 Born to a Boston postal clerk, he shined shoes and raised pigeons, in his early youth, before finding work as a stock boy.He joined the US Military in 1963, and the following year was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba before being transferred off to spend the following year in the Vietnam War.Some time shortly after 1965, he was sentenced by a Massachusetts state court to five years in prison for armed robbery and assault, serving the last ten months in Massachusetts Correctional Institution - Cedar Junction.