John F. Prunty was born September 18, 1899 to Thomas and Mary Ann (nee Bicknell) Prunty of 16 Juniper Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a gardener, was from Ireland, while his birth record shows his mother hailed from Australia. Censuses and other records variously report her as born at sea or in Ireland to Irish-born parents.
The 1900 census shows us a Thomas and Margaret Prunty (sic) on Pearl Street in Brookline. Besides the mistaken change in Mary Ann's name, John's age is shown very erroneously as 14. I believe the census taker truly confused his data, possibly swapping information among the children - as for John with his sister Elizabeth (or other siblings) who is shown as being born September 1899. Other siblings in the home include Mary (8), Hugh (6), Stephen (4), and Thomas, (2).
The (more accurate) 1910 census finds the family in Boston, where father Thomas is still a gardener. He and Mary have been married 24 years, have had 7 kids, of whom 6 are alive. This missing child seems to be Catherine, born October of 1892. The children listed are Mary (23), Hugh J (19), Steven (16), Thomas (14), Elizabeth M (12), and John (11).
John may be seen on the 1920 census as a Marine aboard the USS Utah in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his home address given then as 30 Austin Street in Boston. Funnily, he is also shown at home in Boston with his family on this same census at the Austin Street address he reported from Cuba. Father Thomas is now a janitor, age 55, and Mary Ann is 52. The family is rounded out by Hugh J (age 28) who is a Marine, Stephen S (25, a private chauffeur), Thomas (23, a teamster), our John (20, a Marine like Hugh), Elizabeth (age indecipherable, but now surnamed Wallace, a shoe factory employee with a son Edward E, age 2 and some months), and Francis Ready (son in law, age 31, shoe factory worker, widowed, with daughter Mary E, age 8).
At this time I can see only a few details of the 1930 census. Father Thomas is deceased. The bulk of the family lives in the household of son Thomas, age 34. Mother Mary is alive, age 65. Also there- Elizabeth Prunty (31, probably the former Elizabeth Wallace from 1920), John (28), Edward Wallace (13), and Mary Ready (19).
I cannot find John on the 1940 census. Articles mentioned he had a wife, Alice, who by 1944 lived in NYC. There is a Massachusetts-born Alice Prunty living in New York in 1940 with a son John. This son is age 6 on the 1930 census, and 16 on the 1940 census, and his surname changes from Prunty to Monahan, perhaps suggestive of a separation or divorce. On one of these censuses Alice's father lives with her, Patrick J Monahan. She was an attendant at a hospital, and had once been a student at Daly Industrial School in Dorchester, theoretically a place where good girls from bad circumstances could learn dressmaking, millinery, and other trades. On the 1940 census, she reports herself as widowed, though this John Prunty would not be murdered until 1944. As divorce was shameful then, was she being demure in calling herself a widow, or do we perhaps have a wrong Alice? She was certainly once a teen mom, being just 33 on the 1940 census with a 16 year old boy. If this is our Alice, she is not with her husband on either census. And if this is our Alice, it makes us ask "Did John have a son?" More and more, I think the answer is "yes". Our John was in the Marines, and in 1922 he was mustered at Guard Company, Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, New York, NY - so it seems he was in the neighborhood to have possibly fathered a child in 1923-1924. (This was after his having been mustered in 1919 at the Marine Barracks, US Naval Academy Annapolis Maryland, and serving as a trumpeter on the USS Utah.)
I am still looking for an answer to this... and for more about John's life and character... and would love the opportunity to see a better picture of the man than the one that I could piece together.
John F. Prunty had served in the Marines in WWI. Though afterwards he had returned to civilian life and worked as a painter, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was motivated to sign up once more to serve his country until he aged-out and was discharged. Not long after his discharge, he unwittingly became a murder victim.
John F. Prunty was attacked in the Fenway by five youthful Roxbury thugs who sought to rob him. They panicked when he fought back and called for help, so one removed his belt and strangled him with it. That boy had hoped to render him unconscious, but ended up killing him.
It must be said that the death was considered especially horrific at the time, drawing much national press attention. World War II was still on, so the slaying of a former serviceperson was particularly heinous. The fact it was done by teens was then unheard of, and resulted in the imposition of a mandatory 9:00 pm youth curfew in the area. It was observed in the press that of the five boys involved, one was fatherless, one was motherless, and a third had separated parents. Still, one boy was an honor student and winner of four scholarships. It was observed that of errant teens of the area, it was not uncommon for their mothers to work nights at munitions factories while their fathers served in the war, so the area teens often became a law unto themselves.
