Reputed Mobster, Associates Arraigned On Gambling Charges
Accused Capo Member Of Patriarca Mafia Family

POSTED: 4:24 pm EDT May 3, 2006
UPDATED: 4:51 pm EDT May 3, 2006

A reputed mobster and a dozen other men were arraigned Wednesday on organized gambling charges.

According to state police, Joseph Achille, is a capo in the Patriarca mafia family.

Achille and 12 others were arrested during a series of police raids on one day last year.

Among the items confiscated were assorted guns, betting ledgers, an undetermined amount of money and a bag of marijuana.

Police said Achille and his associates were involved in an organized gambling operation grossing more than $500,000 per month.

Bookmaking, according to state police Maj. Steven O'Donnell is the lifeblood of organized crime.

Some of the men arrested had previous convictions on gambling charges.

All of the men arraigned were released on bail pending trials at later dates.

Judge: Mob hit man Flemmi must testify
By Laurel J. Sweet
Monday, June 5, 2006 - Updated: 03:11 AM EST

Gangland serial killer Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi must testify at the wron ul-death trial brought by a 77-year-old Quincy mother whose son he admitted torturing to death, a federal judge has ruled.

As part of a 2003 agreement with the federal government, John McIntyre’s hit was one of 10 Flemmi copped to in exchange for pleading guilty to racketeering.

The former Winter Hill Gang boss is worried talking about the 1984 tag-team slaying of McIntyre, 32, with sidekick James “Whitey” Bulger could expose him to state murder charges and poison any bid he makes to reduce his life sentence.

But with jury selection for the civil action slated to get under way this morning, U.S. District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay has found against Flemmi, 74, calling his confession to McIntyre’s murder “the ultimate statement of self-incrimination” and the likelihood of his ever being a free man again “remote.”

A still-grieving Emily McIntyre, whose son was missing for more than 15 years before his bones were recovered from a mass mob grave next to the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester in January 2000, is suing a who’s who of Boston’s underworld and the FBI for $50 million. She declined to comment yesterday.

“Her son was murdered,” her attorney, George Garfinkle, said. “She’s an average mother - if you can use the term average - who lived to see her son die before her by violent means.”

Bulger, 76, who has been on the run for 11 years despite a $1 million bounty on his head, is also a defendant.

McIntyre, a fisherman, was allegedly executed for telling investigators Bulger and Flemmi were smuggling stolen guns to the Irish Republican Army.

Flemmi refused to answer any questions about McIntyre’s death at his deposition last year for Emily McIntyre’s lawsuit.

However, according to court documents, Flemmi was asked if it were true that on Nov. 30, 1984, he and Bulger had McIntyre lured to a house in South Boston. Flemmi was asked if it were true Bulger put a machine gun to McIntyre’s chest, while Flemmi chained him to a chair, and that later they tried to strangle him to death, but Bulger became frustrated and shot him in the face.

When McIntyre survived that, Flemmi was asked if it were true he held McIntyre’s head up while Bulger repeatedly shot him with a pistol and that Flemmi then pulled his teeth and tongue out with a pair of pliers.

Trial starts today in suit linked to Bulger
Family of slain man seeks $50m from US
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | June 5, 2006

After a long legal and emotional battle, the first of 17 federal suits brought against the government by alleged victims of fugitive crime boss James ``Whitey" Bulger goes to trial today.

The family of Quincy resident John McIntyre, who was 32 when he was brutally slain in 1984, is seeking $50 million in the wrongful death suit. Longtime FBI informant Stephen ``The Rifleman" Flemmi has admitted to his murder and has implicated Bulger .

The first witness the McIntyres plan to call to the stand in US District Court in Boston today is Flemmi, who will be testifying publicly for the first time since he began cooperating with the government three years ago.

In a strange twist, the McIntyres must prove what federal prosecutors have asserted as fact in court filings and criminal proceedings held in the same courthouse: that McIntyre was killed because former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. leaked word that McIntyre was cooperating against Bulger.

``They fought so hard for us not to get our day in court, for the truth not to come out," said McIntyre's brother, Christopher. He said it is a victory for him and his mother, Emily, just to have a trial on their suit, no matter what the outcome is.

Ten of the 17 cases that have been brought against the government by alleged Bulger victims or their relatives were dismissed on grounds that they were filed too late. The rest are pending.

Flemmi, who struck a deal with the government that spared him the death penalty, is serving a life sentence after admitting to teaming up with Bulger to kill McIntyre, as well as nine other people. He testified in a deposition last year that Connolly had warned Bulger that McIntyre was cooperating with authorities against him.

McIntyre vanished Nov. 30, 1984, six weeks after telling the FBI and US Customs agents that Bulger and Flemmi were involved in an unsuccessful plot to ship guns to the Irish Republican Army aboard the Valhalla, a Gloucester-based fishing trawler.

In January 2000, his remains were recovered, along with those of two other victims, from an unmarked grave across from Florian Hall in Dorchester.

Former Bulger associate Kevin J. Weeks, who led investigators to the grave after cutting a deal with the government, gave chilling details of McIntyre's slaying while testifying at Connolly's 2004 federal racketeering trial. McIntyre had been lured to a South Boston home, according to Weeks, chained to a chair, grilled for hours, then shot in the head. Weeks is also scheduled to testify in the McIntyre trial.

The suit was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which does not allow for a jury trial. The case will be decided by US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay. A jury trial will be held later in the McIntyres' wrongful death allegations against Connolly and four other retired FBI agents

Trial starts today in suit linked to Bulger
Family of slain man seeks $50m from US
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff |
June 5, 2006

After a long legal and emotional battle, the first of 17 federal suits brought against the government by alleged victims of fugitive crime boss James ``Whitey" Bulger goes to trial today.

The family of Quincy resident John McIntyre, who was 32 when he was brutally slain in 1984, is seeking $50 million in the wrongful death suit. Longtime FBI informant Stephen ``The Rifleman" Flemmi has admitted to his murder and has implicated Bulger .

The first witness the McIntyres plan to call to the stand in US District Court in Boston today is Flemmi, who will be testifying publicly for the first time since he began cooperating with the government three years ago.

In a strange twist, the McIntyres must prove what federal prosecutors have asserted as fact in court filings and criminal proceedings held in the same courthouse: that McIntyre was killed because former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. leaked word that McIntyre was cooperating against Bulger.

``They fought so hard for us not to get our day in court, for the truth not to come out," said McIntyre's brother, Christopher. He said it is a victory for him and his mother, Emily, just to have a trial on their suit, no matter what the outcome is.

Ten of the 17 cases that have been brought against the government by alleged Bulger victims or their relatives were dismissed on grounds that they were filed too late. The rest are pending.

Flemmi, who struck a deal with the government that spared him the death penalty, is serving a life sentence after admitting to teaming up with Bulger to kill McIntyre, as well as nine other people. He testified in a deposition last year that Connolly had warned Bulger that McIntyre was cooperating with authorities against him.

McIntyre vanished Nov. 30, 1984, six weeks after telling the FBI and US Customs agents that Bulger and Flemmi were involved in an unsuccessful plot to ship guns to the Irish Republican Army aboard the Valhalla, a Gloucester-based fishing trawler.

In January 2000, his remains were recovered, along with those of two other victims, from an unmarked grave across from Florian Hall in Dorchester.

Former Bulger associate Kevin J. Weeks, who led investigators to the grave after cutting a deal with the government, gave chilling details of McIntyre's slaying while testifying at Connolly's 2004 federal racketeering trial. McIntyre had been lured to a South Boston home, according to Weeks, chained to a chair, grilled for hours, then shot in the head. Weeks is also scheduled to testify in the McIntyre trial.

The suit was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which does not allow for a jury trial. The case will be decided by US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay. A jury trial will be held later in the McIntyres' wrongful death allegations against Connolly and four other retired FBI agents.

Page 2 of 2 --The McIntyres filed the suit five years ago, but Justice Department lawyers persuaded Lindsay to dismiss it in 2003, arguing that the family had waited too long to file when ``any reasonable person" should have known that FBI negligence or misconduct led to McIntyre's death. Now faced with a trial after an appeals court reinstated the suit two years ago, the Justice Department contends in court documents that ``there is no admissible evidence" that Connolly leaked McIntyre's name to Bulger or Flemmi.

William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy, called the government's legal tactics in all the civil lawsuits arising from the Bulger scandal ``offensive to victims of crime and their families." Delahunt -- who participated several years ago in congressional hearings that scrutinized the FBI's handling of informants, including Bulger and Flemmi -- said: ``My position is these [civil] cases should have been resolved without litigation. . . . There's no moral justice here."

Delahunt also said he found it astounding that the Justice Department is now arguing in the civil cases that claims of FBI misconduct by Flemmi and Weeks are not reliable while federal prosecutors, who also work for the Justice Department, relied on Weeks's testimony to send three people, including Connolly, to prison. Flemmi is also scheduled to testify in two upcoming criminal trials: one in Florida in which Connolly is accused of murder in helping Bulger and Flemmi to orchestrate a gangland slaying there in 1982 and another trial in Boston, in which former New England Mafia boss Francis Salemme is accused of lying about a gangland slaying.

``It presents the face of the criminal justice system as some sort of `Alice in Wonderland' mess, where up is down and down is up," Delahunt said.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington, declined to comment on the McIntyre case.

During a 1998 interview, Connolly denied informing Bulger that McIntyre was cooperating, telling the Globe: ``I never even heard his name before he was killed. I have no recollection of ever being told that McIntyre was a source for anyone."

Cambridge lawyer E. Peter Mullane, who represents Connolly in the civil case, accused Flemmi of lying. ``It's just another one of those outlandish assertions by Flemmi trying to curry favor with the government by telling them what he thinks they want to hear."

Connolly has never been charged in connection with McIntyre's slaying. A federal jury convicted him of racketeering and of warning Bulger to flee in advance of Bulger's 1995 racketeering indictment. Connolly was cleared of charges that he leaked information that led to three other slayings. He is serving a 10-year sentence in the federal case and is tentatively scheduled to stand trial in Miami in August on the state murder charges.

Bulger remains a fugitive on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. He is accused of 19 murders, including McIntyre's .

Agent says FBI ignored warning to drop Bulger
By Laurel J. Sweet
Friday, June 16, 2006 - Updated: 02:22 AM EST

Two years before a government informant named John McIntyre was butchered and buried in a South Boston basement, FBI officials in Washington were advised to sever their ties to James “Whitey” Bulger, the fellow mob informant who would murder the Quincy man.

Bulger and the FBI
FBI knew agents had mob pals
G-man says he tried to sever Bulger ties

“I was overrun,” Robert Fitzpatrick, the former Boston FBI assistant special-agent-in-charge who made the request, testified yesterday in U.S. District Court.

“I had an opinion. They had an opinion. Their opinion won out.”

Bulger, who has evaded a worldwide manhunt for 11 years, was regarded as “too valuable” an ally in the FBI’s war against his rival, the Italian Mafia, Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick has provided damning testimony against the FBI in a $50 million suit by McIntyre’s family accusing the agency of having had a hand in his death because of its unseemly relationship with Bulger.

Fitzpatrick said thatseven months before McIntyre was killed by Bulger in 1984 for divulging Bulger’s efforts to supply guns to the Irish Republican Army, the feds, believing Bulger was dealing drugs, too, planted a bug in his car. Bulger tore it out.

Complaints to the FBI that its own agents had tipped Bulger off were swept under a rug.

“Did that cause concern, even if the suspicions were never proven . . . beyond you?” Judge Reginald C. Lindsay asked Fitzpatrick.

“It should have,” Fitzpatrick answered. “It should have caused an inspection by headquarters. That was not done. . . . It was out of my hands.”

Bulger concerns raised: Co. questions convention job
By Scott Van Voorhis and Jay Fitzgerald
Saturday, June 17, 2006 - Updated: 12:30 AM EST

A key contractor that sets up shows at Boston’s showcase new convention center is squirming under the public spotlight over its hiring of the ex-con brother of fugitive gangster Whitey Bulger.

An executive with Freeman Decorating recently expressed concern that the hiring of Jackie Bulger as a $29-an-hour laborer could hurt efforts to lure shows to Boston’s new, $800 million-plus meeting hall.

The Freeman executive feared the Bulger connection could unfairlyassociate Boston’s new hall with “gangsters,” said John Perry, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 82, which Bulger recently joined.

The company is now weighing whether to keep the 68-year-old Bulger on, according to Perry and other convention business insiders. The former courthouse clerk was stripped of his state pension after he was convicted of obstruction of justice in the search for his fugitive brother.

“I think they are going to play a game with me and lay him off, and that is too bad,” Perry said.

However, it’s not just convention center contractors, but some of Bulgers fellow union members who have been fuming.

They say Bulger, who joined the union only two months ago, has leap-frogged over other Teamsters with more experience and seniority, violating Teamster contracts with firms that set up shows for convention sponsors.

But Perry argued such criticism is off base, with more work than hands to go around. Bulger, he said, has only tallied 40 hours over the past two months.

Perry defended Bulger, saying he even called to apologize for the controversy.

“I know I am bringing a lot of heat on you,”’ Perry recalled Bulger telling him.

Freeman executives could not be reached for comment.

FBI probes Chicago union over fugitive mobster

June 28, 2006

BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter


The FBI is investigating to see if officials of a Chicago electrical union know anything about the whereabouts of James "Whitey" Bulger -- a Boston mobster on the FBI's Top 10 list of fugitives, sources said Tuesday.

One official for the nearly 16,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 134 volunteered to surrender his Palm Pilot organizer to federal agents when they visited him last week, sources said.

"They think he has some phone number," said a source close to the union.

Also last week, another union official was presented with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury in Boston next month, but negotiated with the FBI to conduct an interview in Chicago in the future, the source said.

