During the early 1930s, Buccola battled other ethnic gangs for territory, along with his underboss Joseph Lombardo, another mobster from Boston's North End. In December 1931, Lombardo arranged the murder of Frank Wallace, the boss of South Boston's Irish Gustin Gang. Then in 1932, Frank Morelli merged his Providence family with Buccola's Boston family, forming the "New England crime family". Buccola ruled as boss of the New England family from East Boston as he continued to have his competition murdered. He then had the boss of Boston's Jewish mob Charles Solomon murdered, leaving himself as the most powerful gangster in Boston. He held a party in Johnston, Rhode Island on April 27, 1952 to celebrate his retirement and Raymond Patriarca's ascension to boss of the New England crime family, and he retired to Sicily in 1954 where he ran a chicken farm. He died in 1987 of natural causes at the age of 101.