While the five boys participated, it was Gerard T. Shields who initiated contact, engaging the intended victim in conversation while the others waited in the bushes. The bottom line is that the boy who actually killed Sgt. Prunty was young Francis X. Mulligan, then known as "Buzzie", age 15, a former Boy Scout, of 1441 Tremont Street in the Mission Hill district of Roxbury, being raised by his widowed working mother, Mary. He had two brothers in the service, one of them a paratrooper who'd won a Silver Star.
Frank had somehow became leader of a small gang called the Crusaders. They were so young that an older gang refused to include them and said they were merely "in the way". This unnamed elder gang committed robberies in the Fenway by using young girls to lure the male victims to a planned attack spot like the bushes, and then several would jump the surprised victims and take their wallets. The girls also acted as "fences" to hold and get rid of purloined booty, like watches.
The night of August 13, 1944, copying the actions of the older gang who'd not accept them, the Crusader boys ambushed John F. Prunty, who was walking a bridle path alone in Fenway near the museum. The young robbers got $128. The loose spending of the money as well as having larger bills changed in local restaurants is what got the boys nailed, along with the gang related information given by a girl who was not involved in the Prunty attack but who worked with the older gang. She had herself been attacked months earlier near her home. It was assumed the young lady's legs and abdomen had been slashed in order to silence her about what she knew as acting as bait and a fence for the older gang. The papers are not clear about what she may have known. It is made clear that two nights earlier, in the same place as Prunty's attack, another serviceperson, merchant seaman Harold L. Weiler of Utica NY, was attacked by the older gang. Weiler was beaten, lost $6 and his watch, and survived. It seems in not being accepted by the elder gang, this younger one imitated their tactics and location to accost Sgt. Prunty.
One person led to another, and soon there was an all-out investigation of delinquent young people in the area. Both male and female teens were questioned, and some sentenced for this or Weiler's or other assaults. In all, it was suspected the two rival gangs had committed perhaps 60 assaults and robberies. In Prunty's attack, all five boys were given "sanity tests". Finally Frank X. Mulligan made a statement about what had happened in which he implicated himself as the strangler, and the others as participating in the robbery and beating. Frank stated he was "trying to put him out... to stop him from yelling."
A family member of Sgt. Prunty's recalled that the priests from Mission Church testified that the attackers were good boys because they put some of the stolen money in the church collection. This testimony horrified John's brother.
Initially held without bail, Frank was sentenced to two 15 to 20 year terms for manslaughter and robbery. I'm told that every year Prunty's brother went to hearings as the boys came up for release. Ultimately, Frank's sentence was commuted to 9 to 20 years, and he served nine years. It seems everyone was on his side. Preachers from both Catholic and Protestant faiths spoke or wrote on his behalf. Even Sgt. Prunty's sister, Elizabeth Wallace of South Boston, chimed in saying that she thought Frank should be released and that she had forgiven him. He was the last of the boys still in prison for the attack and robbery in 1952. He was paroled in 1953.
Sadly, within weeks he committed another offense by writing a series of bad checks and was re-jailed. His life would go on like this, with periods of normal life interrupted by criminal activity and jail. His life, in fact, would end like this as well. After serving time for bank robberies he committed as a senior citizen, Frank regained his freedom and reunited with his wife, but not long after his release he died of long-standing heart trouble.
I was an acquaintance of Sgt. Prunty's killer Frank X. Mulligan, who was 15 when he murdered Sgt. Prunty. In May of 2013, driven by curiosity and some doubt, knowing Frank could be fanciful, I had begun tracking down this murder he had alluded to. It astonished me that the story was true and well-documented. It was not until January of 2015 that I could locate Sgt. Prunty's place of rest and record him here.
I came to meet Frank because he married a good friend of mine in his later years. Because he was a charming, sociable and smart man, I could never reconcile his character with his confessed youthful murder, nor with his multiple acts of lawlessness as an adult. He was candid about all his shortcomings and deeds, and spoke of them as though they were things he did not completely understand, and the killing never rested easy on his conscience. In light of Frank's wrongdoing, and in recognition of his years of guilt, I respectfully tell Sgt. Prunty's tale here for the wrong that Frank could never make right.
