Formerly Stippo's Liquor Mart

 

Greg Ports

 

At 295 Old Colony Avenue in Charlestown, Massachusetts, there lies a liquor store. It’s by no means a large building, but it isn’t small either. It’s painted sky-blue, the same as the building next to it, which contains a variety store and business for cashing checks. It’s located in the heart of South Boston, known for its particularly Irish population. It’s called Rotary Liquors, previously The South Boston Liquor Mart, and before that Stippo’s Liquor Mart, and before that an abandoned gas station, and before that Texaco Gas Station. Had it not been for Stephen Rakes it could have continued being an abandoned gas station, but Rakes purchased the property in 1983 and opened Stippo’s Liquor Mart in January of 1984. It might’ve continued to be Stippo’s Liquor Mart had it not been for Whitey Bulger, a long time boss of Boston’s “Winter Hill Gang,” who seized control of the store in January of 1984, one week after Rakes opened it.

 

Stephen “Stippo” Rakes was born and raised in South Boston, and didn't mind working hard to earn a living. He had tried his hand at several small businesses, such as owning a deli for a brief period. In 1983, he needed a new way to earn a living, and he knew what he wanted to do. Though his wife, Julie Rakes, felt that a video-rental store was the best option, Stephen felt that a liquor store would be much more profitable. He knew of a great location, an abandoned gas station on Old Colony Avenue. He leased the property for $500 a month, with the option to buy. He took Julie to an auction at City Hall, and she won a bid for a liquor license that used to belong to a liquor store on Essex Street in Boston’s adult entertainment district for a mere $3000. Shortly thereafter, the entrepreneurial couple hired a contractor, Brian Burke, to begin the intense renovation on the property. Turning a gas station into a liquor store wouldn’t be easy, especially due to the massive underground tanks that had to be removed.  Stippo felt the renovations were worth it though, due to the incredible advantages his liquor store would have over the neighborhood’s other eleven. For one it was situated right on main street, where traffic was always flowing. The property was also situated between two large housing projects, where the majority of their clientele resided. The biggest advantage though, was by far the parking lot. With nine parking spaces, Stippo’s had nine more parking spaces than other liquor store in the area. This was undeniably the most valuable asset the property had to offer. The renovations as a whole were merely meant to take full advantage of the property’s preexisting usefulness, while still milking every ounce of functionality possible. The renovations added up to $80,000 and included an alarm system and plate glass windows with steel roll top grates, which were necessary precautions given the neighborhood’s somewhat violent history. Shortly before Christmas of 1983, Stippo’s Liquor Mart opened its doors to the public, and just as anticipated it did extremely well, bringing in twenty-five-thousand dollars worth of business in the first four days alone. But those eleven other liquor stores in the neighborhood saw much different numbers, in fact they were all seeing significant profit decreases during what was typically one of the busiest times of the year. Naturally, the other store owners grew jealous of the Rakes’ success, which contributed to the abrupt downfall of Stippo’s Liquor Mart.

 

Curiously enough, the aspects of a location that make for a successful liquor store are fairly similar to the aspects of a location that make for a successful criminal headquarters, or at least in the case of Whitey Bulger, who had been eyeing Stippo’s property since the renovations began. Bulger was quick to see the potential of the business as a new base of operations for his criminal enterprise, and Bulger happened to be in the market for a new base of operations anyway, having been recently ran out of his previous hangout, the Lancaster Street Garage, by state troopers. The location was ideal of Bulger’s business, which would serve as both a headquarters for illegal activity and a way to turn dirty money into taxable money. It was in an area he was very familiar with, having grown up there. It was important for him to work in a place where he knew everyone, because in his line of work a simple unfamiliar face could mean the end of his empire. The visibility of the liquor store was also useful, disallowing sneaky and unwanted patrons from getting too close without being noticed. The fact that it was situated in between two large housing projects meant Bulger would be able to peddle drugs in and out of said projects with great ease. And since Bulger would use the establishment for money laundering, and since he saw a lot of dirty money, it meant he would need the business to rake in as much clean money as possible, the heavy traffic flow and the scarce commodity that was a parking lot would make this significantly easier. Rather than buy the property from Stippo right away though, Bulger let him make the important renovations first. Bulger and his right hand man, Stephen Flemmi, would check out the progress of the renovations every night, of course without Rakes’ knowledge. When the Rakes’ finally opened their liquor store they did the absolute best they could do, and with all that great effort came a great reward. The business was a huge success, so Bulger knew it was a good time to take it over. Barely even a week after Stephen and Julia Rakes opened the doors of their new business, Bulger and his gang walked in and took it.

