Fmr Boston Mayor Flynn At Funeral While Thieves Ransack Home
BOSTON (CBS/State House News Service) - Former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn was the victim of a break-in at his South Boston home.
What's worse, Flynn tells the State House News Service, the robbery occurred while attending a funeral on Thursday. The service was for former House Speaker Thomas Finneran's mother.
WBZ-TV's Jonathan Elias reports.
Flynn, who served as Boston mayor from 1984 to 1993, said while he and his wife were at the mass, the thieves broke in, ransacked the house, and grabbed everything of value, including a solid gold cross that Pope John Paul II gave him.
"They literally took everything of value," Flynn said.
Flynn's list of what thieves stole includes valuable jewelry, letters he'd received from former Presidents Reagan and Clinton and correspondence sent to him by John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Tony Blair and former South African president Nelson Mandela shortly after he was released from prison. The thieves also took a gold cross he received from Cardinal John O'Connor from New York. Flynn, 71, was the US Ambassador to the Vatican from 1993 to 1997.
"Just about everything, everything of value we ever had from the past 50 years is gone," Flynn said.
Flynn said the envelope containing the correspondence was labeled "valuable letters."
"Maybe that was my mistake, marking them valuable, but they were valuable to me," Flynn said.
Flynn doesn't know if the robbers targeted his home specifically, adding that a neighbor heard someone trying to force their way into the neighbor's home around the same time.