The officials insist they do not know Bulger or where he is, the source said. The Chicago Sun-Times is not naming them because they have not been charged with a crime.

Mike Fitzgerald, powerful leader of the union, was not involved in the FBI visit, sources said.

Attorney Edward M. Hogan released a statement Tuesday saying, "The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 134 is not a target of any federal investigation, nor has any employee or officer of the union been detained by federal agents."

Gangster vanished in 1995



"Federal agents from Boston, Mass., did come to the union hall to discuss an ongoing investigation of a case in Boston totally unrelated to IBEW Local 134," the statement said. "The union cooperated and complied with all of the government's inquiries into this matter."

An FBI spokeswoman in Boston did not return a call, but a source confirmed agents from the Bulger Fugitive Task Force in Boston have traveled to Chicago to follow up on leads about his disappearance.

Bulger, 76, vanished from Boston on Jan. 5, 1995, before his indictment on charges of racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking. Bulger, a leader of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, was accused of involvement in 19 murders. The FBI is offering a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

There have been some indications Bulger has been in Chicago while on the lam. In the book Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob, associate Kevin Weeks said Bulger flew from Chicago to New York in September 1996 and picked up fake IDs from Weeks.

fmain@suntimes.com

http://www.wrko.com/article.asp?id=50489
http://www.wrko.com/article.asp?id=50504

Reputed Patriarca mobster expected to plead guilty

July 7, 2006

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --A longtime member of the Patriarca crime family is expected to plead guilty next week to conspiring to collect debts from two men, according to court documents.

Anthony St. Laurent Sr., 64, known as "The Saint," was arrested by law enforcement officials at his Johnston home in April and has been jailed ever since.

Authorities have previously described St. Laurent as a made member of the Mafia. He was on supervised release at the time of his most recent arrest.

The U.S. Attorney's office accuses St. Laurent of demanding $100,000 from two victims in addition to $2,000 weekly payments as part of an alleged shakedown effort.

He could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. According to court documents, prosecutors will recommend St. Laurent receive a sentence reduction for pleading guilty.

In 2002, St. Laurent pleaded guilty to running a multistate gambling operation from a prison cell in Kentucky, but had since been released from prison. Prosecutors said the ring took in almost $1 million over a seven-week period.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the plea agreement. St. Laurent's lawyer didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Alleged bank-job pal eyed in con’s stabbing
By Michele McPhee
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief

Friday, August 4, 2006 - Updated: 01:43 AM EST

An Everett jailbird was in critical condition yesterday after he was repeatedly stabbed in the chow hall at MCI-Concord by an alleged co-defendant in a bank robbery, Department of Correction sources said.

The victim, Joseph Scalesse Jr. of Everett, had just returned to stir from Middlesex Criminal Court, where he was sentenced to two years on robbery charges stemming from a locker break-in at an area gym. He was set upon by another convict who knew him from the bank job, the sources said.

DOC officials confirmed an inmate was repeatedly stabbed with a prison-made pick-type weapon, and was hospitalized with severe but non-life-threatening injuries.

The other inmate was transferred to another facility and will face internal department discipline and possible prosecution by the District Attorney’s Office, said DOC spokeswoman Diane Wiffin, who refused to provide details on the incident.

Sources said Scalesse might have been viewed by inmates as someone who’d given up information on other crimes, possibly provoking his attack yesterday morning. Wiffin could not answer why two co-defendants would be housed in the same prison facility.

Middlesex prosecutors said Scalesse had been indicted in December and held on $50,000 cash bail stemming from the theft of a wallet at a Cambridge health club. Scalesse pleaded guilty this month, and was sentenced yesterday.

Zip’s Web site rings no bells with Avon lady
By Laurel J. Sweet and Howie Carr
Thursday, August 3, 2006 - Updated: 06:52 AM EST

A mysterious new Web site claims to be soliciting money for the mounting legal bills of former FBI agent John “Zip” Connolly, but an aging Avon Lady linked to the site insists she has never heard of the corrupt ex-G-Man.

The cheesy charity JusticeforJohn.com is registered to a Rebecka Lee. However, the Somerset address Lee lists on the Web site actually belongs to Josephine Branco, a 78-year-old grandmother and part-time Avon Cosmetics saleswoman.

‘I don’t even know him,” Branco told the Herald, adding she’s never heard of Lee either.



Donations payable to “Justice for John” are directed to a privately rented post office box in Milton, which the U.S. Postal Service confirmed yesterday is receiving mail.

“John Connolly and his family have suffered financial hardship due to his wrongful conviction and false imprisonment and as he fights for justice he is in need of our help,” reads the online plea for hand-outs.

Connolly’s attorney, E. Peter Mullane, did not return a call.

Connolly, 66, of Lynnfield is hoping for a new trial on charges he was a longtime law enforcement sieve to fugitive mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. Now four years into a nine-year prison sentence, he is also awaiting trial in Miami on charges he conspired to help murder former World Jai Alai president John Callahan in 1982 because Callahan could tie Bulger to the execution of another gambling honcho.

Justice for John.com accuses Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, the former Mafia boss whose testimony is credited with convicting Connolly, of seeking “revenge.”

“A jury found Frank to be credible, a judge found Frank to be credible,” said Salemme’s attorney, Steven Boozang. “John Connolly is grasping at straws. Frank Salemme is a lot of things and he’s admitted to them, but he’s not a liar.”

Peter Gelzinis contributed to this report.

Ruling that freed mafia captain is upheld

August 11, 2006

BOSTON

A US Appeals Court judge yesterday upheld a District Court ruling last year that freed former Mafia captain Vincent M. Ferrara six years before his 22-year sentence was completed . Under a plea agreement with the government in 1992, Ferrara pleaded guilty to racketeering, extortion, gambling, and ordering the 1985 slaying of Vincent ``Jimmy" Limoli. Last April, a District judge ended Ferrara's sentence after finding a prosecutor had withheld evidence during plea negotiations that a key witness sought to recant his claim that Ferrara ordered Limoli's murder.

Mob figure denied due process, judge rules
By Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald Columnist
Friday, August 11, 2006

In a 3-0 decision handed down yesterday, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that former North End Mafia capo Vincent Ferrara should remain free because he was denied due process at the hands of federal prosecutors who secured a plea deal that sent him to prison for 16 years.
The court’s strongly worded conclusion noted: “The sad fact is that the government promised (Ferrara) that it would carry out fully its obligation to produce exculpatory evidence but instead manipulated a key witness, deliberately chose not to reveal the stunning evidence concerning (Walter) Jordan’s recantation, yet represented falsely that it had kept its promise.
“This was impermissible conduct.”
The appeals court, in ruling for Ferrara, upheld U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf’s decision to commute Ferrara’s 1992 sentence last May, and along with it, Wolf’s severe condemnation of current assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn, who conducted the prosecution of Ferrara.

Obviously, reputed mobster is no longer the Big Cheese
By O’Ryan Johnson
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - Updated: 01:36 AM EST

Think our alleged baseball team is bad? Try our alleged mob.

A day after the Sox got swept by the Yankees, the reputed underboss of the New England mob was not only robbed but disrespected when fresh thieves broke into his North End shop, Fresh Cheese, and made off with the till and an unknown amount of cash.

The front glass door was shattered, said police, who were called to the Endicott Street business at 6 a.m. The shop is owned by Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio, who in 1993 pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in federal jail for attempting to take over an Indian casino and for shaking down a Las Vegas gambler for $27,000. Several investigators have said DiNunzio was appointed to underboss of La Cosa Nostra in 2002 or 2003, by Providence mob chief Louis “Baby Shanks” Manocchio.


The robbery has some people wondering what the North End is coming to.

“You know it wasn’t any of the North End boys or North End men who did it,” said neighbor Mary Ciampa. “It’s the people who come in here from the outside, in the early morning, that’s who did it.”

Another woman who declined to be named said, “Whoever did it, they didn’t know them.” She smiled and chuckled when asked to explain. Another woman near her smiled and said, “They understand.”

In the store, two workers denied knowing anything about a burglary and said the manager and owner were unavailable for comment. And say what you will about the owner’s alleged other line of work, for $7 you can’t beat the subs.

“They make them this big,” said Ciampa, her hands about 18 inches apart. “They’re filled with tomatoes, and they stuff them with all sorts of cold cuts.”

DiNunzio was in the news last year when his SUV hit and killed a 16-year-old girl in the South End. He was not charged in the accident.

The decline of LCN continues. Authorities have tried to put in place successors of the big LCN targets; like the Albanians and the Cuban Corporation. However they dont get the same attention as the good ol' boys. The Albanian Rudaj group was comprised mostly of Italians and in fairness does not have more power/reach than LCN but still they muscled them out. The Cubans definitely deserve more attention, they seem organized, rich and powerful. The influence of movies is not to be underestimated I guess.

At 77, Whitey beats all odds: Birthday boy bucks past, age and G-men on the lam
By Laurel J. Sweet
Sunday, September 3, 2006 - Updated: 09:25 AM EST

As he turns 77 today, fugitive serial killer James “Whitey” Bulger can toast defying the odds.

Yet again.

America’s maximum life expectancy is 76.9 years. But then, whoever said South Boston’s savage septuagenarian - aging on the fly with a heart condition, for 11 years, 9 months and counting - is still in this country?

“I’d kind of like to see what he looks like after all these years,” Teresa Stanley, 65, Bulger’s left-behind love of 30 years, told the Herald. “It’s just an awful legacy to go out with, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him.”


There’s no reason to think the birthday boy who turned the city’s streets red with the blood of men and impressionable young girls before skipping town needs to shop assisted-living developments.

In 1998, astronaut John Glenn became the oldest person in space at age 77. Actor Paul Newman is 81. In three weeks, fitness guru Jack LaLanne hits 92.

A reputed millionaire many times over, Bulger, onetime boss of Boston’s Irish crime syndicate, has eluded capture since being tipped by the FBI to a grand jury indictment charging him with racketeering. The older brother of former state Senate and University of Massachusetts President William Bulger has since been charged with 18 murders.

With a $1 million bounty on his head unclaimed, Bulger remains second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Last year alone, authorities checked out alleged Whitey sightings in 19 countries.

Both the FBI and U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan declined to extend birthday greetings to Bulger. But New York Times best-selling author Philip Carlo offered one: “Salud!”

“Whitey had a cleverness about him that made him the Einstein of the street. If he leads the life of a retired, wealthy industrialist and doesn’t trust anyone around him, he’ll remain free until he dies,” said Carlo, who wrote “The Ice Man” about Richard Kuklinski, the most twisted, prolific hit man in history.

Kuklinski, who once left a victim bound and bleeding in a cave and filmed as rats ate him to death, was 70 when he died in March while in custody.

Carlo said the onset of the East Coast Mafia contract killer’s twilight years mellowed Kuklinski, a beast who had boasted of 200 gruesome slayings.

Carlo, who also wrote “The Night Stalker” about Richard Ramirez, a serial killer who terrorized Los Angeles in the 1980s, is fascinated by Bulger.

“He could be unbelievably spontaneously vicious,” Carlo said. “I think at 77 he’s just as dangerous, but he’s less apt to lose his temper.

“Most guys on the lam get caught because they’ve got to keep going back to the neighborhood. Whitey has an international look on the world. He’s not only alive, he’s enjoying his life. When you’re content inside, that’s the best fountain of youth there is. And I think he’s very content.”

- lsweet@bostonherald.com

FBI found liable for Bulger, Flemmi
Murder victim's kin awarded $3m
By Shelley Murphy and Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | September 6, 2006

A federal judge found yesterday that the FBI's mishandling of longtime informants James ``Whitey" Bulger and Stephen ``The Rifleman" Flemmi caused the 1984 murder of Quincy fisherman John McIntyre and ordered the government to pay more than $3 million to McIntyre's mother and brother.

The decision, which marks the first ruling on a lawsuit brought against the government by victims of Bulger and Flemmi, raised the hopes of families who have similar suits pending and was hailed as a ``spectacular victory" for another family whose lawsuit was dismissed on grounds that it was filed too late.

``This represents finally some measure of vindication for all the families that were shut out of the judicial process by the government, to their great discredit, on claims somehow that the families were too late in pointing their finger at the FBI," said attorney Frank A. Libby Jr., who represents the family of Roger Wheeler, a Tulsa businessman whose 1981 murder was orchestrated by Bulger and Flemmi.

``Emily McIntyre achieved what the Wheelers tried to achieve all along, which was accountability," Libby said.

US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay , who presided over an 18-day bench trial in June, ruled that former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. warned Bulger and Flemmi that McIntyre was cooperating against them, knowing the tip would likely lead to McIntyre's murder.

In a 110-page decision, Lindsay found that the FBI failed to properly supervise Connolly and failed to investigate numerous allegations that Bulger and Flemmi were involved in drug trafficking, murder, and other crimes over decades.

Even though the FBI investigated Bulger and Flemmi for four murders -- including Wheeler's -- in the early 1980s, Lindsay wrote, ``the truth is, however, that the FBI was not pounding the pavement looking for evidence that could `stick.' "

``Instead," wrote Lindsay, ``the FBI stuck its head in the sand when it came to the criminal activities of Bulger and Flemmi. The agents of the Boston office knew they had an obligation to report informants' criminal activity, so they carefully avoided knowledge of criminal acts by their informants."

The judge ordered the government to pay $3 million to McIntyre's mother for the conscious suffering he endured before his brutal slaying, $100,000 for the loss of her son's company, and $1,876 for funeral and burial costs.

``This places the legal responsibility for John McIntyre's death on the doorstep of the FBI and the US government," said New Hampshire attorney Steven M. Gordon , who represents McIntyre's mother and brother, Christopher.

Emily McIntyre, 77, of Quincy, said yesterday that she was thankful for the judge's ruling, but, ``I'm not satisfied yet, and I'm not talking about the money."

