Last Rites (15 page)

C
HAPTER
8

W
HAT
'
S
L
EFT

In the decade that has followed since the mob war and the subsequent trials and convictions, much has changed in the New England mafia. No longer do you have the old-time street wise guys; today, they have a more corporate look about them. They still loan shark and run illegal bookmaking operations, but now it's on a much smaller scale. At the height of the mafia's power in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, there were approximately five thousand members. Today, that number is much lower. However, the real strength of the mob was never in the number of made guys there were. The real strength was in the number of connected guys who take orders from the made guys. These guys number in the tens of thousands. There are always young Turks willing to do low-level crimes and work their way up the ladder to make a name for themselves. This new breed of wise guy is neither as smart nor as forward thinking as his predecessors. The old-time gangster grew up in a particular culture under specific economic conditions with limited educational and employment opportunities. The old-timers didn't come to this country with the intention of taking over the criminal world. They came here to work and build a better life, and circumstances altered the course for a few of them.

Today, the replacements choose to be wise guys. The traditional mob structure is crumbling. It can be compared to the end of the Roman Empire. The wolf is at the door, so to speak, and it's not the federal government. Instead, it's the Russians, Albanians, Chinese and other ethnic groups taking over. They are also much more brutal and fearless of the authorities and the consequences of their crimes; they view our worst prison as the Four Seasons when compared to the prisons in their homeland. In Providence, the Latin Kings and Asian gangs have become fully entrenched in the metropolitan area over the last fifteen years. They are newcomers and don't have the same national or international reach as the mob, but they are relentless in their pursuit to gain power and recognition. Patriarca member Guglielmeti was caught on a wiretap grumbling about the mob of today. He said, “So, now I mean it's like, ah, a whore in the neighborhood—you know, you stand here long enough, we'll use her.”

Roughly during the same time that the Italian mob was at war with itself, a new and more violent Irish mob was on the rise in Charlestown. In 1992, George Sargent was brutally gunned down on a summer night outside a pizza parlor in Charlestown. He had provided information to police concerning criminal dealings in his neighborhood. The community left him lying in the street in a pool of his own blood and refused to cooperate with the police when questioned. In fact, no one even called the police. This was the code of silence that existed in Charlestown that had prevailed for decades. Between 1975 and 1992, the neighborhood had experienced forty-nine murders, thirty-three of which were never solved. The Irish mob was overrunning the small, heavily Irish community. These violent career criminals were preying on their own people. They had established a major PCP and cocaine distribution center. Because of the fierce ethnic tribalism that existed in this community, these criminals were able to operate with virtual impunity. When it became clear that Charlestown had a major drug problem, the DEA became involved. It joined forces with the Massachusetts State Police, the Boston Housing Police, the FBI, ATF and the U.S. Marshals.

After three long years of extensive investigations, they finally achieved tangible results. In order to find informants to help solve both the drug and murder cases, they arranged to protect witnesses who agreed to testify. The DEA even set up a hotline that allowed informants to stay completely anonymous. This went even further toward ending the tyranny that had held the residents hostage for so many years. In July 1994, forty defendants were indicted on charges including racketeering, murder, conspiracy, drug trafficking and armed robbery. One indictment charged that two of the defendants paid hired killers $5,000 to murder anyone who tried to encroach on their territory.

Today, the Irish mob has been replaced in Charlestown with yuppies and white-collar professionals looking to raise their families in historic quaint three-deckers with backyards the size of postage stamps. The DEA was effective in shutting down the Irish mob for good in Charlestown. It hasn't been that effective with the Italian mob. Angiulo said it best: “Crime doesn't pay unless it's organized.”

The other attack that the mafia has had to deal with is the affliction of drugs. Cocaine and heroin have made the mob a ton of money; however, they have hurt more than they have helped. Drug trafficking has spread chaos among the mob hierarchy and forced the mafia into Chapter Eleven. The old-timers never touched drugs; they didn't deal them and they especially didn't use them or tolerate anyone who did. From 1989 to 1995, the last mob war was riddled with heavy drug use by several of its members. Had these men not been involved with narcotics during this time frame, the rogue faction may have been more successful, the death toll may have been much lower and the end result would have been drastically different.

