On the morning of June 28, 1978, five men were found shot to death in the basement of the Blackfriars Pub on Summer Street in Boston. Among the victims was 34-year-old John A. Jack Kelly, a married father of four and a former investigative journalist who was working as the pub’s night manager. The scene showed close-range shotgun and .25-caliber pistol wounds, and investigators concluded there were at least two assailants.

Police initially suspected robbery because a large sum of cash and several kilograms of cocaine were on the premises, but a small arsenal of firearms and some drugs and money left behind complicated that theory and suggested a possible targeted, organized-crime motive. Two men, Robert Italiano and William N. Ierardi, were arrested and tried less than a month later but were acquitted, and no one has been convicted in the case.

Rumors have tied prominent Boston mob figures to the massacre, and reports say Kelly had cultivated contacts in the criminal underworld during his reporting career, which may have placed him at risk. Does anyone have memories of Kelly, the Blackfriars Pub, or the night of June 28, 1978 that could shed more light on what happened?