The 1900 census shows us a Thomas and Margaret Prunty (sic) on Pearl Street in Brookline. Besides the mistaken change in Mary Ann's name, John's age is shown very erroneously as 14. I believe the census taker truly confused his data, possibly swapping information among the children - as for John with his sister Elizabeth (or other siblings) who is shown as being born September 1899. Other siblings in the home include Mary (8), Hugh (6), Stephen (4), and Thomas, (2).
The (more accurate) 1910 census finds the family in Boston, where father Thomas is still a gardener. He and Mary have been married 24 years, have had 7 kids, of whom 6 are alive. This missing child seems to be Catherine, born October of 1892. The children listed are Mary (23), Hugh J (19), Steven (16), Thomas (14), Elizabeth M (12), and John (11).
John may be seen on the 1920 census as a Marine aboard the USS Utah in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his home address given then as 30 Austin Street in Boston. Funnily, he is also shown at home in Boston with his family on this same census at the Austin Street address he reported from Cuba. Father Thomas is now a janitor, age 55, and Mary Ann is 52. The family is rounded out by Hugh J (age 28) who is a Marine, Stephen S (25, a private chauffeur), Thomas (23, a teamster), our John (20, a Marine like Hugh), Elizabeth (age indecipherable, but now surnamed Wallace, a shoe factory employee with a son Edward E, age 2 and some months), and Francis Ready (son in law, age 31, shoe factory worker, widowed, with daughter Mary E, age 8).
At this time I can see only a few details of the 1930 census. Father Thomas is deceased. The bulk of the family lives in the household of son Thomas, age 34. Mother Mary is alive, age 65. Also there- Elizabeth Prunty (31, probably the former Elizabeth Wallace from 1920), John (28), Edward Wallace (13), and Mary Ready (19).
I cannot find John on the 1940 census. Articles mentioned he had a wife, Alice, who by 1944 lived in NYC. There is a Massachusetts-born Alice Prunty living in New York in 1940 with a son John. This son is age 6 on the 1930 census, and 16 on the 1940 census, and his surname changes from Prunty to Monahan, perhaps suggestive of a separation or divorce. On one of these censuses Alice's father lives with her, Patrick J Monahan. She was an attendant at a hospital, and had once been a student at Daly Industrial School in Dorchester, theoretically a place where good girls from bad circumstances could learn dressmaking, millinery, and other trades. On the 1940 census, she reports herself as widowed, though this John Prunty would not be murdered until 1944. As divorce was shameful then, was she being demure in calling herself a widow, or do we perhaps have a wrong Alice? She was certainly once a teen mom, being just 33 on the 1940 census with a 16 year old boy. If this is our Alice, she is not with her husband on either census. And if this is our Alice, it makes us ask "Did John have a son?" More and more, I think the answer is "yes". Our John was in the Marines, and in 1922 he was mustered at Guard Company, Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, New York, NY - so it seems he was in the neighborhood to have possibly fathered a child in 1923-1924. (This was after his having been mustered in 1919 at the Marine Barracks, US Naval Academy Annapolis Maryland, and serving as a trumpeter on the USS Utah.)
I am still looking for an answer to this... and for more about John's life and character... and would love the opportunity to see a better picture of the man than the one that I could piece together.
John F. Prunty had served in the Marines in WWI. Though afterwards he had returned to civilian life and worked as a painter, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was motivated to sign up once more to serve his country until he aged-out and was discharged. Not long after his discharge, he unwittingly became a murder victim.
John F. Prunty was attacked in the Fenway by five youthful Roxbury thugs who sought to rob him. They panicked when he fought back and called for help, so one removed his belt and strangled him with it. That boy had hoped to render him unconscious, but ended up killing him.
It must be said that the death was considered especially horrific at the time, drawing much national press attention. World War II was still on, so the slaying of a former serviceperson was particularly heinous. The fact it was done by teens was then unheard of, and resulted in the imposition of a mandatory 9:00 pm youth curfew in the area. It was observed in the press that of the five boys involved, one was fatherless, one was motherless, and a third had separated parents. Still, one boy was an honor student and winner of four scholarships. It was observed that of errant teens of the area, it was not uncommon for their mothers to work nights at munitions factories while their fathers served in the war, so the area teens often became a law unto themselves.
