A Self-professed Gambler, Cheater, and Liar, Al Bozzi's biggest score was getting his family back.
By
Mary Boyle
For The Item
Al Bozzi sat in the clean and breezy kitchen of his rented Saugus home, speaking easily and openly about the 25-plus years he spent at Suffolk Downs, gambling, cheating and lying. Although things are peaceful now, there were days not too long ago when stealing, beating bookies, dragging horses and abusing his wife and family were a way of life.
"I was a liar and a cheater for more than 20 years," he said, taking out a briefcase and dumping evidence of his former life on the table. The tools of his trade--a telephone bugging device, a jar of invisible ink used to cheat bookies, an electric stimulator placed under the saddle of a horse to induce speed, and a dark bottle of murky-looking liquid used to drug horses--indicate he was no amateur at the game.
"I did it all," he said, "from setting up bookies with prostitutes and getting them drunk to steal their keys, to using my family's food money to gamble. As they say at the track, I went the whole nine yards." Bozzi is thankful those days are gone. He somehow miraculously, managed to recover from the addiction that also plagued his brother, a former bookie, and haunted his parents.
Growing up in an East Boston home where bookies were everyday visitors, Bozzi began doing what came naturally to him. He dropped out of school in eighth grade and started hustling on the streets. He got his first taste of quick money at 15. "I made $350 off a bookie," he said. "Even by then, my life was crap shooting and gambling."
Suffolk Downs, in Revere and East Boston, became Bozzi's second home. He and his buddies spent their time scheming to be on races that had already been run and beat the bookies, always looking for the "big score." He lived with jockeys and rarely held a job. "It was a dangerous game I was playing," he said, referring to brushes with organized crime members, infuriated bookies and fellow gamblers. "I was lucky to escape with my life."
Bozzi's reckless and wild lifestyle made things difficult for his loved ones. His children wondered if the guy they called "Dad" would ever change. His wife, Angie, left him several times and eventually divorced him. He tried to kill her and she ended up with a stay in a mental institution after she tried to kill herself. His oldest son, David, wired his father's car in the hope it would explode. He even turned him in to the FBI after seeing all the deceptive equipment he was using at the race track.
Yet it was those two people, the two he pushed the furthest and hurt the most, who helped Bozzi turn his life around. "My wife, Angie, she's a saint," Bozzi said, "If I didn't have her, I don't know where I'd be." The son took his father and met a priest. The priest told the son to pray for his father, not hate him. David began praying and things slowly turned around for his father. Bozzi pulled off his last dirty play at the track in 1977 and has since been clean.
"My son hated me, I had lost my wife, everything was a mess," he said. "I finally realized I was living inn a fantasy world always waiting for the next big score. I realized it never comes." Bozzi, 65, now works every day as a cabdriver and pays the rent every month. He lives with Angie, and is a real father to his three children and two grandchildren.
"The Big Score," is Bozzi's life story. He said by writing it, he hopes to dissuade other gamblers from wasting a life waiting for the "big score." Bozzi said he presented the half-written book to Universal Studios and was offered a spot as a "movie of the week." He said he declined the offer because there is more money involved in finishing his book, but he eventually hopes the book is made into a movie. For now, Bozzi is happy living the life of a working husband and father, trying to make up for the years he lost trying to get the "big score."
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