Nicholas Femia

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.