While the five boys participated, it was Gerard T. Shields who initiated contact, engaging the intended victim in conversation while the others waited in the bushes. The bottom line is that the boy who actually killed Sgt. Prunty was young Francis X. Mulligan, then known as "Buzzie", age 15, a former Boy Scout, of 1441 Tremont Street in the Mission Hill district of Roxbury, being raised by his widowed working mother, Mary. He had two brothers in the service, one of them a paratrooper who'd won a Silver Star.
Frank had somehow became leader of a small gang called the Crusaders. They were so young that an older gang refused to include them and said they were merely "in the way". This unnamed elder gang committed robberies in the Fenway by using young girls to lure the male victims to a planned attack spot like the bushes, and then several would jump the surprised victims and take their wallets. The girls also acted as "fences" to hold and get rid of purloined booty, like watches.
The night of August 13, 1944, copying the actions of the older gang who'd not accept them, the Crusader boys ambushed John F. Prunty, who was walking a bridle path alone in Fenway near the museum. The young robbers got $128. The loose spending of the money as well as having larger bills changed in local restaurants is what got the boys nailed, along with the gang related information given by a girl who was not involved in the Prunty attack but who worked with the older gang. She had herself been attacked months earlier near her home. It was assumed the young lady's legs and abdomen had been slashed in order to silence her about what she knew as acting as bait and a fence for the older gang. The papers are not clear about what she may have known. It is made clear that two nights earlier, in the same place as Prunty's attack, another serviceperson, merchant seaman Harold L. Weiler of Utica NY, was attacked by the older gang. Weiler was beaten, lost $6 and his watch, and survived. It seems in not being accepted by the elder gang, this younger one imitated their tactics and location to accost Sgt. Prunty.
One person led to another, and soon there was an all-out investigation of delinquent young people in the area. Both male and female teens were questioned, and some sentenced for this or Weiler's or other assaults. In all, it was suspected the two rival gangs had committed perhaps 60 assaults and robberies. In Prunty's attack, all five boys were given "sanity tests". Finally Frank X. Mulligan made a statement about what had happened in which he implicated himself as the strangler, and the others as participating in the robbery and beating. Frank stated he was "trying to put him out... to stop him from yelling."
A family member of Sgt. Prunty's recalled that the priests from Mission Church testified that the attackers were good boys because they put some of the stolen money in the church collection. This testimony horrified John's brother.
Initially held without bail, Frank was sentenced to two 15 to 20 year terms for manslaughter and robbery. I'm told that every year Prunty's brother went to hearings as the boys came up for release. Ultimately, Frank's sentence was commuted to 9 to 20 years, and he served nine years. It seems everyone was on his side. Preachers from both Catholic and Protestant faiths spoke or wrote on his behalf. Even Sgt. Prunty's sister, Elizabeth Wallace of South Boston, chimed in saying that she thought Frank should be released and that she had forgiven him. He was the last of the boys still in prison for the attack and robbery in 1952. He was paroled in 1953.
Sadly, within weeks he committed another offense by writing a series of bad checks and was re-jailed. His life would go on like this, with periods of normal life interrupted by criminal activity and jail. His life, in fact, would end like this as well. After serving time for bank robberies he committed as a senior citizen, Frank regained his freedom and reunited with his wife, but not long after his release he died of long-standing heart trouble.
I was an acquaintance of Sgt. Prunty's killer Frank X. Mulligan, who was 15 when he murdered Sgt. Prunty. In May of 2013, driven by curiosity and some doubt, knowing Frank could be fanciful, I had begun tracking down this murder he had alluded to. It astonished me that the story was true and well-documented. It was not until January of 2015 that I could locate Sgt. Prunty's place of rest and record him here.
I came to meet Frank because he married a good friend of mine in his later years. Because he was a charming, sociable and smart man, I could never reconcile his character with his confessed youthful murder, nor with his multiple acts of lawlessness as an adult. He was candid about all his shortcomings and deeds, and spoke of them as though they were things he did not completely understand, and the killing never rested easy on his conscience. In light of Frank's wrongdoing, and in recognition of his years of guilt, I respectfully tell Sgt. Prunty's tale here for the wrong that Frank could never make right.