She said she wants Connolly, who is serving a 10-year prison term for racketeering, to be prosecuted for her son's murder.

Attorney William Christie, who also represents the McIntyres, said the family plans to ask a jury to decide additional claims in their lawsuit against Connolly and five other agents. The McIntyres were allowed only a bench trial on their claims against the government, but they are entitled to seek jury trials in the claims against the agents, which Christie said they intend to do.

The McIntyres' suit was the first of 17 filed against the government by families of victims of Bulger and Flemmi to go to trial. Ten were dismissed, mostly on grounds they were filed too late, and six are poised to go to trial.

``Those cases should be settled," said US Representative William Delahunt , a Quincy Democrat, accusing the Department of Justice of ``denigrating the American justice system" by continuing to fight the lawsuits and deny responsibility for murders that were committed by Bulger and Flemmi while they were FBI informants.

Boston attorney Edward Hinchey , who represents the family of Michael Donahue , an innocent bystander who was allegedly gunned down by Bulger in 1982, said, ``We're very hopeful that the government will come forward and admit the wrongdoing, admit their responsibility for the murders, and make these families whole and not force them to go through the trial like they did the McIntyre family."

Gina Talamona , a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, wouldn't comment yesterday on the decison or whether the government will appeal it. ``We're reviewing the decision and considering our options," she said.

Gail Marcinkiewicz , a spokeswoman for the FBI's Boston office, also declined to comment on the ruling, but said the FBI has made sweeping changes to its informant program ``to have better oversight of that program so these problems would not continue."

Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified at trial that he and Bulger killed McIntyre Nov. 30, 1984, after Connolly warned them that McIntyre had implicated them in an unsuccessful plot to ship weapons to the Irish Republican Army aboard the Valhalla, a Gloucester trawler.

McIntyre, 32, was lured to a South Boston home, chained to a chair, grilled for hours, choked, and shot to death, according to Flemmi. His remains weren't discovered until January 2000.

The judge rejected the government's contention that Connolly was a rogue agent, who had pocketed $200,000 in payoffs from Bulger and Flemmi over two decades and wasn't acting in the scope of his duty as an FBI agent when he leaked information that led to McIntyre's murder.

Lindsay found that Connolly's superiors ``up the chain of command" approved using Bulger and Flemmi as informants, even when they were suspects in several investigations by the FBI and other agencies.

``For decades preceding the McIntyre murder, agents of the FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi as informants by shielding them from prosecution for crimes they had committed," Lindsay wrote.

Connolly was motivated by greed, friendship with Bulger and Flemmi, and a desire to promote the FBI goal of taking down La Cosa Nostra by getting information from Bulger and Flemmi about local Mafia leaders, Lindsay found.

But yesterday lawyer E. Peter Mullane, who represents Connolly in the civil suit filed by the McIntyres, said his client denies that he alerted Bulger and Flemmi that McIntyre was cooperating.

Connolly, who retired from the FBI in 1990, was convicted in 2002 of racketeering for protecting Bulger and Flemmi from prosecution and warning Bulger to flee just before Bulger's 1995 racketeering indictment.

Connolly, 66, is slated to stand trial in Miami in March on state murder charges for allegedly helping Bulger and Flemmi orchestrate a 1982 slaying in Florida.

3 with mob ties busted in roundup
By Laurel J. Sweet
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - Updated: 01:45 AM EST


State trooper Pasquale Russolillo, left, arrests reputed mob loan shark Philip Puopolo in Revere yesterday. (Staff photo by Nancy Lane)

Reputed mob boss Arthur Gianelli’s bride and two alleged members of his crew were arrested yesterday in connection with a 520-count federal indictment charging their alleged criminal enterprise with illegal gambling, extortion and arson.

Mary Ann Gianelli, 49, an MIT nurse and the sister-in-law of convicted ex-FBI Agent John Connolly Jr., turned herself in to state and federal authorities after reputed loan shark Philip Puopolo was busted at the Revere Businessmen’s Association by the state police Organized Crime Unit shortly after noon.

Authorities allege Puopolo, 50, operated illegal video poker machines at the social club.

According to a superseding indictment unsealed yesterday, Puopolo operated a sports betting office for Arthur Gianelli, 49, of Lynnfield and threatened witnesses to lie to a grand jury.

Gianelli’s gang reportedly pays “rent” to the New England Mafia in order to stay in business.

Mary Ann Gianelli is charged with laundering the money brought in by her incarcerated husband’s “illegal businesses” and of “knowingly” filing false federal income tax returns.

Also arrested yesterday at his home in Revere was Stephen “Moon” Russo, 48, who allegedly managed Puopolo’s betting office. The Secretary of State’s office lists Russo as the clerk of the Revere Businessmen’s Association.

After appearances in U.S. District Court in Boston yesterday, Russo and Mary Ann Gianelli were released on $100,000 unsecured bonds. Puopolo was held pending a Sept. 27 detention hearing.

The Internal Revenue Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted with yesterday’s roundup.







lsweet@bostonherald.com.

Mobster sues claiming he was framed by prosecutors

BOSTON A man is suing the federal government three years after a judge found prosecutors mishandled his 1993 murder-and-racketeering case.
Pasquale Barone Junior spent 15 years in prison for a killing allegedly ordered by the New England Mafia. He had pleaded guilty to a state manslaughter charge. But he says he was deliberately framed on the more serious federal charges by a prosecutor, two retired F-B-I agents and other unnamed officials.

The 45-year-old Barone is seeking unspecified damages for himself and his daughter.

Prosecutors claimed New England mob boss Vincent Ferrara ordered Barone to kill Vincent Limoli in 1985. But Judge Mark Wolf found they did not tell the defense when a key witness recanted. Wolf freed Barone after a plea bargain. He also freed Ferrara after reducing his sentence last year.

A spokeswoman for the U-S attorney's office declined to comment on the lawsuit or a Justice Department investigation of the prosecutor.

Boston men cleared in mob slaying sue government


CHITOSE SUZUKI / AP
Joseph Salvati, his daughter, Gail Orenberg, left, and his wife, Marie, head to court in Boston on Thursday.

By Jay Lindsay
The Associated Press

BOSTON — Two Boston men who spent 30 years in prison for an underworld slaying they did not commit are suing the federal government after a judge found that the FBI had withheld evidence that would have cleared them.

In a trial that opened Thursday, those men and the families of two others who were wrongfully convicted but died in prison are seeking damages from the government that could total more than $100 million.

Joseph Salvati, 72, and Peter Limone, 74, were exonerated in 2001 after a state judge found that FBI agents hid wiretap tapes and other information from state prosecutors to protect an FBI informant and former mob hit man, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza.

Barboza was a mob assassin responsible for numerous slayings during Boston's gangland wars of the 1960s. He was also so vital to FBI efforts to crack the mob that it allowed him to frame four men for murder, attorneys for the plaintiffs said in opening statements.

"It was a rigged game ... assented to by the FBI," said attorney Austin McGuigan, who represents Salvati.

The lawsuit was filed after the Justice Department released documents in 2001 that showed the FBI withheld evidence from state prosecutors that could have cleared the men, so the agency could protect an informant who committed the crime.

Justice Department attorney Bridget Lipscomb said federal authorities had no duty to share information with state prosecutors and cannot be liable for the results of a separate state investigation. She also noted the four men had access to some FBI information and top-notch attorneys who raised doubts about Barboza's testimony at their trial.

Limone, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo were sentenced to death in 1968 for the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan but were not executed before the death penalty was banned in 1975. Salvati was sentenced to life in prison.

Salvati, 72, and Limone, 74, were exonerated in 2001 after the Justice Department documents were released. Greco and Tameleo died in prison before being exonerated.

The case is being tried without a jury before U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner.

On Thursday, attorneys for the men and their families said the problems were rooted in a 1960s FBI policy of protecting informants' identities at all costs. Barboza, who moved to California as the first participant in the federal witness-protection program, was shot to death in San Francisco in 1976.

Mystery around Rhode Island man’s 1964 death deepens with new autopsy; police check new leads
By Associated Press
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - Updated: 05:44 PM EST

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Louis James DeFusco was found floating in Narragansett Bay in 1964, a ship’s anchor tied around his legs and a bullet in his mouth. Authorities called it a suicide. But relatives had their doubts.

Some four decades later, family members had his body exhumed so it could be moved to a family burial plot. Before reburying the remains, they asked the medical examiner’s office to perform another autopsy.

The second examination this past summer revealed a bullet wound to the back of the head - a finding that changed the official cause of death from suicide-by-drowning to homicide.

“We didn’t want this thing to go on anymore, with the injustice of it being recorded as a suicide,” Robert DeFusco, who was 15 when his father died, said Wednesday.

Louis DeFusco was 38 when he disappeared the night of Aug. 6, 1964. Only hours earlier, the Cranston man was hitting golf balls in his yard with his son. He was last seen leaving a marina in Warwick, about 12 miles south of Providence, that he and his brother had just recently sold.

Twelve days later, his body was found floating in the water.

An initial autopsy found a bullet in the mouth and damage to his teeth, but did not spot a gunshot to the back of the head, said Dr. Thomas Gilson, the state’s chief medical examiner.

“He was not in the best of shape, apparently, when he was found,” said Gilson. “He’d been in the water for a period of time, maybe as much as 12 days, and it was overlooked.”

Robert DeFusco, now 57 and retired in Dover, said he and his sister planned earlier this year to move their father’s remains from one plot in a Cranston cemetery to another. But first they wanted his corpse re-examined.

The youngest of six children, and an entrepreneurial son of Italian immigrants, Louis DeFusco was considered a hardworking businessman.

At the time of his death, he was in the process of divorcing his wife, with whom he had three kids. Authorities looked into several theories, even questioning his estranged wife before ultimately settling on suicide.

“He wasn’t despondent, none of the things that would indicate he would be suicidal. It just wasn’t him,” said Robert DeFusco, who lived with his father and chipped golf balls with him on the day of the disappearance. Two other siblings lived with their mother.

Plus, there were the peculiar circumstances: the heavy anchor tied around his legs and the curiously undetected gunshot wound to the head.

Authorities who investigated the death in 1964 determined that Louis DeFusco had drowned himself.

After the first autopsy failed to find the entrance wound, Gilson said, doctors must have inferred that DeFusco shot himself in the mouth, survived, and drowned by attaching an anchor to himself. The gunshot wound identified in the mouth was initially thought to be nonfatal.

“The anchor sort of has a different implication now that we have a gunshot wound to the back of his head,” Gilson said.

He said DeFusco’s body was preserved well enough after burial to clearly reveal the fatal head wound.

The medical examiner at the time, Dr. Harold Beddoe, was quoted in The Providence Evening Bulletin as saying there was no evidence of a homicide or truth to rumors he had been “killed for reasons relating to his private life, business connections, alleged gambling debts, or during the course of a robbery.”

The younger DeFusco said a police chief was so insistent that his father had committed suicide that he stood on a chair to demonstrate how it could have happened.

DeFusco said his father was never involved with the mob, but there were “shady characters who had boats” and “some of them were mob-related figures.”

He speculated the killing was mob-related and had something to do with his father’s efforts to clean up the marina.

“Nobody kills like that” but the mob, Robert DeFusco said.

The case was referred to the Warwick Police Department, which has identified several leads and people of interest, according to Maj. Joseph Tavares. A spokesman for Attorney General Patrick Lynch said the office was working with the police to evaluate any evidence.

After 42 years, DeFusco said, the family realizes that the likelihood of an arrest is “next to nil.” But, he added, “at least we feel that he and the family’s been vindicated and at least the truth has been recognized.”




Feds to be on alert at Whitey galpal’s mom’s burial today
By Laurel J. Sweet
Thursday, November 16, 2006 - Updated: 07:17 AM EST

The South Boston mother of James “Whitey” Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, will be laid to rest today, presumably never to know if her fugitive daughter is dead or alive.

Bulger on the run
Mourners mum at funeral of Whitey gal’s mom
Where’s Whitey?

Jenit L. Greig, 78, died Monday. A memorial service will be held this morning at the O’Brien Funeral Home in South Boston. Sources said federal authorities, who have been hunting for Bulger and Greig nearly 12 years, will be watching.

Meanwhile, Whitey watchers are debating the authenticity of an alleged San Diego sighting of America’s most-wanted fugitive mob boss last month.

“Bulger Fugitive Task Force investigators have reviewed all relevant material related to the recently reported sighting of James Bulger in San Diego,” executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Krekorian in Boston said yesterday in a prepared statement.

“At this time, no one has concluded that the individual is in fact James Bulger.”

An off-duty cop claimed he saw Bulger leave a showing of “The Departed” at the UA Horton Plaza 14 movie theaters in downtown San Diego, then board a trolley. Bulger was reportedly alone.

Theater manager Robert Livingston said the cineplex is less than 15 miles from the Mexico border. He said FBI agents in San Diego subpoenaed the theaters’ security tapes.

“The Departed” stars Jack Nicholson as a psychotic South Boston Irish crime boss, believed to be based on Bulger, 77, a suspect in at least 19 murders.

Friends said Jenit Greig, whose now 55-year-old daughter Bulger took on the lam, was “a very nice, very quiet” woman.

Her sister, Iva Harrington, 81, declined to comment. Catherine Greig’s twin sister, Margaret McCusker, did not return a call.


Peter Gelzinis, Howie Carr and Michele McPhee contributed to this report.


Feds pay the price for botched mob job
By Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald Columnist

Friday, November 17, 2006 - Updated: 06:38 AM EST


Peter Limone. (File photo)

That the prospect of justice has arrived 40 years late for Joe Salvati and Peter Limone, along with two fellow defendants who died in prison, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo . . . is shameful.

That the Department of Justice has seen fit to send Bridget Bailey Lipscomb back to Boston to defend the putrid reputation of the FBI . . . well, that could be called a blessing.

