Name change couldn't erase the stains from a murder at a downtown bar, which has now closed permanently

Loyal Nine on Union Street downtown, which was Sons of Boston until one of its bouncers killed a visiting Chicago man outside in 2022, has closed for good, will sell its liquor license to its landlord and will use any money left over to pay "the victims of, as we all know, the unfortunate incident there," its lawyer told the Boston Licensing Board this morning.

Bar attorney Carolyn Conway spoke at what was supposed to be a hearing on an assault and battery inside the bar on June 13, but apologized to the board for getting the hearing date mixed up, said she was not ready to answer questions about that case but told the board any possible discipline might be moot since the bar's owners, who include local bar entrepreneur Derek Brady, shut the bar that night and will not re-open.

Board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce, however, said the "violation stays with the license" and that she is not going to allow any transfer of the license until after a hearing on just what happened that night. She did not provide any details, but said it was "very serious."

Apolonia Martinez, whose son, Daniel, was killed by the bouncer, filed a wrongful-death suit against both the bar's owners and the bouncer, in 2022. A judge is scheduled to issue a judgment in the case by April 28, 2025, according to Suffolk Superior Court records.

The board first shut the bar, then called Sons of Boston, in April, 2022, about a month after bouncer Alvaro Larrama ended an argument outside the bar with Martinez and a friend of Martinez's by fatally stabbing Martinez.

At a licensing-board hearing on the March 19, 2022 stabbing, police said that Larrama grew so enraged during an argument with Martinez over his refusal to let Martinez and his friend in that after the two men gave up and walked away, he chased them down Union Street.

When Martinez realized he was about to get attacked, he tried hitting Larrama with a beer can - only to have Larrama stab him in the left side of the chest around 6:51 p.m., police say. Police say Martinez staggered down the block before collapsing in front of Hennessy's - from which EMTs would rush him to Mass. General, where a doctor declared him dead at 7:24 p.m.

Larrama then ran back inside the bar, where another employee - and at the time part-owner of the bar - helped him change clothes so he could run out the back and escape police.

Larrama turned himself in two days later. In April of this year, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 17 to 20 years in state prison.

The licensing board voted April 5, 2022 to shut the bar indefinitely because the murder was just the latest example of how the place was "an abject failure" in protecting the public.

However, in January, 2023, the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission overturned the ruling, saying the police testimony at the board hearing was hearsay, because it consisted mainly of reports read into the record by officers who were not actually involved in investigating the incident.

The bar then petitioned the board to let it re-open under a new name; the board gave its permission in April, 2023.