Rivals of Richie the Boot Boiardo actually set him up for the kill in the 1930s. He was shot-gunned and seriously wounded on at least one occasion. But he would survive to rise up and dominate all those around him. So much so that by the late 1930s-early 1940s, he became one of the top recognized powers in the Northern New Jersey area of the Garden State.
One of the most iconic and feared mafioso to ever operate out of New Jersey was the Genovese Family’s Ruggiero Boiardo. An almost mythical figure in the underworld, “Richie the Boot,” as he was widely known, got his start during the early years of Prohibition in the 1920s. He was a wild man and not somebody to be trifled with.