With Ms. Lipscomb at the government table, the only question may well be how much of a potential $100 million in civil damages will these men and their families see.

Five months ago, Lipscomb’s attempt to convince U.S. District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay that the FBI could not be blamed for enabling their Teflon rat, Whitey Bulger, to slaughter John McIntyre, turned into graceless courtroom hash.

Though Lindsay was swayed by absolutely none of it, he tossed the government a considerable bone by confining the McIntyres’ award to $3.5 million instead of a possible $50 million.

This time, however, the FBI’s crime is even more egregious. And the case will be heard by a different federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner.

In a nutshell: H. Paul Rico - the Darth Vader of gangster G-men and mentor to fallen FBI agent and murder defendant John “Zip” Connolly - framed four men for a murder two of his informants committed.

From the first moment, more than 40 years ago, Rico knew that Salvati, Limone, Greco and Tameleo were innocent, yet watched them go off to prison, where three languished on death row.

During yesterday’s opening arguments at the Moakley Courthouse, Lipsomb countered 40 years of government treachery with the Professor Irwin Corey defense, namely:

The feds were not obliged to share information with state prosecutors (who tried the original case) and can’t be held liable for the results of a separate state investigation.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

In the face of such circular reasoning, Peter Limone’s defense lawyer, Juliane Balliro, was moved to note, “Despite all the exposure and attention this case has received, and the fact that these men were exonerated. Despite all that was revealed during the Wolf Hearings. Despite the condemnations of a congressional committee, the government does not change its stripes. They still remain in complete denial.”

If “staying the course” in Iraq means holding the U.S. death count to, say, 10 soldiers a week, then perhaps staying the course when it comes to the rancid saga of Boston FBI criminals means holding the cash award to a small fraction of what is being asked.

Will Bridget Bailey Lipscomb get accolades from her DOJ bosses if the plaintiffs in this case came away with only $10 million or $20 million payout? Would that pass for a government victory?

Because the sheer weight of the evidence suggests she cannot win on the merits. Because in this case, the feds have no merit.

Juiliane Balliro sees this moment as an opportunity “to finally connect all the many threads of this case into a rope.” Too bad such a rope cannot be slipped around H. Paul Rico’s neck, for the decrepit old son of Hoover expired in a Florida jail, awaiting his own murder trial.

For the past 29 years, Victor Garo has built his law practice around fighting for Joe Salvati. After freeing him from jail, Garo led him to a congressional hearing room in Washington five years ago, where Rico answered for his sins by a blurting out a sarcastic, “What do you want from me, tears?”

“The mindset of federal government today,” Garo said last night, “is the same as it was that morning in Washington. But my response is no, we’re not interested in tears. This time, we want justice.”


Mob killer gets parole for Christmas
By Michele McPhee
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief

Friday, November 17, 2006 - Updated: 06:13 AM EST

Vincent Federico - the convicted killer who became a made man in the Mafia while on a weekend prison furlough in a ceremony that was bugged by the FBI - will be paroled for Christmas after he disavowed any mob ties, the Herald has learned.

Federico, now 46, is a second-degree lifer at MCI-Norfolk in connection with the murder of a Cambridge man, Robert McFarlane, who was hit by five bullets as he helped a friend move out of a North End apartment above Federico’s in 1977.

Federico had argued with the victim for no apparent reason before shooting him five times on Hanover Street, according to the parole decision. Federico is scheduled for release Dec. 15.

While imprisoned, Federico was granted a furlough, a weekend pass from prison that allowed him to become one of four men to be baptized into the Providence-based Patriarca crime family at a ceremony held in the basement of Federico’s sister’s Medford home on Oct. 29, 1989.

During the ceremony, which was overseen by reputed boss Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, the inductees pricked their trigger fingers, drew blood and burned a holy card of the crime family’s patron saint while vowing: “As burns this saint so will burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead.”

The baptism was secretly audiotaped by disgraced FBI head John Connolly, now facing the death penalty in Miami on murder conspiracy charges.

The FBI bug in the Medford basement was long considered the most important incursion ever by law enforcement into the innermost sanctums of organized crime, and the tapes helped bring down the Patriarca family.

Federico’s pledge to protect mobsters was a major concern to the parole board, according to the decision.

“A focal point of deliberations during the past decade is Mr. Federicos much-publicized conduct in 1989, while incarcerated, with organized crime,” the decision reads. “In a letter dated 2005, Mr. Federico expresses his regret and remorse of becoming involved with persons associated with organized crime.”

When writing his letter, Federico apparently forgot the words of Biagio DiGiacomo, who baptized him and three other mobsters in 1989: “We get in alive in this organization and the only way we’re going to get out is dead.”

Lawyer: ‘Cheese’ won’t curdle -- Reputed mob boss pleads not guilty
By Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - Updated: 01:16 AM EST



Carmen ‘‘The Big Cheese’ ’DiNunzio is arraigned yesterday in Salem Superior Court, where the alleged underboss of the New England Mafia pleaded not guilty to extortion and gaming charges. (Staff photo by Mike Adaskaveg)

Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio, the 400-pound eatery owner who allegedly runs Boston’s Mafia, is “a big boy” who won’t melt from the heat and vehemently denies being a mob wheel, his downtown lawyer said yesterday.


“He runs a cheese shop in the North End and a restaurant in East Boston,” attorney Anthony Cardinale insisted outside Salem Superior Court after DiNunzio, the reputed underboss of the New England Mafia, pleaded not guilty to extortion and gaming charges.

DiNunzio, 49, of East Boston, posted $20,000 cash bail and was chauffeured from the Witch City in the front seat of an unassuming silver Isuzu Ascender.

“He’s fine,” Cardinale said when asked how the rotund restaurateur in black loafers was holding up. “He’s a big boy.”

DiNunzio, who allegedly answers to Providence godfather Luigi “Baby Shanks” Manocchio, was arrested in the North End by state police late Friday afternoon.

First Assistant Essex District Attorney John Dawley explained to Judge Leila Kern that the charges stem from a 2001 wiretapping probe of North Shore bookmakers.

Dawley said within the tapes there were repeated references to making “rent payments” to DiNunzio in exchange for “protection from street gangs” that might otherwise endanger the bookmakers’ lives and livelihoods.

He cautioned that the three-count indictment against DiNunzio “involves violence and it involves witnesses who remain on the street.”

Cardinale later asserted DiNunzio poses no threat and - other than the fact that the statute of limitations on the Cheese’s alleged offenses was about to run out - he questioned what took prosecutors so long to raise a stink against the Cheese.

“I don’t think they feel that strongly about the case,” Cardinale said. “It’s to our benefit.”

A source with gangland connections called DiNunzio a “gentleman” and “fundamentally, a pretty sound guy.”

“He’s not a guy that you’re going to get smart with. He’s certainly not a fool,” the source said, adding that between Carmen’s Kitchen and passing out parmesan at his Fresh Cheese Shop, “If he’s running the mob, he’s certainly the hardest working guy running the mob. That shop is not a front. He really knows his cheese.”

lsweet@bostonherald.com.

Friday, December 1, 2006
Police arrest reputed mobster known as "The Big Cheese"

By Shelley Murhpy, Globe Staff

Reputed New England Mafia underboss Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio has just been arrested by State Police in Boston's North End on illegal gambling and extortion charges, according to law enforcement officials.

The 49-year-old mobster, who has been dubbed "The Big Cheese'' and operates a cheese shop on Endicott Street in the North End, has been indicted by an Essex County grand jury on charges of extortion, maintaining or organizing a gaming operation and conspiracy.

DiNunzio, of East Boston, allegedly rose through the ranks of the local mob to become underboss about five years ago, running Boston's rackets under the direction of reputed New England Boss Luigi "Louie" Monocchio of Rhode Island.

The probe into DiNunzio's alleged mob related extortion of bookmakers has been underway since 2001. Authorities said it is related to the same investigation involving William Angelesco, 35, of Chelsea, who is awaiting trial on similar offenses.

Angelesco was arrested earlier this year on charges of promoting and organizing a gambling operation. Prosecutors said Angelsco supervised 10 people as a middle manager from a Saugus-based ring from which State Police have seized $800,000.

Angelesco was acquitted in 2001 of the slaying of a Revere strip club manager.

If convicted DiNunzio faces up to 15 years in state prison.

State trooper says reputed mobster’s ‘quite a character’
By O’Ryan Johnson
Sunday, December 3, 2006 - Updated: 03:09 AM EST

The Big Cheese may be on ice, but a night in the cooler apparently hasn’t curdled his spirits.
“He’s quite the character,” a state trooper guarding reputed Boston mob underboss Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio, aka “The Big Cheese,” said yesterday. The trooper declined further comment.
The big cheese:
DiNunzio, 49, a resident of East Boston, is a weekend guest at the Danvers state police barracks where he is awaiting arraignment on extortion and gaming charges, state police said.
DiNunzio’s North End store, Fresh Cheese Shop, meanwhile, did brisk business yesterday with customers snapping up stacks of sliced cheese and eyeing the rows of exotic olive oils.
At a phone number listed for DiNunzio, a woman who identified herself as his mother declined to comment.
“Honey, I know you have a job to do, but right now I’m not in the best of health,” she told the Herald.
The parmesan don was busted in a car at the corner of Cooper and Lynn streets in the North End, just around the corner from his cheese shop.
DiNunzio is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in Salem Superior Court, where he is expected to make bail of $250,000.

ojohnson@bostonherald.com.

Alleged Mafia underboss is freed on bail
He faces charges of extortion and illegal gaming

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | December 5, 2006

SALEM -- Reputed New England Mafia underboss Carmen "The Big Cheese" DiNunzio looked uncomfortable yesterday as he shuffled into court in leg irons. He didn't speak, as his lawyer entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to charges of illegal gambling and extortion.

"He's unused to the attention he's getting," said Boston lawyer Anthony M. Cardinale, who represents DiNunzio, 49, of East Boston. The man described by law enforcement officials as a low-key underworld leader was freed on bail after posting $20,000 cash.

"It's not the strongest of cases, but anything in superior court is always serious," said Cardinale, who has previously represented a who's who of mobsters, including former New England mob boss Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme and former underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo.

Cardinale said the indictment returned by an Essex County grand jury on Friday alleges crimes that occurred in 2001 and was brought just as the statute of limitations was about to expire.

"I think it's to our benefit that they waited this long" to bring the case, Cardinale said.

DiNunzio is charged with extortion, maintaining or organizing an illegal gaming operation, and conspiracy in maintaining or organizing a gaming operation.

According to law enforcement officials, DiNunzio rose to be second in command of all New England mobsters about 2002, after winning the favor of New England godfather Luigi "Baby Shanks" Manocchio of Providence.

Cardinale said his client vehemently denies allegations that he is the number two man in the New England mob and controls all Mafia activities in the Boston area.

First Assistant Essex District Attorney John T. Dawley said he was seeking a high cash bail for DiNunzio because "this case involves violence."

"It also involves witnesses who remain on the street," Dawley said.

He added that DiNunzio has a 1993 federal conviction for extortion.

In that case, DiNunzio admitted shaking down a Las Vegas gambler for $27,000 and was sentenced to four years in prison.

The indictment alleges that DiNunzio conspired to run an illegal gambling operation between September and December 2001 with four men, Joseph Settipane, Thomas Verona, James Candelino, and Gregory Costa.

All four men were bookmakers, according to law enforcement officials.

Settipane died after the Massachusetts State Police Special Service Section launched the 2001 probe, using wiretaps and hidden bugs to secretly record conversations.

Verona, Candelino, and Costa were indicted in December 2002 on illegal gambling charges in allegedly running a sports betting operation.

At the time, an Essex prosecutor described the trio as midlevel agents in a gambling network tied to organized crime. All three were convicted and sentenced to probation.

In March, Varone was among 24 men indicted on state gaming charges, according to a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett. That case is still pending.

The investigation that led to DiNunzio's indictment also led to the indictment last February of reputed mob soldier William Angelesco on gambling and conspiracy charges.

DiNunzio, who owns the Fresh Cheese shop in the North End and Carmen's Kitchen restaurant in East Boston, declined to comment before leaving in a silver Isuzu.

Fat chance streets any safer
By Alan Lupo
Wednesday, December 6, 2006

No matter how many times I have walked by Carmen’s Kitchen in East Boston’s Orient Heights neighborhood, I have never caught a bullet.
I am not sure that I or others can say that should we find ourselves in the middle of a less than Socratic dialogue in certain parts of Roxbury, the South End, Dorchester, Mattapan or Hyde Park.
So, then, I am wondering when pondering the grand scope of criminal justice, why the arrest of Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio is where law enforcement’s priorities should be these days.

DiNunzio has an interest in the aforementioned joint along with a North End cheese shop. This is not why state police arrested him the other day. He also is alleged to be a bigtime bookie, maybe an extortionist of bookies and possibly an underboss in the Mafia, which is better than being a wheel man, a button man or a soldier, if one is into upward mobility.
He has a record of run-ins with the law, and the troopers who nailed him are most likely the kind of guys we citizens appreciate.
But as young gangbangers try to replicate Iraq among neighbors who are truly frightened for their lives, I cannot get all that excited about the cheese fellow. Even if there is reality to rumors that the real guy in charge is Peter Limone, released five years ago after doing 33 years for a hit he did not commit, I am not in an uproar. Indeed, should Limone take over the mob, he probably would work to minimize whatever violent tendencies the outfit might continue to harbor.
I do not romanticize the mob, which will never be in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.
But it is what it is these days, and that’s not what it was, thanks to years of RICO prosecutions, wiretaps and lots of rats.
It became obvious by the early 1970s that many new players were getting into organized crime and they represented just about every ethnic and racial group, ranging from the Russian Mafiya, to Nigerian drug smugglers and con artists, to Jamaican posses, to highly organized Latino and Asian outfits.
That’s enough cause for concern, but much scarier is disorganized crime, which reached a height of fright in Boston in the early 1990s and seems to be making some sort of comeback these days.
Black, and in some cases, Cape Verdean street gangsters are exacting revenge over real or exaggerated slights. They are replicating what the white ethnic gangsters were doing in the 1960s and ’70s.
One difference is that the organized crime guys generally had better aim than today’s young hoods. There have been too many instances of bullets flying into the apartments of innocent families.
It’s been enough to prompt one retired cop to suggest in dark cop humor that maybe the city should give all the gangbangers target practice so that they would shoot only each other.
It’s been a while since the residents of Orient Heights and the North End had to worry about too many gunslingers waiting to test their testosterone.
Times have changed, and so have the players who need the kind of scrutiny from every level of law enforcement that was put to use when Boston’s streets were last out of control 15 years ago.

