Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  One of Rico’s weaknesses as an agent was that he could be sloppy with paperwork and bureau protocol. He had been censured early in his career for minor infractions such as administrative errors, inadequate filling out of reports, and, on one occasions, failure to report that he had misplaced his weapon. It was not uncommon for an agent who was good at the important things like developing informants and solving big cases to be weak when dealing with administrative details required by the system. It was the job of a special agent in charge, or SAC, to pair up an agent with someone who complemented his skill set, which is how Rico wound up with Dennis Condon as his partner.

  Condon was from Charlestown, an upright Catholic who regularly attended Mass and never swore in public. He did not have Rico’s street skills, but he was good at paperwork and expert at handling the bureaucracy. Together, they were a dynamic duo.

  With Barboza, Rico and Condon had landed a big fish. Barboza was the most infamous mob turncoat in history, and would remain so until Sammy “the Bull” Gravano was used to take down mafia boss John Gotti in the early 1990s. Before he was finished, Barboza would be used as a witness in multiple trials, but the one where he was given an opportunity to truly prove his worth commenced in June 1967, when Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward “Ted” Harrington announced the indictment of Raymond Patriarca Sr. and two others on the charge of murder.

  With Barboza as the lead witness, it was a strong case, and Patriarca knew it. Through an underling, he communicated to Barboza’s lawyer that “the Office,” as mafia headquarters in Providence was known, would be willing to make a fifty-thousand-dollar payoff to Barboza to keep his mouth shut. When told of this offer, Barboza responded, “Tell Raymond to go fuck his mother in the mouth.”

  Predictably, the Mafia devised a counterresponse. The man enlisted to lead the charge was Barboza’s own friend, Steve Flemmi.

  No one in the Mob knew that Flemmi was a Top Echelon Informant, or that he had secretly met with Barboza at Walpole and talked him into testifying against the Mafia. All they knew was that he was a local gangster on the rise who would likely jump at the chance to prove his value to the Office. And so, Flemmi, playing both sides of the fence, took on the assignment from the Mafia of planting a bomb in the car of John E. Fitzgerald Jr., Barboza’s lawyer. Flemmi undertook the job with his partner, Frank Salemme, who did not know that Flemmi was a covert informant for the FBI.

  On the night of January 30, 1968, Barboza’s lawyer left his office in Everett, Massachusetts, got in his car, and turned the key in the ignition, which ignited an explosive device. The car went up in a ball of flames. Fitzgerald crawled from the vehicle. Among his many injuries, Fitzgerald’s right leg was severed at the knee, but he survived the attack.

  The bombing had been devised to intimidate Barboza and make him change his mind about testifying, but it had the opposite effect. More determined than ever, Barboza took the stand and testified against Raymond Patriarca, helping to bring about what was, at the time, the most significant conviction of a high-ranking mafia figure since Hoover became director.

  It was a huge victory for the bureau, and a major validation of Hoover’s creation of a Top Echelon Informant Program. In this case, federal prosecutors had been able to take down the Godfather from within, something that had never been done before.

  To call the conviction a feather in the caps of Rico and Condon would be an understatement. U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clarke 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.” Rico was given an immediate salary increase, and Condon received a $150 incentive award for “skillfully handling an important government witness whose cooperation was vital to the conviction of Patriarca and two associates.”

  The two agents did not have much time to bask in the glory of the Patriarca conviction. One month after the trial, it was announced that Barboza’s services as a witness would be utilized once again in what would become known as “the Deegan murder case.”

  Two years had passed since small-time hood Teddy Deegan was murdered in an alleyway outside the Lincoln National Bank in Chelsea. What had initially seemed like a minor case had grown in stature now that the main witness was Barboza, the man who took down the Mafia.

  The FBI and many local police officers had a good idea who was behind the Deegan murder. There was the secret gypsy wire transcript of Barboza and Jimmy the Bear Flemmi visiting Raymond Patriarca in Providence seeking authorization for the murder. Through street scuttlebutt and underworld intel, a composite picture had come into focus. One Chelsea cop had even come upon the getaway car that night and caught a glimpse, from behind, of the driver, whom he described as being partially bald. That was Jimmy Flemmi, a victim of male-pattern baldness from an early age. Through other witnesses, it was possible to establish that a total of six men had been involved, though none of the witnesses had seen the faces of the assailants.

