Alex Rocco is an American actor. His roles have ranged from comedy to playing gangsters in Mafia movies. Rocco was born Alexander Federico Petricone, Jr. in Cambridge, Massachusetts but raised in Somerville, Massachusetts, the son of Mary and Alexander Sam Petricone. He is of Italian descent. According to organized crime turncoat Vincent Teresa, Alex was a hanger-on with the Winter Hill Gang of the Boston area. An unwanted advance toward Rocco's then girlfriend on Labor Day, 1961 touched off the Boston Irish Gang War of the 1960s. Georgie McLaughlin who made the advance was beaten by Winter... Hill Gang members. Howie Carr, a Boston-area journalist and radio personality who has written extensively about the Boston underworld, has written that the young Petricone was arrested in Charlestown in November 1961 along with Winter Hill boss Buddy McLean for questioning following the death of Bernie McLaughlin of the McLaughlin gang, the first murder of the war. Petricone was released without charge, and shortly thereafter left the Boston area.
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