Extorting dough from illegal bookies warrants arrest, but it doesn’t endanger tots and teens minding their own business on the family porch.

Hub’s oversized criminal underbelly
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist

Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - Updated: 09:40 AM EST

OK, so Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio isn’t fat, he’s obese. The Big Cheese goes 4 bills easy. He’s the don of doughnuts, the capo of capicola. He’s putting the sub back in subpoena.


There’s an old saying that history first repeats itself as tragedy, then as farce. I guess we know which category Boston organized crime now falls into. Just call it the Marinara Mob. People don’t ask him if he’s got a gun in his pocket. They assume it’s a pepperoni.

But hey, it’s not like he’s the first fat guy (allegedly) mixed up in Boston organized crime. There’s a long tradition of overeating. Remember Gerry Angiulo on the FBI tapes, telling his boys, “I’m sending for Vinny and his partner, Fat Vinny.”


Kevin O’Neil in South Boston near his Station News store. (Photo by Kevin Wisniewski)

Or look at Kevin O’Neil, Whitey Bulger’s money-launderer. In the most recent pictures of him, he doesn’t weigh much over 300 pounds. But that was after he’d done a stretch at Club Fed.

In the old days, out of the street, or in the case under the counter, which was where O’Neil spent most of his time, cowering, he was known as “Turtleneck Pants.”

See, he’d pull his pants up, like that would somehow obscure his 60-inch waist.

Now he’s lost over 100 pounds, although it looks like Kevin Weeks found most of them. Their boss, Whitey Bulger, didn’t like his guys to be fat. Guys like Whitey pride themselves on staying buff, if you know what I mean.

One guy Whitey had on the payroll for a while was Nick Femia. An old Joe Barboza hand, Femia managed to become that rare creature, an overweight cocaine addict. When they were operating out of the Lancaster Street garage, Femia used to sneak down to McDonald’s on Causeway Street for a trans-fat fix, and if Whitey discovered his stash, he’d start screaming at Femia, pelting him with tasty, salted spuds.

Another hood who got fat and stoned was Stevie Flemmi’s brother, Jimmy the Bear. Jimmy the Bear killed lots of people, and ate lots of food.

There was once a state rep even tubbier than The Big Cheese - actually, a couple, but I’m thinking of Rep. John ‘McFeel‘ McNeil, who later ended up in the Franklin County House of Correction after he went down on a child-pornography rap.

“You know what the worst thing is about weighing 460 pounds?” he once asked me, and I had no immediate answer. “It’s when you lose 60 pounds, nobody even notices!”

The Big Cheese knows the feeling, I’m sure.

The irony is, the only place most hoods aren’t fat is in the movies. Check out the mugshot here of Alex Petricone. It was taken when he was getting arrested with Buddy McLean, the founder of the Winter Hill Gang.

Then he made a good career move, fleeing to Hollywood, changing his name to Alex Rocco and unlike Buddy and the rest, he survived, getting good roles in, among other films, “The Godfather II” and “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.”

But in those movies, playing (what else?) a gangster, he was 50 pounds lighter than he was back in the day.

Check out the photo of Tony Pino, the Brinks bandit. In the movie he was played by Peter Falk. None of that Raging Bull realism for Columbo - he would have needed to pack on at least 50 pounds to realistically portray Pino.

Big Mob Men
http://news.bostonherald.com/galleries/?ti...BigMobMen#photo

Report says lower profile mob still thrives in New England
By Associated Press
Saturday, December 9, 2006 - Updated: 02:49 PM EST

BOSTON - The New England mob is much smaller and has a lower profile than it did during it heyday in the 1980s, but it’s still making money at traditional criminal pursuits such as extortion, drug trafficking and bookmaking, authorities said.

Several decades of federal prosecutions have weakened the Mafia, and the number of “made men” who have taken a formal oath and pledged their souls to the Mafia is about half of what it was in the Boston area in the early 1980s, Detective Lt. Stephen P. Johnson of the State Police told The Boston Globe.

Johnson, who oversees organized crime investigations as head of the Special Service Section, said the Boston faction has about 20 to 25 active soldiers who report to several capos.

But State Police in Rhode Island and Massachusetts said the New England Mafia continues to thrive, with illegal gambling - particularly sports betting - the lifeblood of the organization.

“It is the only traditional organized crime group left in town, with the exception of Asian gangs who primarily stay within their neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “What they’ve tried to do is keep a low profile while maintaining their traditional activities, which would include extortion, drug trafficking, bookmaking, loansharking, and even pornography.”

The New England Mafia operates in Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts up to Worcester. The western part of the state is allegedly controlled by New York families.

Since the 1930s, leadership of the New England Mafia has shifted between Boston and Providence. It reverted to Rhode Island in 1995 when the reputed current godfather, Luigi “Baby Shanks” Manocchio, took over.

Manocchio, 79, has been described as a low-key boss who united warring factions after Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme’s violent reign, the Globe reported.

Manocchio works out of a coin-operated laundry on Federal Hill in Providence and lives in an apartment upstairs.

Major Steven O’Donnell of the Rhode Island State Police, a longtime organized crime investigator, said wiretap and informant information has identified Peter J. Limone, 72, as the mob’s consigliere, who traditionally moderates internal disputes.

Limone was exonerated of a 1965 gangland murder after spending 33 years in prison and is suing the government for more than $100 million in an ongoing trial at federal court in Boston.

His lawyer, Juliane Balliro, denied that Limone was a consigliere. Noting the ongoing trial, she added, “we find the timing of these revelations very suspicious.”

O’Donnell also identified Robert J. DeLuca as a capo in Rhode Island. DeLuca was paroled in March after serving 12 years in prison. An FBI bug indicated in 1989 that DeLuca was among four new soldiers inducted into the Mafia in a blood-oath ceremony in Medford.

DeLuca’s lawyer, Artin Coloian, said DeLuca had a spotless record in prison and “there’s no reason for anyone to doubt that his life would go the same way.”

Last week, alleged underboss Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio, 49, owner of a cheese shop in Boston’s North End, was arrested on charges of extortion and running an illegal sports-betting operation. He allegedly oversees all the mob’s activities in the Boston area.

His lawyer, Anthony Cardinale, denied DiNunzio is an underboss, describing him as “a low-key, well-liked neighborhood guy who happens to be Italian.”

O’Donnell said mobsters in the Providence area have remained about the same in number, but they’re not grooming their children to take over anymore. Johnson said it’s the same in Boston, where he said there’s no mob headquarters in the North End, though gangsters fraternize there.

“The bad guys live in suburban towns now,” said Johnson.

Johnson said authorities must keep pressure on the mob, even though its numbers are dwindling.

“The key is to not let it grow, to keep pruning away at it, so it doesn’t get a chance to take off again,” he said

Sorry about that Hollander, thought there was no Boston post :)

Cops nab alleged Mafia boss: ‘Big Cheese’ busted after 5-year probe

By O’Ryan Johnson and Laurel J. Sweet
Saturday, December 2, 2006 - Updated: Dec 3, 2006 02:36 AM EST

Carrying a wad of 100s and 50s as fat as a ball of mozzarella, Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio was busted by state police yesterday in the North End near the spot where the alleged Boston Mafia kingpin runs a cheese shop, authorities said.
DiNunzio, 49, of East Boston was charged with extortion, maintaining or organizing a gaming operation and conspiracy to maintain gaming operation, said Essex District Attorney Jon Blodgett. “It went down peacefully,” a state police source told the Herald last night. DiNunzio said nothing when police grabbed him from his car at the corner of Cooper and Lynn streets around 5:15 p.m., the source added, nor on the long drive to the state police barracks,in Danvers, where he is being held on $250,000 bail. He is expected to be arrainged Monday in Salem Superior Court, prosecutors said.

The arrest was the result of a five-year investigation of DiNunzio’s alleged gaming operations by troopers Nunzio Orlando and Pasquale Russolillo of the state police organized crime unit.
The probe stemmed from a 2001 wire tap that recently netted alleged made man William “Billy” Angelesco, 35, of Chelsea. In May, Angelesco was charged with extortion and bookmaking.
DiNunzio’s alleged roots in La Cosa Nostra date to the last days of the Angiulo era in the 1980s, when he allegedly ran errands and fetched coffee for mobsters.
In 2003, police sources told the Herald that DiNunzio was named the official “capo regime” of Boston by alleged Providence don Louis “Baby Shanks” Manocchio.

DiNunzio, who runs Fresh Cheese Shop on Endicott Street, allegedly won the top job only after another reputed mobster, Peter Limone, turned it down.
Limone - with alleged mob ties that date to the 1960s - was released from prison in 2001 after serving 33 years for a murder he did not commit.
Limone, now 74, and DiNunzio often have been seen together in the North End, but have repeatedly denied working together to run the rackets.
DiNunzio prefers to operate under the radar, a police source said.
But the alleged capo has made headlines, most recently when crooks snatched the till from his cheese shop in August. Then, in April 2005, the SUV DiNunzio was driving struck and killed Stephanie Lam, a 16-year-old Dorchester girl, on Washington Street.
Though he was not charged in Lam’s death, DiNunzio has spent much of his life in and out of courts and jails. In 1993, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in federal jail for attempting to take over an Indian casino and for shaking down a Las Vegas gambler for $27,000.
While in Vegas - where DiNunzio was on the run after allegedly stiffing the Angiulos for $80,000 - he was known by mobsters as an enforcer who collected debts, sources told the Herald in 2003.
Yesterday, the Essex District Attorney’s Office said troopers secured a secret indictment against DiNunzio prior to his arrest. If he’s convicted on all charges, DiNunzio could spend up to 15 years behind bars.


Carmen Salvatore DiNunzio is escorted into the state police barracks in Danvers yesterday.

BOSTON (AP) -- Mafia membership may be down in New England, but the organized crime group still rakes in lots of money.

And like Tony Soprano on T-V, most of today's mobsters have moved out of their old city enclaves and into the suburbs.

The Boston Globe reports that the New England mob is led by 79-year-old Luigi "Baby Shanks" Manocchio of Providence, Rhode Island. And reputed Mafia soldier Robert DeLuca has been working at a downtown Providence restaurant since he finished 12 years in prison last spring.

Boston underboss Carmen "The Big Cheese" DiNunzio was arrested last week on gambling and extortion charges.

But investigators say drug trafficking, bookmaking, loansharking and pornogrpahy remain lucrative pursuits for organized crime.

Twelve people arrested on drug, gambling charges

Dec 12, 2006 10:25 AM


NORTH SCITUATE, R.I. (AP) -- A dozen people are arrested in a bust into what police say was a large-scale gambling operation with ties to the Patriarca crime family.

Police say they recorded about 675-thousand dollars in bets on professional and college sports games in the 45 days they were listening in on phone calls with wiretaps.

State Police Major Steven O'Donnell says the suspected ringleader is Edward Lato, a man who O'Donnell says has a long history of running gambling rings Lato is charged with racketeering, bookmaking and other crimes. He's still under the watch of federal probation officers for an earlier gambling case.

Authorities also arrested Kevin Lisi, of Houston, Texas. He's accused of taking bets from Texas. The arrests happened yesterday and today.

Rhode Island police bust alleged gambling ring connected to Mob
By Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer | December 11, 2006

NORTH SCITUATE, R.I. --Rhode Island police have arrested a dozen people in a sports betting ring that allegedly generated about $675,000 in illegal wagers in just two months, all under the watch of a man whom detectives call a ranking member of a New England Mafia family.

The man accused of being the ring leader, Edward Lato, 59, of North Providence, is a longtime member of the Patriarca crime family, a syndicate that traditionally dominated criminal rackets in Providence, Boston and beyond, said Maj. Stephen O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Rhode Island State Police.

"He's as high as you can go before you get to the bosses," O'Donnell said Monday.

Investigators said they gathered evidence using court-approved wiretaps that allowed them to listen to telephone calls and read text messages sent between accused ring members.

Charged with racketeering, organized criminal gambling, conspiracy and bookmaking, Lato was released Monday after posting bail.

The arrest alone could land Lato behind bars. He was sentenced in 1999 to five years, 10 months in prison after admitting that he made extortionate loans to gamblers and businessmen, then hired strong-arms to collect debts.

Freed from federal prison in 2004, Lato is still serving three years of supervised release. Getting arrested again violates the terms of that release, although authorities at U.S. District Court in Providence haven't decided whether to detain him, said Barry Weiner, the court's chief probation officer.

An attorney for Lato could not immediately be reached for comment.

O'Donnell said police arrested Lato in a home as he was examining betting records with Rocco Falco Jr., 59, of Smithfield, who was sentenced to more than four years in prison during the same extortion case that earlier snared Lato.

Detectives accuse Falco and Gary Cedroni, 38, of North Providence of serving as underlings for their alleged Mafia boss. Both men are charged with racketeering, criminal gambling and bookmaking.

