, was being held for his involvement in the shooting of Boston patrolman Robert Noonan. Detective John P. Flaherty of the Fields Corner Division stated that Officer Noonan's family was afraid of potential uprising from members of the Charlestown Mob and that a police detail he placed around his bed at Boston City Hospital while he recuperated from his gunshot wound. O'Rourke allegedly shot Noonan after he tried to break up a bar brawl. O'Toole was remanded to the Charles Street Jail and prison authorities later had O'Rourke sent to the Billerica House by Judge Reuben L. Lurie on advice from the Assistant District Attorney John Mahoney. He and prison officials were worried of a possible outbreak of violence in the streets of Boston and in the prison itself among its incarcerated Charlestown Mob and Winter Hill Gang associates. The city had just overcome a brutal violent gang war and did not want another one.
Read more about this topic: James O'Toole (mobster)
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“Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)