  From the beginning of his cooperation, Barboza admitted to Rico and Condon that he had been an accomplice in the Deegan murder. He gave them an accurate account, including the fact that Jimmy Flemmi had initiated and been in on the planning of the murder and served as the getaway driver. Barboza also made it clear that, as a condition of his cooperation agreement, he would not testify against Jimmy Flemmi. Not only did Rico and Condon accept this condition, but they set about creating a version of the murder that would minimize Barboza’s involvement and leave Jimmy Flemmi out of it.

  The plan: Barboza would plead guilty to having played a role in the planning of the hit. Two men he identified as having been involved—Ronald Cassesso and Roy French—actually were participants in the murder. That left four others. Rico and Condon saw it as an opportunity to implicate two known mafia figures they had been trying to indict for years—Peter Limone and Enrico “Henry” Tameleo. These two men had nothing to do with the Deegan murder, but in the eyes of Rico and Condon they were probably guilty of other crimes and therefore fair game.

  That left two more accomplices to be named. They left that up to Barboza, who implicated two completely innocent men who just happened to be on his shit list: Louis Greco, a former boxer and bar owner who had once punched out an associate of his, and Joe Salvati, who owed Barboza four hundred dollars.

  With Salvati, the investigators had a problem. After creating their story of what had taken place that night and identifying Salvati as the getaway driver, they learned that there was an eyewitness identification from a Chelsea police officer: he had seen the getaway driver from behind, and the man was bald. Joe Salvati, of Sicilian extraction, had a full head of black hair. So a detail was added to Barboza’s confession that Salvati that night had worn a bald wig.

  All six of the men named by Barboza were arrested and indicted for the murder of Teddy Deegan.

  Pulling it off would not be easy. The case was being prosecuted in Suffolk County, not in federal court. They would not have Assistant U.S. Attorney Ted Harrington to help them stage manage Barboza’s testimony, as they had during the Patriarca trial. Ensuring that Barboza would be able to maintain such a complicated conspiracy would require due diligence from Rico and Condon.

  In later years, the two FBI agents would claim that they had little involvement in the Deegan prosecution, since it was not a federal case. Condon even took the stand as a witness at the trial and testified that he had not met with Barboza in the weeks and months leading up to the trial. This was a lie. Decades later, in FBI memos uncovered via court order, it was revealed that the agents had met with Barboza on twenty-one different occasions in the month before the trial. Getting Barboza to digest and remember the details of a false story that involved so many moving parts took a concentrated effort by the agents.

  And they weren’t the only ones: FB
I memos also showed that supervisors, deputy directors, and Hoover himself were kept abreast of every stage of this government conspiracy to frame four innocent men.

  In May 1968, the Deegan murder trial got under way. Already, the feds had suppressed exculpatory evidence and suborned perjury. Barboza took the stand, and at first his testimony was wobbly; then Rico, Condon, and other FBI agents showed up in court.

  Joe Salvati, seated at the defendants’ table, looked around with a mounting sense of horror. “You think a third-base coach has hand signals,” he noted, decades later. “You should have seen those agents giving hand signals to Barboza when he was on the witness stand.”

  Special Agent Condon, who came across as more professional than Rico, the street agent, testified on behalf of Barboza as a character witness. He reminded the jury how valuable Barboza’s testimony had been in the FBI’s ongoing war against the Mafia.

  Based on the testimony of Barboza, the six defendants were all found guilty. Four were given the death penalty; two others—including Joe Salvati—were given life in prison.

  On the heels of the Patriarca case, the FBI received international acclaim for yet another significant victory against the evils of organized crime. Both Rico and Condon received personal letters of acknowledgment from Hoover. But the agents realized they might have a problem. Nearly everyone in the Boston underworld knew that Barboza’s testimony was fraudulent and that innocent people had been framed. The Deegan case was a Pyrrhic victory, because keeping the truth hidden and maintaining the lie would involve more diligence for many years to come.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE Deegan murder trial, Special Agents Rico and Condon visited Steve Flemmi and his partner Frank Salemme at Salemme’s auto garage in Boston’s Roxbury section. Condon made a lighthearted reference to the convictions of the innocent men, and Salemme responded with anger, saying, “[Joe Salvati and the others] weren’t even there, and you know it.” Salemme’s father was a member of the Knights of Columbus; he knew that Condon was also a member of the Catholic fraternal organization. “You’re a fourth-degree knight. One of the commandments is ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.’ How do you expect to get through the pearly gates with St. Peter after you put that slob up there to tell his lies?”