The other mitigating factors that have added to the mob's demise can be contributed to the neighborhoods that were once considered mob strongholds. Neighborhoods that were once unique for ethnic tribalism, fierce parochialism and partisan politics have changed.

When Jerry Angiulo was sentenced in 1986, the North End of Boston was almost 100 percent Italian-American; today, it is less than 40 percent. This exodus of people in the old neighborhoods left a vacuum that was filled by immigrants of other nationalities. Another factor is that the Generation X gangsters don't adhere to the old rules. They scoff at the old rules, shoot at their elders and grab the drug money as quick as it comes in. Years ago, these guys kept their mouths shut and served their time without complaint. Today, it doesn't matter whether a guy is facing one month or one thousand years; the first thought is,
can I give up some information to save myself ?

The original infrastructure of the American mafia that was established by Lucky Luciano was set up to insulate the bosses. The rules were made to establish order. Today, there is anarchy. The new generation has taken traditional mob values like loyalty, honor and family and bastardized them to their criminal ends. Loyalty has turned into betrayal. The FBI has been singing the death song of the American mob for quite some time, but it hasn't yet been able to kill it. The mob's ability to survive stems from its ability to reinvent itself. The average gangster is lost in a complex world of moral relativism, and like his postmodern contemporaries, he is overwhelmed and confused. Day after day, lines are blurring into one another. Roles are shifting, things are changing. Even in the mob, nobody knows what's what. The reality is that chaos reigns when rules should bring order. This brings to light the foolishness of a life in organized crime without the organization. This is the end result when you break the vows of the criminal covenant. Loyalty to an organization and its boss is what makes organized crime work. However, a loyalty rooted in fear will eventually collapse.

What the FBI and the government don't seem to understand is that there will always be someone to fill the place of the mobsters who are sent to prison. For some people, the routine of a normal life—that is, work, paying bills and living an honest life—is seen as the curse of the stupid and weak. These men are under the belief that money and pleasure bring happiness and contentment. They ignore the extreme guilt, paranoia and greed that gradually rip their lives apart.

On a cold January morning in 2005, David Achille, son of a capo in the Patriarca family, headed to a construction site in India Point Park, Providence, to settle a dispute over union job assignments. The Rhode Island State Police allege that David's father, Joseph Achille, received the order from top-level mobsters to shoot two laborers in the kneecaps. While the mob was getting ready to flex its muscle on the waterfront, state police were monitoring telephone calls. They were tipped off to a potential confrontation. They moved in and arrested David Achille and a union laborer. In Achille's car was a loaded handgun. Rhode Island State Police detectives say that they thwarted a potentially bloody confrontation at the job site. The father-and-son duo ended up pleading guilty to a variety of felony charges stemming from the aborted shooting; they are each currently serving a one-year sentence.

In 2008, federal prosecutors brought to light a remade New England mob, headed by Arthur Gianelli, a bookmaker, loan shark and money launderer who looks more like Gordon Gekko in
Wall Street
. The FBI refers to the Gianelli crew or gang as the Gianelli Group. Gianelli is the brother-in-law of ex–federal agent John Connolly. It appears that Gianelli's men opted for betting slips rather than computers. They control illegal gaming machines, football cards, offshore betting in Costa Rica and other racketeering enterprises. During his trial, it came out that Boston Bruin Hall of Famer Gerry Cheevers took a loan from Gianelli that was brokered through Phil Castinetti, who is from Revere and owns Sportsworld, the largest sports memorabilia store in New England. The interest rate on Cheevers's loan was 150 percent. It seems that Cheevers defaulted on the loan and Gianelli dispatched mob enforcer Phil Puopolo to Castinetti to ensure that Cheevers paid. According to the prosecution, Gianelli committed hundreds of crimes that netted him millions of dollars. This made it harder for him to launder.

