Elena Semander

popular name: Nicholas Femia

date_of_death: December 16, 1983

age: 44

cause_of_death: Gunshot - .357 magnum to the head

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Nicholas "Nicky" Femia was a low-level, but extremely violent, mobster and member of the Joe "the Animal" Barboza gang on Bennington Street in East Boston. After the Barboza gang diminished in 1967, he later became involved with the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville during the early 70s, which by then wielded power in areas like South Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, South End, Charlestown and Cambridge. All other parts of the Greater Boston area were controlled by the Patriarca Crime Family, the Mafia's New England Branch. Femia was suspected in several gangland killings during the violent feud of the mid 1960s between the Charlestown gang lead by the McLaughlin Brothers, and Winter Hill Gang lead by James "Buddy" McLean in Somerville. Barboza's East Boston gang backed McLean along with various members of The Bennett Gang in Roxbury, which included; Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi, his psychotic brother Jimmy the Bear, and Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme. Femia was heavily involved in armed robberies and extortion. He was a bulky guy with a vicious temper known to use a baseball bat or a sawed-off shotgun when making a point. Femia would come to an abrupt end quite befitting of a man of his violent personality. In December 1983, Femia was killed in a shootout with the occupants of an East Boston Autobody shop on Condor Street, in a shakedown attempt that went horribly wrong. Nicholas Femia shares his grave with his father in the Winthrop Cemetery on Cross Street, a small upscale beach community in Suffolk County, just outside of East Boston.

popular name: Antonio Pollina

date_of_death: February 27, 1993

age: 100

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Antonio "Mr. Miggs" Pollina was an Italian-American mobster and was the short lived boss of the Philadelphia crime family during the late 1950s. Shortly after immigrating from Caccamo, Sicily he developed an arrest record dating back to 1927 and included arrests for murder, concealed weapons, untaxed liquor, assault & battery. His legitimate employment was as a cheese salesman for Maggio Cheese Co. (owned by the powerful mobster Micheal Maggio) Pollina was one of the top leaders of the mafia group known as "The Greaser Gang" and controlled a large loansharking operation. In 1959 Pollina was made interim boss of the Philadelphia crime family. It was then Pollina began plotting the murder of his rival and top earner Angelo Bruno. Pollina ordered his Underboss, Ignazio Denaro, to murder Angelo Bruno, but Denaro instead informed Bruno of Pollina's intentions. Bruno used his connections to The Commission to take Pollina's power away from him. The Commission authorized Bruno to murder Pollina. Pollina stepped down and Angelo Bruno replaced him and kept Denaro as his underboss. Upon his death, he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

popular name: Rudy Marfeo

date_of_death: April 20, 1968

age: 42

cause_of_death: Gunshot wounds from mob hit

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: In 1968 local bookmaker Rudolph “Rudy” Marfeo had recently defied New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca by refusing to pay his "tribute money" and publicly disrespecting Ray Patriarca. This was not wise considering Patriarca had Rudy’s brother Willie whacked in a Federal Hill restaurant just two years earlier for doing the exact same thing. Patriarca wanted Marfeo, “straightened out,” as soon as possible and ordered the hit on Rudy. On April 20, 1968 Rudy and his bodyguard Anthony Melei were observed shopping at Pannone’s Market on 282 Pocasset Avenue in Providence. Rudolph Marfeo, the bookie, fell near the front door, a drawn .38 in his hand, his left side blown apart. Anthony Melei, the bodyguard, died next to the ice cream freezer, his face shot away by Double OO buckshot. The shopkeeper and his wife dived behind the deli counter as the killers retreated. What makes these murders so important in the history of the New England Cosa Nostra is that subsequent charges and guilty verdicts against Ray Patriarca and his associates signaled the downward spiral of the Patriarca crime family and to their New England operations.