The Phantom Pirate: Tales of the Irish Mafia and the Boston Harbor Islands

by David Kales

Overview

This is a story about a modern day pirate, the most ruthless gangster and feared crime boss to ever come off the streets of Boston.

Some readers would no doubt recognize this man, so his name and the other characters in this story have been changed to protect the dead-- and those who could become the dead.

For twenty-five years, he ruled the Boston underworld, controlling illegal gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing in Boston, up and down the East Coast from Maine to Rhode Island. He was the Don of Bostons Irish Mafia.

Who is this modern day pirate? What was his secret deal with the FBI? Where is this man now? Only The Phantom Pirate knows

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452077604
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	07/30/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	723 KB

About the Author

David Kales has been a journalist, editor, and free-lance writer for over forty years. His journalist experience includes Newsweek, Forbes, INC magazine, and foreign correspondent for The Hearst Newspapers, covering the Vietnam War and Southeast Asia. He was also a recipient of a Carnegie Foundation grant for reporting on China, awarded by the Columbia School of Journalism. He has written and edited numerous publications on business, international affairs, and environmental/recreational matters. He is author of Masters of Art (co-authored with his wife, Emily) and All About the Boston Harbor Islands. The Phantom Pirate is his first work of fiction.

Read an Excerpt

This is a story about the islands of Boston Harbor, whose history is filled with legends about pirates and plunder, smuggling and buried treasure, forts and dungeons - and treachery and murder. It is also the story about a modern day pirate, the most ruthless gangster and feared crime boss to ever come off the streets of Boston. Some readers would no doubt recognize this man and many of the people in his world; so the names of the characters in this story have been changed to protect the dead and those who could become the dead. These characters - gang members, co-conspirators, fellow mobsters, lawmen, harbor denizens, victims, and seanchies (Irish storytellers) - each spin their tale about him in the pages of this book. For twenty five years, a man named James Freney ruled the Boston underworld, controlling illegal gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing in Boston, up and down the East Coast from Maine to Rhode Island. He was the Don of Boston's Irish Mafia. They say that he even sat at the table with the Five Families of New York when La Cosa Nostra was big. The FBI credits him with murdering twenty two people, but who knows how many more bodies he's dumped into Boston Harbor? Freney went on the lam in 1995 when he found out that he was going to be indicted for racketeering and murder, and the FBI, along with every other law enforcement agency across the country, is still looking for him. The FBI has put Freney on its Ten Most Wanted List, right behind Osama Bin Laden, and posted a $1 million reward for his capture. Although his story has been reported for years by newspapers and television in Boston and across the nation, providing many facts about his life, little is certainabout the myth and mystery that shroud him. We are not even sure whether he is still alive. But dead or alive, his ghost haunts the present, and is doomed to haunt the future. Time, in the end, is the best storyteller. The setting - the Boston Harbor Islands - is real. The intersection where characters and setting meet is imaginary. But it could have happened this way.