John F. Prunty was born September 18, 1899 to Thomas and Mary Ann (nee Bicknell) Prunty of 16 Juniper Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a gardener, was from Ireland, while his birth record shows his mother hailed from Australia. Censuses and other records variously report her as born at sea or in Ireland to Irish-born parents.
The 1900 census shows us a Thomas and Margaret Prunty (sic) on Pearl Street in Brookline. Besides the mistaken change in Mary Ann's name, John's age is shown very erroneously as 14. I believe the census taker truly confused his data, possibly swapping information among the children - as for John with his sister Elizabeth (or other siblings) who is shown as being born September 1899. Other siblings in the home include Mary (8), Hugh (6), Stephen (4), and Thomas, (2).
The (more accurate) 1910 census finds the family in Boston, where father Thomas is still a gardener. He and Mary have been married 24 years, have had 7 kids, of whom 6 are alive. This missing child seems to be Catherine, born October of 1892. The children listed are Mary (23), Hugh J (19), Steven (16), Thomas (14), Elizabeth M (12), and John (11).
John may be seen on the 1920 census as a Marine aboard the USS Utah in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his home address given then as 30 Austin Street in Boston. Funnily, he is also shown at home in Boston with his family on this same census at the Austin Street address he reported from Cuba. Father Thomas is now a janitor, age 55, and Mary Ann is 52. The family is rounded out by Hugh J (age 28) who is a Marine, Stephen S (25, a private chauffeur), Thomas (23, a teamster), our John (20, a Marine like Hugh), Elizabeth (age indecipherable, but now surnamed Wallace, a shoe factory employee with a son Edward E, age 2 and some months), and Francis Ready (son in law, age 31, shoe factory worker, widowed, with daughter Mary E, age 8).
At this time I can see only a few details of the 1930 census. Father Thomas is deceased. The bulk of the family lives in the household of son Thomas, age 34. Mother Mary is alive, age 65. Also there- Elizabeth Prunty (31, probably the former Elizabeth Wallace from 1920), John (28), Edward Wallace (13), and Mary Ready (19).
I cannot find John on the 1940 census. Articles mentioned he had a wife, Alice, who by 1944 lived in NYC. There is a Massachusetts-born Alice Prunty living in New York in 1940 with a son John. This son is age 6 on the 1930 census, and 16 on the 1940 census, and his surname changes from Prunty to Monahan, perhaps suggestive of a separation or divorce. On one of these censuses Alice's father lives with her, Patrick J Monahan. She was an attendant at a hospital, and had once been a student at Daly Industrial School in Dorchester, theoretically a place where good girls from bad circumstances could learn dressmaking, millinery, and other trades. On the 1940 census, she reports herself as widowed, though this John Prunty would not be murdered until 1944. As divorce was shameful then, was she being demure in calling herself a widow, or do we perhaps have a wrong Alice? She was certainly once a teen mom, being just 33 on the 1940 census with a 16 year old boy. If this is our Alice, she is not with her husband on either census. And if this is our Alice, it makes us ask "Did John have a son?" More and more, I think the answer is "yes". Our John was in the Marines, and in 1922 he was mustered at Guard Company, Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, New York, NY - so it seems he was in the neighborhood to have possibly fathered a child in 1923-1924. (This was after his having been mustered in 1919 at the Marine Barracks, US Naval Academy Annapolis Maryland, and serving as a trumpeter on the USS Utah.)
I am still looking for an answer to this... and for more about John's life and character... and would love the opportunity to see a better picture of the man than the one that I could piece together.
John F. Prunty had served in the Marines in WWI. Though afterwards he had returned to civilian life and worked as a painter, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was motivated to sign up once more to serve his country until he aged-out and was discharged. Not long after his discharge, he unwittingly became a murder victim.
John F. Prunty was attacked in the Fenway by five youthful Roxbury thugs who sought to rob him. They panicked when he fought back and called for help, so one removed his belt and strangled him with it. That boy had hoped to render him unconscious, but ended up killing him.
It must be said that the death was considered especially horrific at the time, drawing much national press attention. World War II was still on, so the slaying of a former serviceperson was particularly heinous. The fact it was done by teens was then unheard of, and resulted in the imposition of a mandatory 9:00 pm youth curfew in the area. It was observed in the press that of the five boys involved, one was fatherless, one was motherless, and a third had separated parents. Still, one boy was an honor student and winner of four scholarships. It was observed that of errant teens of the area, it was not uncommon for their mothers to work nights at munitions factories while their fathers served in the war, so the area teens often became a law unto themselves.