Ring members largely solicited bets from around Rhode Island, although Texas authorities arrested 39-year-old Kevin Lisi of Houston as part of the probe. He's now held in a Texas jail pending extradition to Rhode Island, where he's charged with gambling offenses.

During raids, police seized roughly $20,000 in cash in bills as small as $2 and as large as $1,000. They also confiscated an ounce of cocaine, Vicodin pills, steroids and syringes, gambling ledgers and six vehicles.

12 Arrested for Organized Criminal Gambling, Racketeering, Possession & Delivery of Cocaine
Contact: Major Steven G. O'Donnell, Field Operations Officer Telephone: (401) 444-1002

On Sunday afternoon, December 10, 2006, Rhode Island State Police, along with the Department of Attorney General, Providence Police, and assisted by several local police departments, fanned out throughout the State and arrested twelve (12) subjects on Organized Criminal Gambling, Racketeering, Narcotic Delivery, Possession and Possession with Intent to Deliver charges. These charges stem from several court-authorized wire interceptions into a large-scale illegal gambling operation investigated by the Rhode Island State Police, Providence Police and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office.

During the forty-five day wire interception, detectives intercepted conversations in which over $675,000.00 in illegal gambling wagers on professional and college sporting events were recorded. The investigation began after learning of this organized criminal gambling operation was being operated by Rocco Falco of Smithfield and Gary Cedroni of North Providence, and under the management of Edward C. Lato, who is an alleged ranking member of the Patriarca Organized Crime Family.

Yesterday, detectives executed nine (9) court-authorized search warrants and seized over $20,000.00 in United States currency, over an ounce of cocaine, a large amount of hydrocodone (Vicodin), numerous packages of steroids, marijuana, illegal gambling ledgers, three computers and six vehicles.

The following arrests were the result of the execution of arrest and search warrants:

1. Steven Parreault, age 64, of 76 Kenway Avenue, Warwick, Rhode Island for Possession of cocaine 1 ounce to 1 kilogram, possession of cocaine with Intent to deliver, conspiracy to possess a controlled substance, possession of marijuana. Subject was arraigned by a Justice of the Peace at State Police Headquarters and ordered held with out bail pending a formal arraignment in the 3rd Division District Court. Today he was arraigned in 3rd Division District Court and held without bail, pending a bail hearing set for 12/21/06

2. William Stanton, age 42, of 150 Skunk Hill Road, Exeter, Rhode Island for Delivery of a Controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance with Intent to deliver, and possession of marijuana (2nd offense). Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters by a Justice of the Peace and was ordered held without bail pending a formal arraignment in 4th Division District Court. Today he was arraigned in 4th Division District Court and held without bail pending a bail hearing set for 12/13/06.

3. Kim Parreault, age 49, of 76 Kenway Avenue, Warwick, Rhode Island for possession of cocaine 1 ounce to 1 kilogram, possession of cocaine with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy, possession of marijuana. Subject was arraigned by a Justice of the Peace at State Police Headquarters and held overnight at the ACI pending a formal arraignment in the 3rd Division District Court in the morning. Today she was arraigned at 3rd Division District Court and held without bail pending her bail hearing set for 12/21/06.

4. Rocco Falco, Jr., age 59, of 3 Price Lane, Smithfield, Rhode Island for R.I.C.O., organized criminal gambling, conspiracy to commit organized Criminal gambling and bookmaking. Subject was arraigned by a Justice of the Peace at State Police Headquarters. Bail was set at $20,000 with surety. Subject was unable to post bail and was held overnight at the ACI pending a formal arraignment and bail review in the 6th Division District Court this morning. Today he was formally arraigned and released on $20,000 with surety bail.

5. Edward C. Lato, age 59, of 4 Smithfield Road (Apartment 32),North Providence, Rhode Island for R.I.C.O. organized criminal gambling, conspiracy to commit organized criminal gambling, bookmaking. Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters by a Justice of the Peace. Bail was set at $50,000 with surety. Subject was unable to post bail and was held overnight at the ACI pending a formal arraignment and bail review in the 6th District Court in the morning. Today he was formally arraigned and released on $25,000. with surety bail.

6. Michael Corriea, age 49, of 216 East Street, Cranston, Rhode Island for bookmaking and delivery of a controlled substance. Subject was arraigned by a Justice of the Peace at State Police Headquarters and was ordered held without bail pending a formal arraignment in the 6th Division District Court in the morning. Today he was arraigned and held without bail pending a bail hearing on 12/21/06.

7. Gerald Kent, age 41, of 54 Ridge Drive, Exeter, Rhode Island for R.I.C.O., organized Criminal gambling, conspiracy to commit organized criminal gambling and bookmaking. Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters by a Justice of the Peace. Bail was set at $20,000 personal recognizance

8. Lloyd A. Card, Jr., age 34, of 25 Ledge Street, Providence, Rhode Island for R.I.C.O, organized criminal gambling, conspiracy to commit organized criminal gambling and Bookmaking. Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters. Subject was released on $20,000 personal recognizance.

9. Thomas A. Sousa, age 41, of 2 Barker Avenue, North Providence, Rhode Island for possession of marijuana, controlled substance conspiracy, delivery of a controlled substance. Subject was arraigned before a Justice of the Peace at State Police Headquarters where he was ordered held without bail pending a formal arraignment and bail review in the 6th Division District Court in the morning. Today he was arraigned and released on $25,000 with surety bail.

10. Gary Cedroni, age 38, for R.I.C.O., organized criminal gambling, conspiracy to commit organized criminal gambling, Bookmaking (2nd offense), delivery of a controlled substance. Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters where he was ordered held without bail pending a formal arraignment and bail review at the 6th Division District Court this morning. Today he was held without bail pending a bail hearing on 12/22/06.

11 Kevin T. Carbone, age 41, of 59 Walter Avenue, North Providence, Rhode Island for Possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, (hydrocodone) Controlled substance conspiracy, delivery of a controlled Substance. Subject was arraigned at State Police Headquarters by a Justice of the Peace. Subject was ordered held without bail pending a formal arraignment in the 6th Division District Court this morning. Today he was held without bail pending a bail hearing scheduled for 12/22/06.

12 Kevin Lisi, age 39 of 1302 Parkway Court, Houston, Texas. He was arrested today by members of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Criminal Intelligence Unit at his place of employment. He will be arraigned as a Fugitive From Justice on charges of RICO, Organized Criminal Gambling, Conspiracy and Bookmaking. He will be a held at the Montgomery County Jail in Houston, Texas pending his waiver of extradition.

Ex-Springfield mayor testifies in false-imprisonment case
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
By DAN RING
dring@repub.com


BOSTON - Former Springfield Mayor and state Parole Board member Michael J. Albano yesterday testified that the FBI never provided him with information that three men convicted of murder were innocent.

"To the contrary, no information was provided to show their innocence," Albano testified yesterday in a civil trial in U.S. District Court in Boston in which two men and the families of two deceased men are suing the government for more than $100 million for wrongly putting the men in prison.

Two of the men - Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone - were in prison for more than 25 years before a judge tossed out their convictions in January 2001. They were exonerated after secret FBI documents were released indicating that the bureau knew the men were innocent but helped set them up to protect an informant who actually committed the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan in Chelsea outside Boston.

As a member of the state Parole Board in the 1980s, Albano voted unsuccessfully to recommend commutation for three of the men - Limone, Salvati and Louis Greco, who now is dead. The fourth man, Henry Tameleo, died in prison in 1984.

Albano, 56, of East Longmeadow, also testified that he was visited by former FBI agents John J. Connolly Jr. and John Morris when the Parole Board was considering in 1983 whether to commute the sentence of Limone.

At the time, Albano was 32 and was new to the board.

Albano testified that he asked the FBI for information that was pertinent to the three who were seeking commutation.

Austin J. McGuigan, of Hartford, lawyer for Salvati, then introduced an FBI report by the late Special Agent H. Paul Rico that said two days before Deegan was murdered, mobster Vincent "Jimmy" Flemmi planned to kill Deegan and that the murder was approved by the then boss of the New England mafia. Rico died in jail in 2004 while awaiting trial on charges that he helped arrange the slaying of a Tulsa businessman.

Albano testified that he never saw the report during his tenure on the Parole Board. Albano said it was never given to any member of the board. Outside the courtroom, Albano told reporters later that the two agents attempted to bully him into voting to oppose commuting Limone's sentence.

"They said this was a bad crime - an organized crime hit - and that these defendants deserved to be in jail for life," Albano told reporters. "They also said it probably would not bode well for me if I wanted to remain in public life, that this would not be a good vote for me."

Connolly's lawyer, E. Peter Mullane of Cambridge, told the Associated Press that Connolly denies Albano's allegation.

Connolly was not an FBI agent in 1968 when the four men were convicted. "He had no reason to want him paroled or not paroled," Mullane said.

Albano said he would stand by his testimony.

"Where is John Connolly now?" Albano said. "He's awaiting murder charges in Florida."

Connolly is serving a federal prison sentence on racketeering charges for protecting informants James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi - while using them as informants against the Boston mob.

Connolly is also charged with murder for allegedly providing information that prompted the slaying in 1982 of a former World Jai Alai president.

Former defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey testified in the trial last week that two years after the four were convicted, a mob hit man named Joseph "The Animal" Barboza told him that he wanted to take back his testimony and that Rico was part of a scheme to frame the four men.

Barboza was the government's lead witness in the 1968 trial of the four men.

Under questioning from Daniel R. Deutsch of Boston, lawyer for the estate of Greco, Albano also testified that Greco maintained his innocence over the years when he saw him on days of Parole Board hearings.

"Mr. Greco would say that he wanted me to know he was innocent and he wanted to live one day as a free man - just one day," Albano testified. "He wanted to be a free man before he died."

Government lawyers did not question Albano. He testified for about 30 minutes.

Albano, who was on the Parole Board from 1982 to 1994, said the government can't provide enough money to compensate plaintiffs. "The FBI knew all along they were not guilty," Albano said.

Albano was elected as mayor in 1995 and decided against seeking re-election in 2003.


©2006 The Republican

Mobster leaves prison


01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 18, 2007

By W. Zachary Malinowski

Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON — Gerald M. “Gerry” Tillinghast, a notorious mob figure who has spent nearly 30 years in prison for an underworld killing, was paroled from the Adult Correctional Institutions yesterday.

At 3 p.m., Tillinghast, 60, walked out of the John J. Moran Medium Security Unit with a parole officer and they drove to the prison’s Pinel Building where the mobster was fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet and briefed on the terms of his release.

Tillinghast will live in western Cranston with an unidentified family member.

Ann Fortin, acting ACI spokeswoman, said prison policy prohibits her from releasing the exact address. She said that she did not know if Tillinghast has found a job. As a rule, parolees on home confinement are required to work.

State and local police detectives positioned their unmarked cars outside of medium security yesterday to get a glimpse of the mob hitman.

“The Department of Corrections and the Parole Board saw fit that he be released after 29 years in prison,” said state police Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell. “We will monitor his activities. Hopefully, he has learned from his past.”

In the ’60s and ’70s, Tillinghast was known as a feared enforcer for the Patriarca crime family. He also had leadership skills and could tap into a vast network of criminals to wreak havoc in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Tillinghast and a host of other mobsters from Rhode Island were accused of participating in the $3-million Bonded Vault heist in 1975 in Providence. A Superior Court jury declined to convict him of criminal charges.

Tillinghast also was implicated, but never convicted, in several other underworld murders.

But his rising star in the underworld came to a screeching halt on Nov. 30, 1978.

That night, Tillinghast and his older brother, Harold Tillinghast, were arrested for killing mob loan shark George Basmajian in a stolen car near T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. At trial, Gerald Tillinghast was convicted of unloading nine rounds into Basmajian, who he considered a friend.

Investigators said that he fired six rounds, reloaded the gun and fired three more times to make sure Basmajian was dead.

The FBI and state police, who had been tailing the stolen car the night of the shootings but briefly lost sight of it, arrested the Tillinghast brothers less than an hour later in a Providence bar. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Still, they always maintained their innocence and remained newsworthy figures behind prison walls.

A few years ago, a state police detective investigating a crime in the prison bumped into Harold Tillinghast. “How’re you doing, Harold?” said the detective. “Not guilty,” Tillinghast answered.

In 1985, Gerald Tillinghast, then 39, was stabbed three times in the neck while he was working in the print shop in the ACI’s maximum security unit.

In 1989, prison officials granted work-release privileges, a move that prompted public outrage. Tillinghast was selling subscriptions for a Vietnam veterans magazine in Cranston when local police learned that he was visiting family members, leaving his job and working with “known criminals” — violations of his work-release conditions.

He was returned to the ACI and the General Assembly passed legislation that required convicted murderers to complete at least 15 years of their sentences before they are eligible for work release.

In the mid-’90s, Tillinghast was transferred to a state prison in New Hampshire. Soon after his arrival, he was arrested for running a sports betting operation out of an East Providence home and a Fox Point social club. Investigators said that Tillinghast ran the racket from his prison cell.

He pleaded no contest to gambling charges and had five years to serve tacked onto his sentence of life in prison. Harold Tillinghast, who was also nabbed in the gambling ring, died several years ago.

On Feb. 15, 2001, the state Parole Board agreed to parole Tillinghast in February 2005. Four months later, the board agreed to parole him this month from the gambling conviction. ACI officials said that on Dec. 28, Tillinghast returned to Rhode Island from the prison in New Hampshire. He was sent to medium security on Jan. 3 to ready him for his release yesterday.

bmalinow@projo.com

Wrongful imprisonment case against FBI winding down
By Associated Press
Monday, January 22, 2007 - Updated: 05:49 PM EST

BOSTON - Two men who spent decades in prison for a 1965 gangland slaying they didn’t commit wept on the witness stand as they recounted what the years behind bars did to them and their families.