All loan sharking took place with the blessing of New England underboss Carmen “Cheeseman” DiNunzio, who lives in East Boston and spends his days working in the North End at his cheese shop, Fresh Cheese. There, he meets with people, and on occasion he also meets with Manocchio at a restaurant in the suburbs. In 1992, he and his brother Anthony, along with nine other men, were indicted for racketeering and extortion. They attempted to take over an Indian gaming hall. A year later, he pled guilty to the extortion count, which included shaking down a Las Vegas gambler for $27,000. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations in Boston has seemed to abandon all ethical pretense. From the handling of Joseph “the Animal” Barboza to the mess created by the Whitey Bulger case, there has been an erosion of trust that has weakened the faith of the American people in its top law enforcement agency. Indeed, an alarming number of cultural problems has exploded in our country since 1960, and it appears that the FBI has been plagued by them as well. Our standards of morality expressed in our laws and customs have been relaxed, abandoned or judicially overruled. The FBI has been besieged by scandal concerning its methods of crime fighting in recent years. The devil's deal that agent Connolly entered into with Bulger and Flemmi is questionable, at best. The ethical and constitutional questions that these cases raise are alarming. Then, a federal judge orders the DEA to inform Gigi as to whether a tracking device was implanted in him, and we are to take their word on the matter. In June 1999, when the
New York Times
asked the FBI if it had ever used such a tracking device, interestingly, Paul Bresson, bureau spokesman, stated, “This is going to fall into the no comment department.”

We rationalize and justify abhorrent behavior under the umbrella that these men are criminals and therefore the end justifies the means. That mentality will have every citizen in this country handing over his or her civil liberties for law and order. These cases give us a glimpse into the character and quality of our top law enforcement agencies' and agents' morality. Uninhibited by the restraints of public appearance, the agents are able to obtain a practiced level of deceit. Without reasonable and responsible limits on law enforcement agencies, their actions will destroy individual lives and, eventually, the fabric of civilized society. Conventional wisdom dictates that morality cannot be legislated or indoctrinated through policy. The complex question that arises then is whether a common standard of morality is even possible, and if it is, how important is it to the fabric of our society? Discussing this controversial issue is like marching through a minefield of objection. The FBI's decision to cover up the scandals seems to be plausibly logical, considering its stake in the matter. To single out agents like John Connolly as villains is to ignore the extraordinarily powerful culture and political forces that have long dominated the FBI. Their often illegal actions are an abuse of power and border on obstruction of justice. This seemingly unprecedented behavior is especially bothersome. Scorn and ridicule are the backlash of years of secret deals. Although it may seem like an elusive ideal to instill some outside monitoring of these agencies and their policies concerning the handling of informants, a moral compass must be established. Despite outside pressure and political limitations, the inescapable conclusion is that the FBI will be stigmatized and have its informants' information undermined for some time, despite a professed willingness to succumb to closer monitoring and a change in policies. These are not grand expectations or elusive ideals, but rather an imperfect system attempting to adjust for the greater good.

The FBI's government misconduct mainly centers on mob snitch Whitey Bulger, who has been an informant since 1970. Another informant was Robert “Bobby” Donati, a driver for Capo Vincent “the Animal” Ferrara, who was found stabbed to death in his white Cadillac in 1991. The next disturbing deal concerned Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurant, a made member of the Patriarca family. He pled guilty to gambling charges and received only a ten-month sentence. We can only speculate as to the information that he gave the FBI for an easy sentence like that. His co-conspirator, Robert “Bobby” Deluca, received five years. Obviously, he wasn't working with the government. Angelo “Sonny” Mercurio was believed to have helped the FBI bug the mafia induction ceremony. His alleged informant status was kept secret from a federal judge. This was also one of the biggest FBI surveillance coups in history. Besides Connolly, there were alleged questionable actions carried out by agent Paul Rico and Dennis Condon, not to mention how many retired or deceased agents were involved in the coverup of the Deegan case.