Animal

by Casey Sherman

  “Did I intend to? Yes,” Barboza replied.

  After concluding his testimony, Joe walked over to the defense table, looked into Patriarca’s eyes, and simply smiled. He knew that his words had inflicted pain. In a period of only two months, Barboza had become a much more polished witness. He had nothing more to hide, nothing for the lawyers to use against him. He was a matter-of-fact killer who did the deadly bidding of more powerful men like Henry Tameleo and Raymond Patriarca. Still, the defense attorneys held onto their belief that the jury would not convict their clients based primarily on the testimony of a man like Barboza. In light of this, they decided to rest their case without calling any witnesses.

  “His story is just a fiction that is made up in cold calculation, in cold blood of which he himself said he was capable,”149 Balliro told the jury during his closing argument. “The case boils down to whether or not you believe Baron [Barboza]. You have ample reason not to believe him.”

  U.S. Attorney Paul Markham agreed with Balliro that Barboza was no angel.

  “The world would be a better place without the Joe Barons,” Markham admitted to the jury before pointing over to the defendants.150 “If you didn’t have Raymond Patriarca, you wouldn’t have the Joe Barons. Who is worse, the fellow who opens the door for the killers or the man who kills?”

  Markham then implored the jury to discount the argument that Barboza’s testimony was a work of fiction. “His story is too implausible not to be true!”

  The jury was handed the case on the fourth day of the trial. To prevent jurors from getting lost in the mire of gray areas, Judge Francis J. W. Ford instructed them to deliver a guilty verdict if Barboza’s testimony was to be believed. But if the panel had any reason to doubt the Animal’s veracity, it would have to allow Raymond Patriarca and the others to walk.

  Joe was sent back to the basement storage room to await the verdict. Since the Angiulo verdict had been decided quickly, Barboza prayed for a lengthy deliberation, as it would increase the likelihood of a guilty verdict. Four long hours went by before John Partington was called up to the twelfth-floor courtroom.

  “This is it,” he told Barboza, who was too nervous to respond. He paced around the storage room like the caged animal he was. If he couldn’t send Patriarca to prison, Barboza had no doubt that the FBI would throw him to the wolves. Minutes later, the door of the storage room opened and in walked John Partington. The lanky marshal could not conceal the smile that matched perfectly with his soft, blue eyes. “Guilty on all counts!” he shouted.151

  Barboza waved his beefy arms over his head as though he’d just won the heavyweight title. He launched himself into the air and screamed, “We did it! We did it!”

  The immediate jubilation eventually subsided, and Joe allowed himself a moment to reflect on what he had done. His eyes began to well with tears. He thought of the friends that had died or been maimed for him. He thought of the trials he had put his wife and daughter through. He thought of the man he had once respected and now reviled. The Portuguese kid from New Bedford had beaten the Mafia at its own crooked game. But he still had a few more scores to settle.

  Partington handed him a marshal’s uniform and told him to put it on. He had to keep Joe alive for trial number three, and deception was still the key. Barboza changed into the clothes and was given an M-1 rifle—unloaded, of course.

  “You’ll pretend to guard one of the real guards, who’ll pretend to be you,” Partington told him.152 Another marshal fitting Barboza’s build and hair color put on Joe’s suit jacket and kept his head low.

  “All right, Barboza you asshole, keep moving,” Joe said as he nudged his decoy forward.

  On the day of his sentencing, Raymond Patriarca asked to speak before the court. He was not happy with his defense strategy and wanted everyone to know it. “Your honor, I got something to say. It may be out of line. I had my witnesses here but counsel said it wasn’t necessary to use them. If we had used my witnesses it might be different.”153

  Both the Mafia boss and his legal counsel had underestimated Barboza, and now Patriarca was going to pay a hefty price. The judge sentenced all three men to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Tameleo was shipped back to the Charles Street Jail to await the Deegan murder trial, and Ronnie Cassesso was sent back to Norfolk Prison Colony, where he would first have to serve out the remainder of a sentence for armed robbery.

