January 27, 2022 — The 1999 gangland-style slaying of Boston underworld figure Kevin (Mucka) McCormack is alleged to have gotten New England mob soldier Billy (The Angel) Angelesco inducted into the Patriarca crime family. Whether or not he actually pulled the trigger in the hit has long been debated.
Anthony Barry and Brian Cahill, the men convicted in the McCormack homicide, have thus-far unsuccessfully hinged their appeal on Massachusetts State Police intelligence reports naming Angelesco as the gunman in the crime. The 50-year old Angelesco is in the final months of a three-year federal prison stint for a beating and robbery he was a part of that took place in a Boston suburb in September 2018.
According to the BOP, Billy the Angel is scheduled to be released from a West Virginia federal correctional facility on July 8. Back in the 2000s, he was acquitted on first-degree murder charges at trial in a nightclub slaying, but busted on state extortion charges. The victim, Peter DeVito, had allegedly booted Angelesco from a topless bar and disrespected him in the incident days earlier.
In the late 1990s, Angelesco, Barry and Cahill were part of the same Boston “JV mob” out of Revere and Medford. Mucka McCormack was the leader of a rival local gang infringing on mafia territory in his drug, gambling and loan sharking rackets. On April 17, 1999, McCormack was gunned down in the parking lot of Cremone’s in Malden, Massachusetts by two men in hooded sweatshirts identified by one of McCormack’s friend’s, a former boxer named Brian Porreca, who was wounded in the attack, as Barry and Cahill.
Porreca was the state’s star witness at Barry and Cahill’s trial for first-degree murder. An admitted heroin user, Porreca admittedly consumed “4 or 5 beers” on the night of the shooting and testified that he didn’t actually see Barry or Cahill unload their weapons into him or Mucka McCormack.
Porreca straddled the fence between both groups, sometimes working as a collector for Mucka McCormack’s crew and sometimes doing muscle work for Billy the Angel, Barry and Cahill. Because Barry and Cahill were not Italian, only Angelesco was eligible to get “made” into the Patri
Per DEA documents, Porreca reported to Angelesco’s right-hand man Eugene (G.G.) Giangrande in a narcotics and sports-betting conspiracy case investigated by federal authorities around the time of the McCormack hit but never brought in the form of an indictment. However, Porreca had been in contact with police after getting jammed up in a drug-related armed robbery weeks prior to McCormack’s killing.
A pair of Massachusetts State Police intelligence reports from July 2001 tie Angelesco to being the triggerman in the Mucka McCormack hit. One report dated 7/17/01, stated that a confidential informant told an investigator that Billy Angelesco was sponsored for induction into the mafia by Boston mob chief Carmen (Big Cheese) DiNunzio and got straightened out because he shot and killed Mucka McCormack.
The other report dated a week later on 7/25/01 stated that another confidential informant told an investigator that Billy Angelesco was sponsored by DiNunzio for membership in the Patriarca crime family and earned his bones by murdering the 29-year old McCormack, despite people thinking it was Barry who pulled the trigger in the hit. Per the second intelligence report, the informant named Gene Giangrande as the getaway driver in the murder conspiracy.
Porreca approached Giangrande’s girlfriend in the minutes after McCormack was killed and he was shot and yelled, “Tell Gene I’m going to put two bullets in the back of his fucking head. The MSP investigator responsible for penninf the two intelligence reports admitted after the fact that he added that the information provided within the reports came from first-hand sources when in reality it did not.
At the time of the McCormack slaying and the intelligence reports, DiNunzio was just a capo in the New England mafia. He eventually became underboss and today federal authorities consider him the boss of the Patriarca crime family. DiNunzio, 64, headquarters out of the Gemini Social Club in Boston’s North End. His nickname comes from his former proprietorship in the Fresh Cheese Shoppe in the North End on Endicott Street.
Barry, 55, and Cahill, 58, remain behind bars doing life prison terms for the murder of Mucka McCormack. Their most recent appeal was rejected in 2019.