But Justice Department lawyers made it clear Monday that theirs will not be the kind of emotional case presented by the men who are suing the government for wrongful imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

Justice Department lawyer Bridget Bailey Lipscomb said the government will not offer testimony from a single live witness. Instead, the government will rely on depositions from several people involved in the 1965 murder case.

The government has argued federal authorities had no duty to share information with state officials who prosecuted Peter Limone, Joseph Salvati and two other men who died in prison after they were convicted in the 1965 killing of Edward “Teddy” Deegan. They say the FBI cannot be held liable for the results of a separate state investigation.

Attorneys for the men, however, say the FBI knew the men had been framed for Deegan’s killing, but hid evidence from state prosecutors that could have cleared the men to protect a Mafia hitman and FBI informant, Joseph “The Animal” Barboza.

Salvati and Limone were exonerated in 2001 after FBI memos dating back to the Deegan case surfaced, showing the men were framed by Barboza.

The memos were made public after they were discovered by a Justice Department task force probing the FBI’s relationship with gangsters and FBI informants James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

Limone, Salvati and the families of two other men who died in prison - Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco - are suing the federal government for $100 million.

Lawyers for the men are expected to finish presenting their evidence Tuesday after 19 days of testimony. Lipscomb told U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner she expects to start and finish the government’s case Tuesday, through depositions and exhibits. Final arguments are scheduled for Feb. 27. Gertner will decide the jury-waived case.

Tale of 2 brothers: 1 indicted, the other runs capital city
By Associated Press
Sunday, January 28, 2007 - Updated: 12:32 PM EST

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - His father is a Mafia lawyer famous for representing a New England crime family so powerful that its late boss was once recorded phoning Rhode Island’s governor to adjust his son’s college schedule.

His older brother, an attorney, was just indicted in a federal sting that allegedly involves a marijuana-trafficking couple, a few lies told to a federal prosecutor and an offer to set up a drug deal.

Yet Providence Mayor David Cicilline remains the anti-corruption leader of Rhode Island’s capital city, whose last elected mayor, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, is still in prison for corruption. He’s leaving the door open to a run for governor, even as federal prosecutors threaten to put his brother behind bars.

Perhaps improbably, Cicilline, 46, has built a political reputation as a reformer for the new Providence, a revitalized city of high-rise buildings, art galleries and waterfront parks. His tenure is seen as a break from the bribes and cronyism endemic under Cianci, and from the days when a decaying industrial town was dominated by the Mob.

“People now have confidence that this is a good city to do business in, that it has an honest city government,” Cicilline said in an interview at City Hall.

The third of five children, Cicilline was born in Providence but raised in coastal, suburban Narragansett. Harriet Quinn, a longtime family friend, said the siblings are close.

“They were raised to be extremely loyal to each other,” she said.

Cicilline is Providence’s first openly gay mayor. And unlike his Catholic father, John F. “Jack” Cicilline, and brother, John M. Cicilline, David adopted the Judaism inherited from his mother, Sabra.

Appointed to a town advisory council at 13, Cicilline steadily honed his political skills. By high school, he was elected governor of a mock legislature for Rhode Island students, said Robert Walsh Jr., a longtime friend and now director of the National Education Association Rhode Island, a teachers’ union.

“He just campaigned everybody,” Walsh said.

His father represented Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who until his death in 1984 controlled organized crime in New England from his headquarters in a vending machine store on Federal Hill, the city’s predominant Italian neighborhood. In recent years, he’s also defended Luigi Manocchio, whom the FBI claims runs the remnants of Patriarca’s organization.

Cicilline never offered apologies for his father’s career.

“He said, ’Look, my father raised a family and put food on the table, and I believe like everyone else in America that everyone has a right to legal representation,”’ Walsh said.

A graduate of Brown University and Georgetown University’s law school, Cicilline established his own law firm inside a building shared by his brother and father. Criminal defense work paid the bills, but Cicilline branched into civil rights and police brutality cases - an interest partly inspired by his father.

“My father was a real democrat with a small ’d’, a real liberal who instilled in me the importance of recognizing our obligation to people who are less fortunate,” Cicilline said.

The elder Cicilline combines decades of legal experience with the street smarts of the rough-and-tumble Silver Lake neighborhood where he grew up. He was acquitted in 1985 - after three trials - of allegedly coaxing a witness to lie.

He’s known in the courtroom as a fighter, even with his own clients.

“I’m the lawyer, you’re the gangster,” he snapped at one reputed Patriarca lieutenant, trying to silence him during a court appearance this month.

While David Cicilline’s legal practice made him rich enough to buy a large colonial home in one of Providence’s most expensive neighborhoods, he decided to branch into politics. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1994, where he served for eight years.

But his last name can be a political liability.

As soon as Cicilline announced he was running for mayor in 2002, Cianci, then under indictment, snapped back.

“If he won’t take any contributions from city workers, then I won’t take any money from the drug dealers he represents every day,” the ex-mayor told reporters.

When news broke last year that John M. Cicilline had racked up $5,880 in parking tickets and fines - making him one of the largest parking scofflaws in the city - it created a headache for the mayor. The older brother eventually paid $2,300 in August to settle the issue.

But looming was an even bigger headache - a federal indictment accusing John M. Cicilline and a now-disbarred lawyer and family friend of requesting more than $100,000 from a couple facing federal drug charges.

According to the indictment, the two lawyers said they would use the money to set up a drug deal so their clients could expose it to federal authorities in the hopes of winning a lighter prison sentence.

Both men pleaded not guilty. John M. Cicilline’s lawyer and Cicilline’s father didn’t return calls seeking comment for this story.

Mayor Cicilline said he doesn’t believe the indictment, whatever its outcome, will rub off on his career or his thoughts about a possible run for governor. He says he’ll consider running in 2010.

“The voters have always been incredibly fair-minded,” he said. “I think people judge you on who you are and what you stand for.”

Residents of the city don’t seem to mind either. At a recent meeting Cicilline had with residents, Jose Ruiz recounted a complaint his church group made to the mayor’s office about an abandoned parking lot that attracted drug dealers and prostitutes.

“That same night he sent like 10 (police) cars. They even put up a fence,” Ruiz said, “So does that say anything to you that he’s doing something for the community?”

Justice Department admits misconduct on mob case

Printer Friendly | PDF | Email | digg
The Associated Press
Feb 2, 2007 7:26 AM (1 day ago)
Current rank: # 16,105 of 17,826 articles

BOSTON - A federal prosecutor in Boston "engaged in professional misconduct and exercised poor judgment" while prosecuting a federal racketeering case in the early 1990s, according to a letter filed in federal court on Thursday.


In response to a critical letter from the judge who presided over the case, the Justice Department conducted an internal investigation and wrote back that disciplinary action had been taken against Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn because of his misconduct in prosecuting Mafia boss Vincent Ferrara and associate Pasquale Barone.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf found three years ago that Auerhahn had withheld evidence in the 1985 slaying of Vincent "Jimmy" Limoli.

The Justice Department refused to detail their findings or disclose what disciplinary action had been taken against Auerhahn, who currently handles counterterrorism cases.

"We are prohibited from commenting on any internal personnel matters beyond what is available in the public record," Samantha Martin, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, told The Boston Globe.

Auerhahn did not return calls from the Globe seeking comment.

Bernard Grossberg, the lawyer who represented Barone, said the government should reveal Auerhahn's punishment.

"How are they going to give Patsy Barone back the 10 years he served on a clearly unconstitutional conviction?" Grossberg said. "Did they find (Auerhahn's) conduct was deliberate? In order for there to be some closure, if at all, you have to know what the disciplinary action was."

Barone pleaded guilty to manslaughter in state court for the slaying of Limoli and was sentenced to five years.

The federal government alleged that the killing was ordered by the Mafia, and Ferrara in particular, so Barone was tried and convicted in 1993 of murder in aid of racketeering and was sentenced to life in prison.

Wolf found in 2003 that Auerhahn had improperly withheld evidence from defense lawyers by failing to disclose that a witness had recanted his claim that Ferrara ordered Limoli's murder.

The judge concluded that the convictions were tainted and cut the sentences of both men. Both are currently free.

A federal appeals court called Auerhahn's conduct "outrageous."

---

Longtime mobster dies in prison

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 13, 2007

By W. Zachary Malinowski

Journal Staff Writer

Angelo J. “Sonny” Mercurio, a longtime mobster who turned informant on the Patriarca crime family, has died of natural causes in Arkansas. He had been moved there several years ago to start a new life in the federal witness protection program.

Mercurio, who was a mob soldier in Boston, died in December of a pulmonary embolism, his mother-in-law, Judith Gopoian, said in an Associated Press account. Mercurio, 70, whose assumed name was Anthony Valenti, had been living in Little Rock, Ark., where he was relocated after providing information to the FBI.

Mercurio was best known for tipping off federal agents to a Mafia induction ceremony in October 1989 that was attended by 17 mobsters, including Rhode Islanders Raymond J. “Junior” Patriarca, Robert P. DeLuca Sr. and Matthew L. Guglielmetti. At the time, Patriarca was the boss of the crime family.

The ceremony, which was held in the basement of a suburban Boston home, was secretly recorded by the FBI and later used as evidence in many mob prosecutions across the country as evidence that La Cosa Nostra does exist.

Mobsters and their lawyers had always maintained that the mob was a figment of the imagination of law enforcement authorities and the news media.

The recording of the induction ceremony, a first for any law enforcement agency, proved to be one of the most damaging and embarrassing episodes in the history of the New England mob. Patriarca, a weak boss, had decided to host the ceremony as a way to bring together warring factions of his family in Boston, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

In the end, Patriarca lost control of the family and was sent to federal prison on federal racketeering charges.

In the 1980s, Mercurio, who had been pardoned for murder, ran Vanessa’s Italian Food Shop, an eatery at the foot of the Prudential Tower in downtown Boston. The FBI planted a bug inside the storeroom where mobsters held meetings. The bug captured mobsters shaking down victims and plotting various crimes. The bug led to the convictions of four top mobsters on extortion and racketeering charges.

Eventually, Mercurio became an informant for the FBI.

In June 1997, the mobster was outed in federal court as a turncoat.

During a series of hearings, Mercurio, who was brought in from a state prison in Georgia, testified in U.S. District Court, Boston, that he was a government informant when he attended the mob induction ceremony.

Mercurio’s appearance came amid defense allegations of government misconduct in a massive racketeering case against mob boss Francis P. “Cadillac Frank” Salemme Sr., of Boston; DeLuca and others.

Mercurio, who was short and pudgy, was dressed in prison whites with blue piping, the standard uniform for inmates in Georgia. He had been arrested there in 1994 with 150 pounds of marijuana. He was convicted and sent to state prison.

Judge Mark Wolf asked Mercurio two questions: His name and whether he was working as a government informant at the mob induction ceremony. “Yes,” Mercurio answered loudly into the microphone.

Marshals immediately ushered him off the witness stand to a lockup outside the courtroom.

During this time, Mercurio’s handler was FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. The mobster and agent used to have secret meetings on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Mercurio had said he regretted being a “rat” and that he felt he had been entrapped by the FBI.

Ironically, Mercurio’s cooperation also led to Connolly’s downfall. He was convicted on federal racketeering charges in 2002 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. For years, Connolly had worked closely with South Boston mob boss James J. “Whitey” Bulger. Even though Bulger was an informant, Connolly provided him with information that he used to take out his rivals and bolster his criminal empire.

In a nutshell, Bulger had a free pass to commit any crime — including murder — as long as he provided inside information to Connolly and the FBI.

Bulger disappeared in 1995 on the eve of his racketeering indictment and has yet to be captured. He has spent years on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. Occasionally, there are reports of sightings of him in places such as Louisiana and California.

Wrongly convicted say FBI was at fault
Compensation urged in closing arguments
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | February 28, 2007

Lawyers for four men wrongly convicted of a 1965 gangland slaying argued yesterday that the FBI was squarely to blame for withholding critical evidence during their trial and urged a federal judge to order the government to compensate them for the decades they spent in prison.

"It was more important for the FBI to protect their informants than to protect innocent people who had families," said Victor Garo, one of the lawyers, during closing arguments in a civil suit seeking more than $100 million in damages from the government on behalf of Joseph Salvati, Peter J. Limone, Henry Tameleo, Louis Greco, and their families. "Shame on our government for doing that."

The discovery of secret FBI files that were never turned over during the men's 1968 trial prompted a state judge six years ago to overturn the murder convictions of Limone, who had served 33 years in prison, and Salvati, who was paroled in 1997 after serving 30 years. Exoneration came too late for Greco, who died in prison in 1995 at age 78, and for Tameleo, who died a decade earlier at age 84.

Yesterday, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the FBI had no duty to share internal documents with state prosecutors and insisted the state was responsible for convicting the men in the slaying of Edward "Teddy" Deegan in Chelsea.

"The United States is not liable to plaintiffs because they were convicted as a result of a state prosecution," Bridget Bailey Lipscomb said. "The FBI did not initiate this prosecution, and there is no duty of the FBI to submit to state or local governments any of its internal files."

She said the FBI had shared some information about Deegan's death with local police.

Three members of Congress who were involved in a two-year investigation of the FBI's mishandling of informants and had condemned the government's handling of the Deegan case were in court yesterday for final arguments, including Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who spearheaded the probe and formerly chaired the House Committee on Government Reform. Also present were William D. Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat, and Stephen F. Lynch, a South Boston Democrat.

Burton said he believes that all four men were wrongly convicted. "We want to make sure justice is served," he said.

US District Judge Nancy Gertner said she expects to rule by late March or early April on whether the government is liable and, if so, how much it should pay.

The judge challenged Lipscomb's effort to distance the federal government from the state prosecution, saying that state authorities had been unable to solve Deegan's slaying until FBI agents recruited hit man Joseph "The Animal" Barboza as a witness against local Mafia leaders and turned him over to state authorities.

