Where the Bodies Were Buried (58 page)

I AM INDEBTED
to the following people for helping me locate sources, separate fact from fiction, and come to a deeper understanding of the hard truths surrounding the Age of Bulger: Raymond Flynn, Mary Lafferty, Ciaran Staunton, James Flynn, Kevin Weeks, Patrick Nee, Teresa Stanley, Bobo Connolly, Tommy Lyons, Joseph Salvati, Anthony Cardinale, Harvey Silverglate, Paul Griffin, Robert Fitzpatrick, Thomas Foley, Richard Marinick, Frannie White, John Martorano, Jimmy Martorano, Steve Davis, Marilyn Di Silva, John Connolly, Howie Carr, Michelle McPhee, Edward Mahoney, Richard Stratton, and Janet Uhlar.

My time living in Boston for the duration of the trial was greatly enhanced by people who helped with logistics, accommodations, and leisure activities, most notably Michael Habicht, Paul Spatachini, Charlie Lo Grasso, Jill Mantineo Macone, Frank DePasquale, David Duggan at the Bricco Suites, Guy Mirisola at Mirisola's restaurant in South Boston, David Riccio, owner of Caffé Vittoria in the North End, and Michael Uiskey, esteemed bartender at the Seaport Hotel. Also, special thanks to Sophia Banda, my personal assistant at the time, who tended to matters back in New York City while I was away.

Researching and writing a book that is complex and densely researched requires understanding and support from family and friends. At the end of writing a book like this, I am sometimes surprised I still have friends, given the all-consuming nature of the project. For hanging in there, I would like to thank Teresita Levy, Benjamin Lapidus, Mike English, Stephanie English, Christina Lorenzatto, Sandra English, Suzanne Damore, Chris Damore, Valerie Anne Garcia, Valentin Sandoval, Jack Brown, Patrick Farrelly, Kate O'Callaghan, and others who have stayed the course.

The journey from rough manuscript to finished book requires contributions from many people. My agent, Nat Sobel, and his assistants at Sobel Weber Inc. play an integral role in facilitating my work. At William
Morrow, I am indebted to Cal Morgan and to David Highfill, who edited the manuscript with a steady hand. Thanks also to Danielle Bartlett and others in the Publicity Department.

Most everyone has some activity that helps him or her deal with the stress of a major project that seems as though it will never end. For me it is music, both as a listener and as an amateur percussionist. The spirit of the drum has a soothing power that serves as a soundtrack for many of my adventures, for which I sometimes turn to Elegua, the spirit of journeys and passageways, to guide me along the road to completion.

INTRODUCTION

¹
The judge at the Deegan murder trial was Felix Forte, seventy-three years old at the time. For a more detailed account of the trial, see: Jan Goodwin, “Justice Delayed: The Exoneration of Joseph Salvati,”
Readers Digest
, March 2008.

²
Connolly may yet get the final word on his conviction in Florida. In May 2014, the state's Third District Court of Appeal ruled that Connolly's conviction should be thrown out on the basis that the government used a gun possession charge against him that violated the statute of limitations. The government has appealed the decision. Connolly, age seventy-four, remained in prison during the appeal, but if the Florida Supreme Court affirms the decision, his second-degree murder conviction will be overturned and he will be released.

1. THE HAUNTY

¹
T. J. English,
Paddy Whacked
(New York: Harper, 2006), pp. 315–16, chapter titled “Irish v. Irish.”

²
According to U.S. penal code, Title 18, Part 1, accessory after the fact is defined as “Whoever, knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact.” The federal statute of limitations is five years from the time of the crime.

³
On April 8, 2015, after a sixteen-day trial at the Moakley Courthouse, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of having perpetrated the bombing. Five weeks later, after deliberating more than fourteen hours over three days, the jury decided unanimously to give Tsarnaev the death penalty.

2. CURSE OF THE COWRITER

¹
Kevin Weeks and Phyllis Karas,
Brutal
(New York: William Morrow, 2007), p. 248.

²
Thomas J. Foley and John Sedgwick,
Most Wanted
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), p. 12.

3. THE O'BRIEN FAMILY BUSINESS

¹
In the lead-up to the Bulger trial, two biographies of the gangster were published with mostly identical biographical information:
Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss,
by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill; and
Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice,
by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. All of these writers were at one time reporters for the
Boston Globe
who covered the Bulger story.

²
Weeks and Karas,
Brutal,
p. 186.

4. DEMON SEED

¹
The book
Barboza,
by Joseph Barboza with Hank Messick (New York: Dell, 1975), is an entertaining though highly specious account of Barboza's career as a gangster. A more credible depiction of Barboza is to be found in
Animal,
by Casey Sherman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2013).

²
The circumstances surrounding the murder of Teddy Deegan and details of the FBI's culpability in the matter remained largely unknown until 2001, when the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sought to access documents as part of a congressional investigation into the FBI's use of criminal informants. That investigation resulted in a report titled “Everything Secret Degenerates,” which is the most complete picture that exists of the bureaucratic corruption surrounding the use of Barboza and the Flemmi brothers as informants.

³
In keeping with his vaunted reputation as a “hands on” overseer, J. Edgar Hoover signed off on this memo and all others related to the handling of the Flemmi brothers and Barboza.

