James M. Murphy was an Irish-American Winter Hill Gang

Winter Hill Gang

The Winter Hill Gang is a structured confederation of Boston, Massachusetts-area organized crime figures, predominantly Irish-American with a small Italian-American faction. It derives its name from the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts north of Boston. Its members have...

 mob associate who in 1970 became the subject of a massive manhunt by the then-Boston Police Department

Boston Police Department

The Boston Police Department , created in 1838, holds the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest police departments in the United States...

 Commissioner Francis Roache

Francis Roache

Francis M. "Mickey" Roache is an American law enforcement officer and politician who is the Suffolk County Register of Deeds. He previously served as Boston Police Commissioner from 1985 to 1993 and was a member of the Boston City Council from 1996 to 2002....

. He was a fugitive wanted in the shooting of two people murdered at a Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

 party on December 24, 1968. When he was placed on the wanted fugitive list he was third behind Frank Salemme

Frank Salemme

Francis P. Salemme [Salemone], also known as "Cadillac Frank" and "Julian Daniel Selig" , is a Boston, Massachusetts mobster who became a hitman and eventually the boss of the Patriarca crime family of New England before turning government witness.-Early years:In 1957, while in prison, Salemme...

 and Stephen Flemmi

Stephen Flemmi

Stephen Joseph "The Rifleman" Flemmi is an Italian-American mobster and close associate of Winter Hill Gang boss James J. Bulger. Beginning in 1965, Flemmi was a top echelon informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

 who were fugitives hiding from racketeering charges. Murphy would successfully evade capture for eight years before surrendering himself to the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 in 1975. Murphy was later acquitted of the crimes he was charged with by a Suffolk County, Massachusetts

Suffolk County, Massachusetts

Suffolk County has no land border with Plymouth County to its southeast, but the two counties share a water boundary in the middle of Massachusetts Bay.-National protected areas:*Boston African American National Historic Site...

 Superior Court

Superior court

In common law systems, a superior court is a court of general competence which typically has unlimited jurisdiction with regard to civil and criminal legal cases...

jury.