62 year cold case in Pittsfield remains unsolved
On May 21, 1962, Harold D. Boland’s body was found by a fisherman on Onota Lake, and the case remains unsolved 62 years later.
www.news10.com
''PITTSFIELD, Mass. (NEWS10)– On May 21, 1962, Harold D. Boland’s body was found by a fisherman on Onota Lake, and the case remains unsolved 62 years later. Boland’s fully clothed body was found floating in an industrial canal with a rope tied to his right hand. He was 48 when he died.
Reports from the Pittsfield Police Chief in 1962, Thomas Calnan, said no violence was indicated in Boland’s death. Boland was a representative for Jewel Tea Co. and worked alone in a garage where police found his empty wallet, broken glasses, papers strewn around, and the matching shoe Boland was wearing when his body was recovered.''
A History of Organized Crime in the Berkshires
The city has seen its share of arrests and convictions related to gambling and purported mob ties. PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Over the past few...
www.iberkshires.com
''The involvement of the New England mafia in Berkshire Downs may have helped, in part, to explain a perceived rise in apparent organized crime in nearby Pittsfield which would last throughout the 1960s.
Illegal activity was on the rise, ranging from the proliferation of bookies to the suspicious deaths of two Berkshire County men within a six-month period in 1962. Harold Boland, of Pittsfield, was found in a canal off Onota Lake in May, having had his wrists tied to a heavy stone. Joseph Klein, a West Stockbridge native who worked in Pittsfield, was found beaten to death outside his car by an assailant who had apparently struck after waiting for him to exit a bar in Canaan, N.Y. While the cases remained unsolved, suspicions ran high that the two men may have gotten in over their head in gambling and run awry of mob enforcers''.