While the five boys participated, it was Gerard T. Shields who initiated contact, engaging the intended victim in conversation while the others waited in the bushes. The bottom line is that the boy who actually killed Sgt. Prunty was young Francis X. Mulligan, then known as "Buzzie", age 15, a former Boy Scout, of 1441 Tremont Street in the Mission Hill district of Roxbury, being raised by his widowed working mother, Mary. He had two brothers in the service, one of them a paratrooper who'd won a Silver Star.
Frank had somehow became leader of a small gang called the Crusaders. They were so young that an older gang refused to include them and said they were merely "in the way". This unnamed elder gang committed robberies in the Fenway by using young girls to lure the male victims to a planned attack spot like the bushes, and then several would jump the surprised victims and take their wallets. The girls also acted as "fences" to hold and get rid of purloined booty, like watches.
The night of August 13, 1944, copying the actions of the older gang who'd not accept them, the Crusader boys ambushed John F. Prunty, who was walking a bridle path alone in Fenway near the museum. The young robbers got $128. The loose spending of the money as well as having larger bills changed in local restaurants is what got the boys nailed, along with the gang related information given by a girl who was not involved in the Prunty attack but who worked with the older gang. She had herself been attacked months earlier near her home. It was assumed the young lady's legs and abdomen had been slashed in order to silence her about what she knew as acting as bait and a fence for the older gang. The papers are not clear about what she may have known. It is made clear that two nights earlier, in the same place as Prunty's attack, another serviceperson, merchant seaman Harold L. Weiler of Utica NY, was attacked by the older gang. Weiler was beaten, lost $6 and his watch, and survived. It seems in not being accepted by the elder gang, this younger one imitated their tactics and location to accost Sgt. Prunty.
One person led to another, and soon there was an all-out investigation of delinquent young people in the area. Both male and female teens were questioned, and some sentenced for this or Weiler's or other assaults. In all, it was suspected the two rival gangs had committed perhaps 60 assaults and robberies. In Prunty's attack, all five boys were given "sanity tests". Finally Frank X. Mulligan made a statement about what had happened in which he implicated himself as the strangler, and the others as participating in the robbery and beating. Frank stated he was "trying to put him out... to stop him from yelling."
A family member of Sgt. Prunty's recalled that the priests from Mission Church testified that the attackers were good boys because they put some of the stolen money in the church collection. This testimony horrified John's brother.
Initially held without bail, Frank was sentenced to two 15 to 20 year terms for manslaughter and robbery. I'm told that every year Prunty's brother went to hearings as the boys came up for release. Ultimately, Frank's sentence was commuted to 9 to 20 years, and he served nine years. It seems everyone was on his side. Preachers from both Catholic and Protestant faiths spoke or wrote on his behalf. Even Sgt. Prunty's sister, Elizabeth Wallace of South Boston, chimed in saying that she thought Frank should be released and that she had forgiven him. He was the last of the boys still in prison for the attack and robbery in 1952. He was paroled in 1953.
Sadly, within weeks he committed another offense by writing a series of bad checks and was re-jailed. His life would go on like this, with periods of normal life interrupted by criminal activity and jail. His life, in fact, would end like this as well. After serving time for bank robberies he committed as a senior citizen, Frank regained his freedom and reunited with his wife, but not long after his release he died of long-standing heart trouble.
I was an acquaintance of Sgt. Prunty's killer Frank X. Mulligan, who was 15 when he murdered Sgt. Prunty. In May of 2013, driven by curiosity and some doubt, knowing Frank could be fanciful, I had begun tracking down this murder he had alluded to. It astonished me that the story was true and well-documented. It was not until January of 2015 that I could locate Sgt. Prunty's place of rest and record him here.
I came to meet Frank because he married a good friend of mine in his later years. Because he was a charming, sociable and smart man, I could never reconcile his character with his confessed youthful murder, nor with his multiple acts of lawlessness as an adult. He was candid about all his shortcomings and deeds, and spoke of them as though they were things he did not completely understand, and the killing never rested easy on his conscience. In light of Frank's wrongdoing, and in recognition of his years of guilt, I respectfully tell Sgt. Prunty's tale here for the wrong that Frank could never make right.
