"My Cousin Joe Was a Hitman for the Boston Mob Above: Members of the Winter Hill Gang, including the notorious James ""Whitey"" Bulger (bottom right) and the author's cousin, Joe McDonald (top left). My cousin killed people. At least, that's what I'm told. I never met Joseph McDonald, but word is he preferred using a handgun. He liked to get in real close so that the soon-to-be deceased could figure out what was coming. His intense, bald visage would be the last face they would see on this earth. He was my grandfather's first cousin, my first cousin twice removed: a bookmaker, loan shark, thief, World War II vet, drunk, killer. He was a member of the Winter Hill Gang, the most notorious Boston-area outfit of the last half-century. There are Winter Hill guys who have admitted to murdering 20 people, guys who tried to run guns for the IRA, and guys who fixed horse races up and down the East Coast. Some of the Hill's associates started grabbing headlines in the early 1960s. Some of them, like James ""Whitey"" Bulger, continue to do so to this day. Lots of people died. Lots of people were sent to prison. So being related, even distantly, to one of the main players in that gang is, well, strange. My father's family—a clan of nurses and engineers—know next to nothing about Joe, who died in 1997. They are not the sort of people who rob warehouses or break out of prison. The author's cousin and Winter Hill Gang member, Joe McDonald. One of my aunts says there was shame, that my grandfather and his siblings were law-abiding folks who couldn't relate to Joe's life. Joe's name was never mentioned. The relatives who did meet Joe only did so once or twice, and memories are slippery things. Did he get pinched in a New York City train station while dressed as a nun with a machine gun under his habit? No, says another one of my aunts, the machine gun was in a hockey bag. There was no habit. It was all over the news, she says. Continue"
{}