In occasional directives to the bureau's various SACs, Hoover made clear that the use of criminal informants was a high-priority initiative, and he was diligent bordering on obsessive in his monitoring of the program. The repurcussions of Hoover's complicity in the Barboza era and beyond are detailed in an extraordinary 2007 report issued by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, in response to
Peter J. Limone, et al. v. United States of America
, the lawsuit filed by Joe Salvati and others after it was revealed they had been framed for the Teddy Deegan murder.

5. JUDAS UNBOUND

¹
Foley and Sedgwick,
Most Wanted,
p. 210.

8. WHITEY AND COCAINE

¹
The Underboss
was reissued in 2002, with a new introduction by co-author Dick Lehr. As with previous publications of the book, there were no footnotes nor even a cursory explanation of sources, though it is reasonable to assume that the book is based on law enforcement sources deep inside the Angiulo investigation. Lehr refers to
The Underboss
and
Black Mass
as “companion pieces,” with the former “still standing as a story of a remarkable bugging operation,” and the latter as “a larger history of a band of FBI agents in Boston who lost their way and, in effect, became gangsters themselves.”

9. SURROGATE SON

¹
Weeks and Karas,
Brutal,
p. 186.

²
Weeks and Karas,
Brutal,
pp. xi–xii.

10. THE HOLY GRAIL

¹
Even though H. Paul Rico, by the time of his death, was under indictment for murder and had been thoroughly disgraced, he still had his defenders. In 2012, two retired FBI agents and a former Los Angeles police officer published an ebook titled
Rico: How Politicians, Prosecutors and the Mob Destroyed One of the FBI's Finest Agents
. An obsequious defense of a man the authors describe as a “hero,” the book sought to discredit the Wolf hearings, the House committee hearings, Sergeant Mike Huff, and anyone else who might have played a role in exposing Rico's misdeeds over the years. The fact that there were people still willing to act as staunch advocates for Rico, even after his death, was an indication of how such a notorious figure had been able to function and even flourish within a myopic law enforcement culture.

12. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

¹
In 2014, federal investigators leaked to local Boston media an updated assessment of the Mafia hierarchy in New England. Vincent Ferrara was not mentioned, suggesting, as Ferrara himself has claimed, that he is retired. The man federal authorities now claim is boss of the New England mafia is none other than Peter J. Limone, the man who, along with Joe Salvati, was falsely convicted for the murder of Teddy Deegan in 1968.

²
A seminal event in the Bulger saga that was, curiously, only mentioned in passing during Flemmi's testimony was a dinner meeting that took place at the home of Steve Flemmi's mother. At this meeting were Flemmi, Bulger, FBI agents Connolly, Morris, and Jim Ring, who had recently taken over as head of the C-3 squad. Also present as a special guest was former agent Joe Pistone, whose exploits as an undercover agent who penetrated the Mafia would be lionized in the movie
Donnie Brasco
. It was an esteemed gathering, with the bosses of the Southie underworld socializing with the leaders of the FBI's organized crime squad in Boston. If that weren't enough, at one point Senator Billy Bulger, who lived across the courtyard from Mrs. Flemmi, entered the room so that he could view a program on Mrs. Flemmi's television. If Billy Bulger thought it was strange to see this unusual mix of good guys and bad guys dining together, he did not say so. In fact, years later, when called to testify at congressional hearings, Billy Bulger claimed to have no memory of the occasion.

The wining and dining of Bulger and Flemmi became a tradition in the Boston division of the FBI. It was revealed at the 2008 Miami trial of John Connolly that before and after his retirement in 1990, his successor as informant handler, Special Agent Nicholas Gianturco, hosted dinner parties for Bulger and Flemmi at his home that were attended by other agents, with his two young children also present in the house. At the Connolly trial, it was alleged by witness Steve Flemmi that Gianturco and at least five other agents—Connolly, John Morris, John Newton, Mike Buckley, and Jack Cloherty—received cash bribe payments from the Bulger/Flemmi organization. Gianturco took the stand and denied the payments (as have all of the agents, except for Morris), but he admitted receiving gifts from Bulger—with John Connolly acting as middleman—that included a black briefcase, a bottle of cognac, and a Lladro vase. Testified Gianturco, “They were informants. Informants were important. You don't make organized crime cases without informants. They were giving us information about the Mafia.” Gianturco added that presents “didn't mean anything. They weren't getting any information from me. They weren't getting any assistance from me. Again, they were informants. They were important, and it just didn't mean anything to me other than a Christmas present.”

13. THE MUGGING OF FITZY

¹
The desire on the part of Bulger prosecutors to punish Robert Fitzpatrick continued after the trial was over. On April 30, 2015, Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak announced that Fitzpatrick was being indicted on six counts of perjury and six counts of obstruction of justice stemming from his testimony at the trial. Specifically, the indictment stated that Fitzpatrick had “knowingly made false and misleading declarations” in his retelling of criminal cases he was involved in previously in his career, most notably his claim that as a young FBI agent in Memphis he had been among the first to arrive at the scene of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and also that he had physically made the arrest of mafia boss Gennaro Angiulo at Francesca's restaurant in 1986. Fitzpatrick was arrested and brought handcuffed into court to face the charges. It was an astounding turn of events, and a seemingly blatant act of retaliation on the part of prosecutor Wyshak. Even
Boston Globe
columnist Kevin Cullen, who had ridiculed Fitzpatrick in print during his time on the stand, referred to the indictment as “vindictive.” Facing charges that could, upon conviction, result in up to sixteen years in prison, Fitzpatrick was slated to go to trial in fall 2015.