  Raymond Patriarca would begin his prison term a year later, after his appeal was denied. John Partington escorted the Mafia boss on a plane from Rhode Island to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. Partington the “boy scout” had gotten the last laugh.

  19

  The Lying Game

  Everybody lies a little sometimes

  B.B. KING

  The Patriarca verdict was a watershed moment in the federal government’s war on organized crime. For the first time in history, a major Mafia figure had been taken down solely by the testimony of one of his men. It proved the FBI’S theory that the only way to defeat La Cosa Nostra was to destroy it from within. The significance of the verdict and the Animal’s contribution was not lost on those in the thick of the battle. “The case in the main depended on his [Barboza] credibility,” U.S. Attorney Paul Markham told reporters. “The jury obviously believed him, believed him 100 percent. It was a significant victory. To put it in a negative way, if we didn’t win it, it would be all over.”154 Much of the credit went to Paul Rico and Dennis Condon. U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark wrote a personal letter to J. Edgar Hoover, stating, “The recent conviction of New England Cosa Nostra leader Raymond Patriarca and two of his cohorts is one of the major accomplishments in the Organized Crime Drive Program. Without the outstanding work performed by Special Agents Dennis Condon and H. Paul Rico these convictions could not have been obtained.”155 Rico was recommended for a quality salary increase, while Condon was given a $150 incentive award for “skillfully handling an important government witness whose cooperation was vital to the conviction of Patriarca and his two associates.” While praise was being heaped on Condon and Rico, Joe Barboza was stuck at Freshwater Cove feeling angry and underappreciated. He was upset that Markham and other members of the prosecution team did not personally thank him for his role in the trial. Barboza once again threatened to shop on the other side of the street. “While these people don’t want to show their appreciation, I’m sure that Joe Balliro would show his appreciation to me,” he told Condon and Rico.

  Donald Barboza visited his brother at Freshwater Cove after the Patriarca verdict. Donald had brought their father along. Joe Barboza, Sr., and his namesake had been waging a cold war against each other for decades. The son was angry that the father had virtually abandoned the family during his youth, while the father was upset that the son had changed both his religion and his name.

  “Why’d you have to do that?” Donald asked Joe.

  “I did it for my Stacy,” Joe replied. “She’ll never get a fair shot in life with the last name Barboza. There’s too much history there. If she’s raised Jewish and if she has a different name, she just may be given a fair chance.”156

  With Barboza on edge and on the fence about testifying in the upcoming Deegan trial, Condon and Rico paid a hospital visit to attorney John Fitzgerald, who was still recovering from massive injuries sustained in the car bombing a few months prior. The lawyer would spend a full year in the hospital, and it would take several more years before he felt safe enough to get into a car that had not already been started by someone else. On the day of the FBI visit, Fitzgerald was angry and ready to exact some revenge of his own. He told Condon and Rico that he would testify in the Deegan trial if it reached a critical point where his words might mean the difference between a conviction and letting the suspects walk free. He also pledged to write a letter to his client Barboza, urging him to continue the war on the mob and send as many gangsters to prison as possible.

  The Animal had already bitten off the serpent’s head in the convic
tion of Patriarca, and he now felt that the FBI owed him a debt of gratitude. Claire was now pregnant with the couple’s second child and feeling ill. Joe pressed the marshals to have her and Stacy brought to a military base, where doctors would be readily available. The request was denied, so Joe penned a letter to Bobby Kennedy himself to complain about his treatment since being taken into federal custody. There is no telling if Kennedy ever received the letter, as he was now in the full throes of a presidential campaign. RFK had entered the race on March 16, 1968, just eight days after the government’s victory against Patriarca, Kennedy’s “pig on the hill.” RFK’S real launching point came after U.S. senator Hubert Humphrey’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. Seeing that Johnson was vulnerable, Kennedy entered the race. The president then stunned the nation by announcing that he would not seek re-election, leaving RFK and Humphrey locked in a heated battle for delegates. Bobby Kennedy’s political philosophy had evolved greatly since his days as a hard-charging, mob-baiting, union-busting government lawyer. The times had changed, and Kennedy had changed with them.