Lipscomb said that the FBI was focusing on Barboza's testimony against Raymond L.S. Patriarca, then the New England Mafia boss, in a federal murder conspiracy case and that there was no evidence they "were even paying attention" to the Deegan case.

Lawyers for Salvati, Limone, Greco, and Tameleo ridiculed the government's assertion, saying that now-retired FBI agent Dennis Condon and his late partner, H. Paul Rico, were aware of internal FBI documents that indicated that Barboza had falsely implicated the four men, yet Condon took the stand during the 1968 trial to vouch for Barboza's credibility.

The FBI didn't disclose that agents listening in on an illegal bug had overheard Barboza and another Boston gangster and FBI informant, Vincent "Jimmy" Flemmi, seeking Patriarca's permission to kill Deegan several days before the March 12, 1965 slaying.

Juliane Balliro, a lawyer for the Limones and the Tameleos, accused Rico and Condon of engaging in "criminal, dishonest, and disgraceful conduct."

Michael Avery, a lawyer who also represents the Limones and the Tameleos, called the government's arguments frivolous.

"They were aware of [Barboza's] perjury, and they delivered him to the state knowing full well what he was going to do," he said.

On his way out of the courthouse, Salvati, 74, of the North End, said: "We waited 42 years, and we're still waiting. But we had our day in court. . . . Now we just rely on the judge."

City pizzeria allegedly also served cocaine to go
Police arrest owner, 2 workers
By Brian R. Ballou and Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | March 3, 2007

Pepperoni, sausage, or cocaine?

These were allegedly among the options at West End Pizza, a shoe-box-sized pizzeria that authorities say doubled as a carry-out cocaine-sales operation just blocks from the TD Banknorth Garden. Amid the cheese, flour, and toppings behind the counter, authorities say, the employees stashed numerous tiny bags of cocaine for sale.

Beginning in November, State Police conducted a sting operation on the nondescript restaurant, setting up a series of undercover cocaine buys. Police said the pizza place served as both an outlet for sales of small amounts of cocaine and a conduit to the owner's house in Revere, where larger amounts could be procured.

On Thursday, police arrested the owner, Domenic DiCenso, 34, and two employees and uncovered a small arsenal of weapons in DiCenso's home, including machine guns and a silencer.

The bust had faint echoes of the so-called Pizza Connection case in New York City in the mid-1980s, when Mafia families used pizza parlors as fronts for heroin smuggling, resulting in one of the largest organized crime prosecutions in US history.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said authorities were examining the possibility of a wider conspiracy in the West End Pizza case.

"Whether or not it's affiliated with any sort of organized crime, a syndicate, or ring has to be developed through further investigation, if at all," Conley said.

DiCenso pleaded not guilty yesterday to a host of drug and weapons charges in Chelsea District Court. Police said the raid at his house on Thursday netted 1.5 kilograms of cocaine, enough for 53 single-ounce sales, stashed in a can filled with coffee grounds, two machine guns, three handguns, and a thick wad of cash.

"The idea that a kilogram of cocaine would be contained inside a coffee can suggests he's not a low-level drug dealer, but a sophisticated high-level drug dealer," said Assistant District Attorney Dean Mazzone. Mazzone said coffee is used to mask the scent of cocaine from drug-sniffing dogs.

A judge set DiCenso's bail at $1 million. His next court date was scheduled for April 25.

DiCenso's lawyer, Jerry Falbo, said his client is innocent.

"There is no evidence that the defendant participated in any of the exchanges," Falbo said. "The defendant never made an exchange or sell of any drugs to any State Police officer."

Two of DiCenso's employees -- Jose I. Rivera, 33, of Cambridge and Aldo E. Saravia, 30, of East Boston -- both pleaded not guilty yesterday in Boston Municipal Court to multiple charges of distributing cocaine.

The tiny West End Pizza storefront had just enough room for an oven, refrigerator, and a counter with five stools. In November, the controlled buys began and continued through last month, police said .

Yesterday Mazzone detailed a buy that occurred Feb. 16. An undercover State Police officer, Trooper Jean Hume, arranged a buy with a unidentified middleman, familiar to her from previous buys. She was taken to DiCenso's Revere home, where the middleman obtained one ounce of cocaine. DiCenso then accompanied the trooper back to West End Pizza, where she got another ounce.

State Police stopped DiCenso on Thursday as he drove his Mercedes G500 along American Legion Highway near his home. He had 50 grams of cocaine with him in the car, police said.

The State Police then went to his home, where they discovered a secret cache in a basement bathroom that contained the 1.5 kilos of cocaine, packed in coffee, Mazzone said. All told, the drugs found that day were worth about $150,000, police said.

In addition, State Police recovered a cache of weapons from DiCenso's home: a Tech-9 submachine gun, a 9mm Uzi submachine gun, .22-caliber derringer handgun, a .45-caliber Colt handgun, a .25-caliber handgun, and a silencer. The serial numbers on several of the guns were scratched out, a common tactic in the firearms black market to avoid police traces.

"Those machine guns that you can see had been fitted with silencers and had their serial numbers obliterated," Conley said at a late afternoon press conference. "We can only guess at their intended purposes."

As prosecutors detailed their findings in court yesterday, DiCenso hid behind a door that was slightly ajar in the courtroom.

Falbo said DiCenso grew up in the Boston area and had operated West End Pizza for nearly a decade.

"He has a business to run, and this business supports many employees," Falbo said.

According to Boston Licensing Board records, DiCenso has operated the pizza shop since 2000 and did not have any licensing violations until 2006.

Only in recent months has the pizza shop, which closes at 4 a.m., drawn the attention of authorities. The shop also apparently served a third purpose: discotheque. On Dec. 3, a Boston police officer passing by noticed a raucous party underway, with two women gyrating on the counter while several men boogied away on the restaurant floor, according to a police report.

"I could see two young women dancing on the table counter," Lieutenant Detective Eric Eversley wrote in a police report. "Several men were dancing on the floor. Music was playing from a system behind the counter with at least two speakers attached to the corners of the ceiling."

He estimated that 18 people were inside; the restaurant's legal capacity is five customers. The Licensing Board issued a warning Jan. 25, records show.

Yesterday, West End Pizza was closed, dark, and quiet, metal gates pulled down over windows. Through the glass, a copy of the police search warrant was visible on the counter, sitting next to an appointment book, a stack of compact discs, and a bottle of TUMS.

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Movie angers real-life victims of mobster
Thursday March 08, 2007
By Julie Masis



BOSTON - While Martin Scorsese is feted by Hollywood for his Oscar-winning film The Departed, relatives of people killed or tortured by the real Boston Irish mobster on whom the movie is based are not applauding.

Some feel exploited by the film that won best picture and best director, saying it stirred up painful memories or glossed over crucial facts. Others simply refuse to see Hollywood's version of the life of fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger.

"The movie gives this hero worship to this creature," said Christopher McIntyre, 47, whose brother was murdered by Bulger's gang in 1984.

"For eight hours, they strapped him in a chair and cut pieces off him. He begged for a bullet in the brain," McIntyre said of his brother's death, adding that he still feels threatened by remnants of Bulger's gang and plans to leave Massachusetts.

He said he had not seen the film because it would be too painful.

The McIntyre family filed a federal lawsuit in 2001 that alleges FBI agents at the top levels of the Boston office knew of Bulger's crimes but protected him from prosecution because his gang acted as informants against the rival Italian mafia.


The FBI has declined to comment on the case, saying its investigation into Bulger is continuing.

Tim Connors, 32, whose father was gunned down by Bulger's gang in 1975, said he did not like the way Hollywood portrayed Bulger and his notorious Winter Hill gang which generated more than 60 convictions in about 30 cases.

"It glorified things way too much. Everybody is just trying to cash in on that story."

Howie Carr, author of the The Brothers Bulger, said that although the movie was set in the insular Irish-American South Boston enclave where Bulger lived, it missed a few salient points in the Bulger story.

In real life there were few if any redeeming characters such as the policeman played by Leonardo DiCaprio who infiltrates the gang and forms a close relationship with the larger-than-life mobster played by Jack Nicholson.

"There were no good guys in this saga," said Carr.

Carr's book explores how much state and city politicians knew about Bulger's gang, and whether they tolerated its years of bookmaking, drug peddling, extortion and murder while Bulger's brother, William, was a dominating force in state politics as Senate president.

David Wheeler, whose father was shot and killed by a hitman on Bulger's orders in 1981, criticisedthe film for glossing over the Government's involvement in Bulger'sgang.

"In my opinion it's a revisionist history that protects the guilty," he said. "I cannot see this movie. Itwould just be too painful."

In a 21-minute documentary on Bulger included in the DVD version of the film, which was released by Time Warner's Warner Brothers Pictures, Scorsese puts some distance between the character of Frank Costello, played by Nicholson, and the real-life Boston gangster.

"In no way do we say that Francis Costello is patterned after Whitey Bulger. But let me put it this way: we felt comfortable in the character and in the situation because we know it to be true."

- REUTERS

Ex-hitman looks to lead quiet life
John Martorano to return to Hub after prison term


John Martorano's plans are 'just to mind his own business,' said his brother, James.

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | March 20, 2007

He was one of the most notorious hitmen in Boston mob history. He became the first in a rogues gallery of underworld figures to turn government witness against gangsters James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and their corrupt FBI handlers.

On Thursday, 66-year-old John Martorano is to become a free man after killing 20 people and serving 12 years and two months in an undisclosed federal prison out of state.

He rejected an offer to join the federal witness protection program and has no qualms about returning to the Boston area, according to his brother, James.

"He just wants to keep his head down and be quiet and just get on with his life," James Martorano said in a telephone interview yesterday. His brother's plans are "just to mind his own business," James said.

Martorano's freedom and return to Boston, however, are a bitter pill for the families of his victims, who were gunned down in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Past coverage:
Archives The search for 'Whitey' Bulger (September 1988 - April 2004)
Archives For families of wrongly convicted, lost time (February 2007)

"I think it is a sad state of affairs where we have to turn to mob hitmen to find the truth about our FBI," said David Wheeler, pointing out that the 1981 slaying of his father, Tulsa businessman Roger Wheeler, remained unsolved until Martorano confessed that he was the triggerman, acting on orders from Bulger and Flemmi.

Attorney James P. Duggan -- who represented the family of Boston financier John Callahan, another of Martorano's victims -- said, "How do any of us have any guarantees that he's not going to murder again? You know he's a serial murderer. You know he still has scores to settle. It's unconscionable, really, that he should be released."

John Martorano will remain under court supervision for five years. As part of his agreement with the government, Martorano will testify later this year at the Florida murder trial of former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., who is accused of plotting with Bulger and Flemmi in the 1982 gangland slaying of Callahan.

Under a plea agreement with state and federal prosecutors, Martorano was sentenced to 14 years in prison in June 2004 for killing 10 people in the Boston area in the 1970s on behalf of Bulger's gang, as well as racketeering, extortion, and money laundering. He also admitted killing eight people in the 1960s, but was never charged with those slayings. He pleaded guilty to Wheeler's killing in Oklahoma in 1981 and the related slaying of Callahan in Florida.

After getting credit for the time he spent in prison while awaiting trial since his January 1995 arrest on the federal racketeering charges, Martorano will finish his sentence this week.

Retired State Police Colonel Thomas Foley, who spearheaded the Bulger investigation, said that investigators and prosecutors wrestled over whether to cut a deal with Martorano, but agreed it should be done because he helped expose Bulger and Flemmi's murderous exploits and their corrupt relationship with FBI agents and a high-ranking retired State Police lieutenant.

"No one knows what the future holds, but if we felt he was going to be a danger and continue to go out and do what he was doing, we wouldn't have gone along with" the deal, Foley said.

He also said that Martorano was not charged with any murders when he was arrested on federal racketeering charges in 1995 and that the 20 slayings had been unsolved until he came forward.

After Martorano and Flemmi were arrested in the 1995 racketeering case, the hitman learned during pretrial hearings that his longtime partners in crime, Bulger and Flemmi, were also longtime FBI informants who fed agents information on rivals in the Mafia and on his own friends, including Martorano. The betrayal prompted Martorano to become a powerful government witness.

His testimony helped lead to the 2002 racketeering conviction of Connolly, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaking information to Bulger and Flemmi and warning Bulger to flee just before Bulger's 1995 racketeering indictment.

Bulger remains one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted.
Past coverage:
Archives The search for 'Whitey' Bulger (September 1988 - April 2004)
Archives For families of wrongly convicted, lost time (February 2007)

Martorano's cooperation also helped prosecutors build a sweeping indictment charging Bulger and Flemmi with 19 slayings. Flemmi pleaded guilty to 10 murders, was sentenced to life in prison, and is now cooperating with the government.

Foley also credited Martorano's decision to cooperate with prompting other gangsters, including longtime Bulger deputy Kevin J. Weeks, to follow in his path and lead investigators to the secret graves of some of Bulger and Flemmi's victims.

Martorano, Flemmi, and Weeks are expected to testify when Connolly goes on trial Sept. 17 in Miami in the Callahan slaying. Martorano says Bulger and Flemmi enlisted him to kill Callahan after Connolly warned them that Callahan might implicate them in the Wheeler slaying.

Martorano was also credited with leading investigators to new evidence that helped Peter J. Limone and Joseph Salvati, who served more than 30 years in prison, prove that they had been wrongly convicted of a 1965 gangland murder. A ruling is due soon in a civil suit against the federal government filed on behalf of the two men and two others who died in prison, seeking more than $100 million in damages.

Weeks, who also rejected an offer to join the witness protection program, said Martorano never betrayed his friends. "The world is a different place today and with everything that has been exposed in this case people realize the complexity of the case and the choices that were made based on Bulger and Flemmi's betrayal," Weeks said yesterday.

Shelley Murphy can be reached at shmurphy@globe.com.