The 1900 census shows us a Thomas and Margaret Prunty (sic) on Pearl Street in Brookline. Besides the mistaken change in Mary Ann's name, John's age is shown very erroneously as 14. I believe the census taker truly confused his data, possibly swapping information among the children - as for John with his sister Elizabeth (or other siblings) who is shown as being born September 1899. Other siblings in the home include Mary (8), Hugh (6), Stephen (4), and Thomas, (2).
The (more accurate) 1910 census finds the family in Boston, where father Thomas is still a gardener. He and Mary have been married 24 years, have had 7 kids, of whom 6 are alive. This missing child seems to be Catherine, born October of 1892. The children listed are Mary (23), Hugh J (19), Steven (16), Thomas (14), Elizabeth M (12), and John (11).
John may be seen on the 1920 census as a Marine aboard the USS Utah in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his home address given then as 30 Austin Street in Boston. Funnily, he is also shown at home in Boston with his family on this same census at the Austin Street address he reported from Cuba. Father Thomas is now a janitor, age 55, and Mary Ann is 52. The family is rounded out by Hugh J (age 28) who is a Marine, Stephen S (25, a private chauffeur), Thomas (23, a teamster), our John (20, a Marine like Hugh), Elizabeth (age indecipherable, but now surnamed Wallace, a shoe factory employee with a son Edward E, age 2 and some months), and Francis Ready (son in law, age 31, shoe factory worker, widowed, with daughter Mary E, age 8).
At this time I can see only a few details of the 1930 census. Father Thomas is deceased. The bulk of the family lives in the household of son Thomas, age 34. Mother Mary is alive, age 65. Also there- Elizabeth Prunty (31, probably the former Elizabeth Wallace from 1920), John (28), Edward Wallace (13), and Mary Ready (19).
I cannot find John on the 1940 census. Articles mentioned he had a wife, Alice, who by 1944 lived in NYC. There is a Massachusetts-born Alice Prunty living in New York in 1940 with a son John. This son is age 6 on the 1930 census, and 16 on the 1940 census, and his surname changes from Prunty to Monahan, perhaps suggestive of a separation or divorce. On one of these censuses Alice's father lives with her, Patrick J Monahan. She was an attendant at a hospital, and had once been a student at Daly Industrial School in Dorchester, theoretically a place where good girls from bad circumstances could learn dressmaking, millinery, and other trades. On the 1940 census, she reports herself as widowed, though this John Prunty would not be murdered until 1944. As divorce was shameful then, was she being demure in calling herself a widow, or do we perhaps have a wrong Alice? She was certainly once a teen mom, being just 33 on the 1940 census with a 16 year old boy. If this is our Alice, she is not with her husband on either census. And if this is our Alice, it makes us ask "Did John have a son?" More and more, I think the answer is "yes". Our John was in the Marines, and in 1922 he was mustered at Guard Company, Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, New York, NY - so it seems he was in the neighborhood to have possibly fathered a child in 1923-1924. (This was after his having been mustered in 1919 at the Marine Barracks, US Naval Academy Annapolis Maryland, and serving as a trumpeter on the USS Utah.)
I am still looking for an answer to this... and for more about John's life and character... and would love the opportunity to see a better picture of the man than the one that I could piece together.
John F. Prunty had served in the Marines in WWI. Though afterwards he had returned to civilian life and worked as a painter, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was motivated to sign up once more to serve his country until he aged-out and was discharged. Not long after his discharge, he unwittingly became a murder victim.
John F. Prunty was attacked in the Fenway by five youthful Roxbury thugs who sought to rob him. They panicked when he fought back and called for help, so one removed his belt and strangled him with it. That boy had hoped to render him unconscious, but ended up killing him.
It must be said that the death was considered especially horrific at the time, drawing much national press attention. World War II was still on, so the slaying of a former serviceperson was particularly heinous. The fact it was done by teens was then unheard of, and resulted in the imposition of a mandatory 9:00 pm youth curfew in the area. It was observed in the press that of the five boys involved, one was fatherless, one was motherless, and a third had separated parents. Still, one boy was an honor student and winner of four scholarships. It was observed that of errant teens of the area, it was not uncommon for their mothers to work nights at munitions factories while their fathers served in the war, so the area teens often became a law unto themselves.