  RFK made no public statements following the conviction of Raymond Patriarca. His focus now was on ending the war in Vietnam and closing the economic and racial gaps that existed in the United States. Still, the guilty verdict must have been music to Kennedy’s ears. Only a year before, RFK had discussed the Mafia boss with John Partington as the two drove to a funeral Mass for Rhode Island congressman John E. Fogarty in Providence. “How do we get that bum on the hill?” Kennedy asked Partington, who had been given the assignment of chauffeuring the senator from the airport to the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.157 Kennedy talked about Joe Valachi and how his testimony before congress had forced the Mafia out of the shadows. Still, more must be done, Kennedy told the young marshal. Partington agreed wholeheartedly but was surprised to learn shortly after their conversation that he had been named to lead the newly formed Witness Protection Program. Partington never asked but certainly believed that Kennedy had been influential in landing him the new position.

  “So thanks to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there,” RFK told an adoring crowd of supporters who had packed themselves inside the Embassy Room ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to hear his victory speech after winning the California and South Dakota primary elections. Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy and his security detail followed the hotel maitre d’ toward a back exit through the kitchen, where employees lined both sides of the passageway for a chance to shake the candidate’s hand. Kennedy smiled and waved to his well wishers and then stopped and turned around to look for his wife, Ethel, whom he feared had gotten separated in the crush of people chanting, “We want Bobby! We want Bobby!” At that moment, a Jordanian citizen and long-time California resident named Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward from the crowd and raised a snub-nosed pistol to the back of Kennedy’s head. The assassin fired several shots; the most damaging entered Kennedy’s brain through the back of his right ear. The candidate fell backward onto the floor.

  Kennedy remained conscious for a few moments while emergency responders placed him on a stretcher. Ethel ran her fingers gently over her husband’s face and chest as he closed his eyes for the last time. He was rushed to Central Receiving Hospital just a short distance from the Ambassador Hotel. Once doctors there obtained a good heartbeat, he was transferred to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan for surgery. The Kennedy family held vigil at the hospital through the night and the next day. RFK had been shot three times: once in the head and twice behind his right armpit. He never regained consciousness and his condition deteriorated as the hours ticked away. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968.

  Some 3,018 miles away from Los Angeles, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Joe Barboza and John Partington were stunned by the news. Unlike most mobsters, who saw Bobby Kennedy as their Public Enemy Number One, Barboza had great admiration for the young Democrat. Partington, however, felt as if he had lost a friend, which he had. A few weeks earlier, Kennedy had asked the U.S. Marshal Service to allow Partington to provide security for him at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago should he win the nomination. The marshal wished that Kennedy had made the request sooner, as he might have been in position to protect the candidate at the Ambassador Hotel. Instead, he vowed to continue RFK’S legacy by protecting those dangerous men who were willing to turn their backs on La Cosa Nostra.

  What Partington did not know was that this part of Kennedy’s legacy was also his dirty little secret. As attorney general, RFK had been a champion of the CIA’S Operation Mongoose, which was designed to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Through this support, Kennedy had shown that he was willing to eliminate foreign enemies of the state by any means necessary. One is left to question whether he would have approved of the tactics now being employed by the FBI to destroy a domestic enemy such as the Mafia. Special agents Rico and Condon had spent years circumventing the laws of the United States in an effort to gain an edge against a foe they believed was more of a threat to the American way of life than Fidel Castro could ever be. If this was indeed a war against organized crime, the agents were prepared to fight in the trenches using the same methods as their adversaries. Rico had already proved that he was willing to commit murder by helping to set up rivals of the Winter Hill Gang for Buddy McLean. Now he was ready to send men to their deaths for a crime they did not commit, and Joe Barboza would be his weapon.

