Saugus Man Finds Guns Stashed In Home Of Late Winter Hill Gang Mobster
SAUGUS (CBS) - The renovation was pretty routine stuff until workers tore out the rotting ceiling from the basement of a Saugus home.
"Well you always find something," says new owner Jose Carvalho. "This time it was guns."
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Bernice Corpuz reports
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Carvalho discovered five guns in all, including three 'old school' revolvers and a handful of bullets.
He called Saugus Police.
"We don't often get calls from people who find guns behind walls," says Saugus Police Lt. Lenny Campanello. "So it was interesting."
That's also interesting: the longtime owner of 15 Laurine Road was convicted mobster Anthony D'Agostino.
The late "Tony Blue," his mob nickname, was a bodyguard and bag man for the infamous Winter Hill Gang, and had a long criminal record.
Carvalho suspects the guns were stuffed into the insulation through gaps in the sheetrock in the basement's boiler room, and then dropped onto the ceiling on the other side of that wall.
"He was definitely trying to hide them," says longtime neighbor Jim Sclafani, who lives two doors down. "He probably forgot they were there."
Neighbors on this tidy Saugus street were hardly astonished by news of this discovery, but chose their words carefully.
"I wasn't surprised – I'll put it that way," added Sclafani. "I figured he was into that kind of thing."
"That kind of thing" is supposedly what got "Tony Blue" shot at the Peppermint Lounge in Somerville back in 1965. He was gunned down in the same hail of gunfire that killed his boss, Buddy McLean.
The difficult job now facing Saugus Police is trying to link these weapons to unsolved crimes that may be four decades old.
"We're focusing on researching the serial numbers on those guns and going from there," says Lt. Campanello. "Each weapon has a different history which can be as unique as fingerprints."
"The question is, did he use those guns anywhere?" neighbor Sclafani asked. "We don't know, but police will probably find out."
The new homeowner does not consider his find good fortune.
"Lucky would be a million dollars," chuckles Carvalho. "This is not luck."
He knows he did the right thing by turning over the guns to police, but worries about the can of worms he may have opened in the process.
"C'est la vie," he said.