 

Stephen and Julia were still getting the hang of operating their business and looking after their two young daughters. Typically that meant one of them would be at home with the kids and the other would be working at the store. One weeknight in early January of 1984, Julia was working in the store by herself. It was a slow night, as most weeknights were, with only a handful of customers, but what mattered was that there were customers. Suddenly the phone rang, when Julia answered the voice on the other side told her to “get out quick,” because there was a bomb in the store. She attempted to find out who she was talking to, but had no luck. She was just left alone with a threat to her life. She called her husband Stephen, who was at home preparing dinner for their children. Stephen tried to comfort Julia, and ensure her that it was just a hoax from a jealous rival, though however comforting Stephen attempted to sound, Julia couldn’t help but notice some tension in his voice. This tension was almost certainly a product of the uninvited guests in the Rakes household: Whitey Bulger, Stevie “The Rifleman” Flemmi, and Kevin Weeks, who was a bouncer at Bulger’s hangout club, “Triple O’s” turned Bulger’s personal driver and bodyguard. The three were let in by Rakes, who recognized all of them. He recognized Kevin Weeks because the two went to high school together, he recognized Bulger and Flemmi because everybody in South Boston recognized Bulger and Flemmi. The three gangsters told Rakes that he had a problem, that there had been some talk of death threats towards him. They said they were going to help him, and that they were going to buy the store from him. Rakes told them it wasn’t for sale. Bulger assumed Rakes was just being prideful and told him, “You don’t understand, we’ll just kill you and take it”. In reality it was Bulger who didn’t understand, because the store was leased and Rakes was in no position to be selling it. Bulger then walked back out to the car and returned with a brown paper bag, out of it he pulled a revolver. Rakes’ 2 year old daughter wandered over to the table where this Bulger and Rakes were sitting. Bulger picked her up and sat her on his lap, attracted by the shiny metal she reached for Bulger’s gun. Bulger let her hold it and she began sucking on the handle, as Bulger ran his fingers through the little girl’s blond hair. “What a shame it would be for you to not see your daughter grow up,” Bulger said to Rakes. The three men left and Rakes was left with a decision to make. Julia felt they should go to the police, however Stephen’s familiarity with men like Bulger had him convinced they’d kill him and his family if they went to anybody. Eventually Stephen got a call from his old classmate, Weeks, saying they needed to talk to him. That night, while Julie was working, the men returned. Flemmi picked up the two year old again, and a familiar situation erupted. Stephen begged them to relieve the child, the men obliged, and dropped a paper bag full of money on Stephen’s kitchen table, in it was sixty-seven-thousand dollars. “Now we own the liquor store,” they told him.

 

Obtaining the liquor store was a huge step in Bulger’s career, but mostly because of the variety store next to it. Bulger put a lot of effort in getting everything he could out of the liquor store, first by changing its name to the more generic “South Boston Liquor Mart” and painting it white with a shamrock on the side to bring in as much of the Irish crowd as possible, and to avoid association with the store’s past. Bulger also let politicians use the store’s windows for campaign advertisement to make sure he kept the government on his side. But Whitey Bulger’s luck would prove itself in 1987, just as the IRS was beginning to grow suspicious of the liquor mart. Next door, at Rotary Variety, Michael Linskey won a $14m lottery ticket. Whitey made a deal with Linskey: seven-hundred-thousand dollars in dirty money up front, in exchange for $1.8 million in taxable lottery winnings over the course of twenty years. Bulger’s efforts to obtain a new headquarters payed off in ways he couldn't even conceive, and he ended up with taxable cash flow for the remainder of his criminal career.