While the five boys participated, it was Gerard T. Shields who initiated contact, engaging the intended victim in conversation while the others waited in the bushes. The bottom line is that the boy who actually killed Sgt. Prunty was young Francis X. Mulligan, then known as "Buzzie", age 15, a former Boy Scout, of 1441 Tremont Street in the Mission Hill district of Roxbury, being raised by his widowed working mother, Mary. He had two brothers in the service, one of them a paratrooper who'd won a Silver Star.
Frank had somehow became leader of a small gang called the Crusaders. They were so young that an older gang refused to include them and said they were merely "in the way". This unnamed elder gang committed robberies in the Fenway by using young girls to lure the male victims to a planned attack spot like the bushes, and then several would jump the surprised victims and take their wallets. The girls also acted as "fences" to hold and get rid of purloined booty, like watches.
The night of August 13, 1944, copying the actions of the older gang who'd not accept them, the Crusader boys ambushed John F. Prunty, who was walking a bridle path alone in Fenway near the museum. The young robbers got $128. The loose spending of the money as well as having larger bills changed in local restaurants is what got the boys nailed, along with the gang related information given by a girl who was not involved in the Prunty attack but who worked with the older gang. She had herself been attacked months earlier near her home. It was assumed the young lady's legs and abdomen had been slashed in order to silence her about what she knew as acting as bait and a fence for the older gang. The papers are not clear about what she may have known. It is made clear that two nights earlier, in the same place as Prunty's attack, another serviceperson, merchant seaman Harold L. Weiler of Utica NY, was attacked by the older gang. Weiler was beaten, lost $6 and his watch, and survived. It seems in not being accepted by the elder gang, this younger one imitated their tactics and location to accost Sgt. Prunty.
One person led to another, and soon there was an all-out investigation of delinquent young people in the area. Both male and female teens were questioned, and some sentenced for this or Weiler's or other assaults. In all, it was suspected the two rival gangs had committed perhaps 60 assaults and robberies. In Prunty's attack, all five boys were given "sanity tests". Finally Frank X. Mulligan made a statement about what had happened in which he implicated himself as the strangler, and the others as participating in the robbery and beating. Frank stated he was "trying to put him out... to stop him from yelling."
A family member of Sgt. Prunty's recalled that the priests from Mission Church testified that the attackers were good boys because they put some of the stolen money in the church collection. This testimony horrified John's brother.
Initially held without bail, Frank was sentenced to two 15 to 20 year terms for manslaughter and robbery. I'm told that every year Prunty's brother went to hearings as the boys came up for release. Ultimately, Frank's sentence was commuted to 9 to 20 years, and he served nine years. It seems everyone was on his side. Preachers from both Catholic and Protestant faiths spoke or wrote on his behalf. Even Sgt. Prunty's sister, Elizabeth Wallace of South Boston, chimed in saying that she thought Frank should be released and that she had forgiven him. He was the last of the boys still in prison for the attack and robbery in 1952. He was paroled in 1953.
Sadly, within weeks he committed another offense by writing a series of bad checks and was re-jailed. His life would go on like this, with periods of normal life interrupted by criminal activity and jail. His life, in fact, would end like this as well. After serving time for bank robberies he committed as a senior citizen, Frank regained his freedom and reunited with his wife, but not long after his release he died of long-standing heart trouble.
I was an acquaintance of Sgt. Prunty's killer Frank X. Mulligan, who was 15 when he murdered Sgt. Prunty. In May of 2013, driven by curiosity and some doubt, knowing Frank could be fanciful, I had begun tracking down this murder he had alluded to. It astonished me that the story was true and well-documented. It was not until January of 2015 that I could locate Sgt. Prunty's place of rest and record him here.
I came to meet Frank because he married a good friend of mine in his later years. Because he was a charming, sociable and smart man, I could never reconcile his character with his confessed youthful murder, nor with his multiple acts of lawlessness as an adult. He was candid about all his shortcomings and deeds, and spoke of them as though they were things he did not completely understand, and the killing never rested easy on his conscience. In light of Frank's wrongdoing, and in recognition of his years of guilt, I respectfully tell Sgt. Prunty's tale here for the wrong that Frank could never make right.
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
