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Ronald Dermody
| Ronald Dermody, Cambridge hoodlum and member of Whitey’s 1955 bank-robbing gang, shown here after his 1956 arrest for a Rhode Island heist. Got out of prison 1964, tried to shoot Winter Hill boss Buddy McLean, missed. Was holed up in Cambridge hotel, called FBI agent H. Paul Rico for help in January 1965. Rico told Dermody to meet him on the Watertown-Belmont line, then called McLean and told him where he could find Dermody. Buddy shot Dermody to death. Whitey, by the way, wouldn’t be released from Leavenworth for another two months. |
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Here’s how Ronnie came to such a bad end, fingered by a fickle fed. He’d begun living with a gangland moll who’d been married to another member of the gang. Dermody made a deal with the McLaughlins - he would kill Buddy McLean, boss of the Winter Hill gang, if the Charlestown guys would whack his rival for the hand of the gal pal. His love rival: Spike O’Toole, whom Whitey et al. would later murder, in 1973. After missing Buddy, Dermody calls agent Rico. Read Frank Salemme’s sworn 1973 account of what happened. |
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Salemme sworn account |
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