  Jury selection for the Deegan murder trial had begun in late May 1968. The names of the jurors were printed in the newspaper, a practice outlawed today for fear of reprisal from either side of the case. Robert L. Vacha from Dorchester was the first member chosen. Some 750 prospective jurors were interviewed over twenty-four days before both sides settled on a panel of fourteen men and two women. During his opening statement, Assistant Suffolk County district attorney Jack Zalkind told the jury that $7,500 was the price tag for the murder of Teddy Deegan, with another $2,500 thrown in to kill Deegan’s friend Anthony “Tony Stats” Stathopoulos, who would provide them with bone-chilling testimony about the night of the murder. More testimony would be provided by Joe Barboza, the star witness in the case, who had recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the murder of Deegan and conspiracy to commit murder with regard to Stathopoulos. Like Barboza, Tony Stats had been isolated in protective custody in the weeks leading up to the trial. He had been transported to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, where he was kept under the watchful eye of two detectives from the district attorney’s office. Unlike Barboza, who had told him to “fuck those Guinea bastards,” Tony Stats was not sure he was capable of sending innocent men to the electric chair. One of the detectives tried to ease his conscience. “Sometimes defendants can be convicted of a crime they didn’t do,” the detective said. “These are bad people anyway and are probably guilty of a lot worse crimes.”158

  Tony Stats knew full well what the Mafia was capable of. Mobsters had tried to poison his food in prison and had set him up for a hit on a lonely road in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It was for this reason that he had himself placed in protective custody. Like Barboza, he knew the feds would cast him aside and let him fend for himself if he didn’t testify.

  Shortly before the trial, Tony Stats was taken to a Boston hotel for a clandestine meeting with prosecutor Jack Zalkind. The assistant district attorney, dressed in a baseball cap, shorts, and sunglasses, told Stathopoulos he wanted him to testify that Louis Grieco was the man who came out of the alley with the gun, not Barboza. Also at issue was whether the gun was in his right or left hand when he came out of the alley. Tony Stats had made previous statements that the gunman who emerged from the alley had carried the pistol in his right hand. That could be potentially dangerous at trial, as Grieco was left-handed. Zalkind ordered Stats to change his testimony and tell the jury that the gunman carried his weapon in his left hand. Zalkind also told him to testify that the gunman walked with a pronounced limp,
as Grieco did from an injury he had sustained in World War II. Stathopoulos was unsure. “These motherfuckers are trying to kill you,” the D.A. reminded him. “And if you do anything to fuck up this case, the name Zalkind will stick in your throat like cancer.”159

  Stathopoulos testified for the prosecution, but his words were overshadowed by those of Joe Barboza, who took the stand in early July 1968 as a stifling heat wave swept through Boston. The Red Sox had just begun an eight-game winning streak, but the city’s attention was focused on the Suffolk Superior Courthouse. As with the Patriarca trial, John Partington made sure that the proper security measures were in place. He had all the shades on the courthouse windows drawn so a sniper could not line up Barboza in his crosshairs from a nearby building. Partington also foiled the attempt of a contract killer who posed as a drunk to get himself arrested and brought inside the courthouse, hoping that he might have the chance to cross paths with the Animal. Barboza testified that he met with Jerry Angiulo’s bodyguard, Peter Limone, during the winter of 1965 in the North End, and that Limone told him that Deegan was being targeted for murder because he had robbed the wrong man and had killed another; Anthony Sacramone, who had close ties to the Office.

  “Limone told me there’s $7,500 in it if I could kill Deegan or have him killed,” Barboza told the jury. “I said I’d look into it, but I wanted to speak to Henry [Tameleo] first.”160

  On the okay of Tameleo, Barboza told the jury he then assembled a hit squad that included Roy French, Louis Grieco, and Joe Salvati as the getaway driver. He also said that the gang was loaded for bear when they lured Deegan to the Chelsea finance company on the night of the murder. Barboza rattled off a laundry list of high-powered weapons that included two .357 Magnum handguns, three .38 revolvers, and a .45 pistol. The men also carried an M1 carbine in case they were forced to shoot it out with police.161 Barboza told the jury that he did not witness the murder because he, Chico Amico, and Ronnie Cassesso had been forced to flee when Chelsea police captain Joe Kozlowski spotted their vehicle near the scene. Barboza said that the trio returned to the Ebb Tide Lounge, where Roy French turned up later with blood stains on his clothes and shoes.