Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo

Anthony Spagnolo was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 13 January 1942, the son of Rosario and Teresa Spagnolo. He was raised in Revere, where he remained a lifelong resident, and enlisted in the United States Army, serving as an Airborne paratrooper. Family and friends later remembered his pride in that service and his lasting interest in history, politics and current events.

He returned to the North Shore after the Army and became a familiar figure in Revere. Those who knew him outside courtrooms described an engaging personality, a sharp mind and a willingness to argue. He took pride in his garden and kept close ties to siblings and neighbors even as his name entered federal case files.

Spagnolo became associated with the Boston faction of the Patriarca crime family, the New England La Cosa Nostra organization long centered between Providence and Boston. Prosecutors said he also went by Crazy Eyes. He was among the made members who attended the 29 October 1989 induction ceremony on Guild Street in Medford, Massachusetts, overseen by then-boss Raymond Junior Patriarca as the family tried to calm Boston-Providence violence. The FBI recorded the ceremony, the only such Mafia induction ever taped in the United States, and used it for years to prove the existence of the organization.

In March 1990 Spagnolo was among twenty-one men indicted in a sweeping racketeering case. He pleaded guilty in 1991 to racketeering and drug charges and served nine years in federal prison. After Anthony DiNunzio's 2012 arrest and later racketeering guilty plea, authorities identified Spagnolo as acting boss of what remained of the fragmented family. In October 2014 he and Pryce Stretch Quintina were charged with extorting protection payments from a company that supplied illegal video poker machines to bars and clubs, including the Revere Moose Lodge. He pleaded guilty and in May 2016 received a twenty-month federal sentence. Older reporting also tied him, without charges, to a role as lookout and getaway driver in the 1976 San Francisco killing of informant Joseph The Animal Barboza.

Spagnolo's published obituary stressed family over notoriety. He cherished his son, Michael Spagnolo, and took pride in his grandson, Anthony Spagnolo. He was survived by siblings Katherine Tiro of Malden, Connie Riley of Saugus, and Vincent Jimmy Spagnolo and his wife Donna of Saugus, along with many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his parents, by siblings Domenic Spagnolo, Mary Flammia, Elizabeth Arone and Rosario Joe Spagnolo, and by Patricia Tripoli, the mother of his son Michael.

Close friend Kenny DeFeo cared for him near the end of his life. Amy, the mother of his grandson, was also remembered as someone special to him. Away from the underworld press, he was known in Revere as a neighbor who loved debate, history and tending his garden.

Anthony Spucky Spagnolo died peacefully on 29 September 2026 at the age of 84. His funeral home announced the date and age; WPRI and other outlets reported the news the following day, and the Boston Globe published a longer remembrance on 1 October 2026. No specific medical cause was listed beyond a peaceful death at advanced age, while crime-reporting sites described illness in the final period of his life.

Visitation was held on Saturday, 3 October 2026, from noon to 2 p.m. at Paul Buonfiglio and Sons-Bruno Funeral Home, 128 Revere Street, Revere, with burial afterward at Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden. Family and friends were invited to celebrate his life.

Spagnolo's public legacy is inseparable from the decline of the New England Mafia. He belonged to the generation that still filled federal dockets in the Angiulo and Junior Patriarca eras, sat in the Medford induction room that gave prosecutors their historic recording, and later held acting leadership of a family already hollowed out by informants, RICO cases and age. His 2014 to 2016 extortion case showed that remnants of the old protection racket still tried to operate even as the organization's street power faded.

When he died at 84, reporters framed his passing as that of one of the last recognizable old-school New England wiseguys. For federal investigators and crime historians, his name remains tied to the Medford tape and to the long arc from mid-century Boston underworld power to a largely residual Patriarca family. For his relatives, the public record was secondary to a father and grandfather remembered in Revere.