 

Stippo never forgot about what Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang did to him, but it did take him a while to figure out what to do about the situation. His first instinct was to go to the police, this was really something his wife advocated for, but as Stippo’s upbringing in the neighborhood provided him with awareness of Bulger’s extremely close involvement with the city’s law enforcement, as well as with the FBI. Shortly after the liquor store was “purchased” by Bulger, the best thing Stippo could come up with was, naturally, a family vacation to Disney World. He had his wife take $67,000  in the brown paper bag, and drop it off at her mother’s house, then take $10,000 out of the bag and bring it into a car dealership to exchange for a minivan. The Rakes family fled to Orlando the very next morning. Stippo and his family only had a few days to enjoy their vacation to Disney World, which evidently was not far enough. Stippo returned from the park one day, to find out a message had been waiting for him at the front desk. Someone named Stephen Flemmi had been trying to reach him. Apparently Stippo told enough people about his escape from Boston to be found, but not enough for Bulger to not be blamed for killing the entire Rakes family. The Winter Hill Gang needed Stippo and his family to come back, because the original owners of the liquor mart going missing just after a mob boss takes it over is somewhat bad for business, even for someone as popular as Whitey Bulger. Flemmi also mentioned that they needed a little help running the business, because none of them had any experience.

 

Upon Stippo’s return, Bulger stood with him on the sidewalk in front of the liquor mart and waved at the passing cars, simply to prove that he hadn’t killed him. Initially Stippo gave Bulger and his crew some lessons on running the liquor store business, but even with the very small cut of the profit that Bulger was allowing him, Stippo simply had too much pride to continue, and moved on to whatever pastures he could find.

 

Simply as a resident of the area, Stippo would never fully be able to shake the influence of the Boston Mob, just as he’d never fully be able to shake his desire to bring them down. Eventually when the government started to crackdown on the Winter Hill Gang’s relationship with law enforcement officials, Stippo was asked to appear in court. He finally had the opportunity to testify against Bulger, and then he lied about everything, out of fear that he’d be killed for going against Bulger. He was convicted of perjury, but avoided a prison sentence by later telling the authorities everything he knew.

 

As of 2012, Stippo was 58, divorced, and working for the MBTA. Bulger was living as as fugitive somewhere in California. In 2013, Bulger was captured and set to appear in front of a jury, and Stippo was dead. Up until the day prior to his death, Stippo was very excited to finally have the chance to go against Whitey Bulger in court, and to be able to see Bulger be held responsible for ruining so many lives. Unfortunately for Stippo, it was decided that he would not be used in the trial, and according to his friends and family, this devastated him. The next day, Stippo met with a friend, William Camuti, who’d allegedly been involved with Stippo in some businesses that weren’t going very well on Stippo’s end. While this was something Stippo’s family knew next to nothing about, Camuti eventually claimed Stippo owed him a lot of money, and met with him at a McDonald’s for coffee to talk about it. Camuti evidently didn’t know how Stippo took his coffee, and instead of cream or sugar he added just a pinch of cyanide. Once the cyanide did its job, Camuti dumped Stippo’s body in woods off of Route 2A. Camuti pleaded not guilty, but was charged with attempted murder, misleading police, and unlawful disposition of human remains. It has yet to be determined whether or not the murder had anything to do with Bulger’s court case. Bulger was given two life sentences for his participation in eleven murders throughout his criminal career. Neither the sentence, nor the trial, once mentioned Bulger’s extortion of Stephen “Stippo” Rakes.

 

When people think of Boston’s history, they think of our founding fathers and the American Revolution. When they think of important Boston landmarks, they think of the Old North Church, and the Boston Common. Boston contains a different history though, one that’s more hidden and hard to come by. Whitey Bulger and his Winter-Hill Gang ruled the city for years, and Stippo’s liquor mart is one of many lasting reminders of Whitey Bulger, but more importantly that Whitey Bulger eventually got what he deserved. Everything we know about the Boston Mob, we know because they failed.

 

 

 

 

A bit about Greg 

 

 

Greg is a freshman VMA major with a heart of gold. He’s made over ten mediocre short films, with no plans of stopping anytime soon. For money, he makes music videos for freaky deaky Berklee students. He’s an aspiring horror and action movie director, because he feels the other genres are “dumb.” He’s okay at the drums and can do an Ollie on a skateboard. He loves helicopters and would love to go in one someday. Please vote for me.