  The vitriol that Rico and Condon received presented a sobering reality. The Big Lie was known or at least suspected by many in the criminal underworld. It put the agents in a defensive posture. Sure, the arrangement of cooperating with the government was wonderful for the informants, like Barboza, but what about those who were on the receiving end of such an outrageous injustice? These were the very kinds of people that Rico and Condon were always on the lookout to recruit. How could the system be trusted when agents and prosecutors were willing to engage in a level of treachery that put even innocent people at risk?

  It was now incumbent upon Rico and Condon to show that the informant arrangement was a two-way street, that they would be willing to reciprocate and protect criminals who cooperated with the government, secretly or otherwise.

  Two months after the confrontation with Cadillac Frank Salemme at the Roxbury garage, the agents learned that Flemmi, their Top Echelon Informant, and Salemme were about to be indicted for their role in the bombing of lawyer Fitzgerald’s car. Flemmi was also soon to be indicted for the murder of Edward “Wimpy” Bennett, a rival gangster. Here was an opportunity for Rico and Condon to show that they knew how to protect their informants.

  Flemmi was in bed one morning when he received a call from Paul Rico: “You and your partner are about to be arrested and indicted. You better get out of town as soon as you can.”

  Flemmi thanked Rico for the info, and then he and Salemme fled.

  This tip-off had consequences for the agents. Because Steve Flemmi was now designated as a fugitive from the law, he was automatically closed as a Top Echelon Informant.

  Flemmi went to Nevada and then Montreal and was not seen in Boston for five years. Salemme also went to Nevada, then branched off on his own and hid out in New York City.

  While on the run, Flemmi kept in touch with Paul Rico. Occasionally, he called Rico at the FBI office, usually via pay phone from some far-flung location. To the secretary, Flemmi identified himself as “Jack from South Boston.” It was not uncommon for agents to receive unusual calls, tips from informants or others who did not want to offer many details about why they were calling. Eventually, Jack from South Boston became a familiar caller. Rico would sit in his office, maybe chewing on a sandwich, while he chatted with a fugitive from the law who was wanted by his own FBI.

  Meanwhile, Joe Barboza’s partnership with the U.S. criminal justice system continued. He testified at another big case, a murder trial that involved Jerry Angiulo and two others. The case ended in an acquittal for Angiulo. Barboza’s role as a witness had been tarnished somewhat, but the government was already deeply entangled with the Animal. The degree to which agents and prosecutors were willing to go to protect Barboza was extreme, and it would become instrumental in understanding later events that shaped the era of Whitey Bulger.

  In 1969, Barboza became the first person initiated into the newfangled federal witness protection program. Along with his wife and three kids, he was relocated to Santa Rosa, California, under the name of Joseph Bentley. He was there for one year before he returned to Boston, in violation of the terms of the program.

  In May 1970, he met secretly with an associate of Raymond Patriarca and indicated that, for a price of five hundred thousand dollars, he would recant his trial testimony. He also contacted the famous criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He told Bailey that he was ready to sign an affidavit declaring that he had committed perjury at the Deegan murder trial, and that four of the men convicted were innocent, and that FBI agents Rico and Condon had assisted him in his fabricated testimony.

  Barboza had become—to put it mildly—a loose cannon.

  And then, suddenly, on the night of July 17, while driving in his hometown of New Bedford, he got pulled over by a local police officer and was found to have guns and marijuana in his car. He was arrested and thrown in Walpole state prison.

  Of the many people who had become concerned by Barboza’s increasingly unpredictable behavior, first in line were members of the New England Organized Crime Strike Force. Even more so than Rico and Condon, the Strike Force, headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ted Harrington, had much to lose if the Deegan murder convictions were ever thrown out. Among other things, it could possibly lead to the overturning of the conviction of Raymond Patriarca, which stood as the single greatest achievement of federal prosecutors in New England. Careers had been made off that prosecution, and to think that it could fall apart or be discredited in any way required damage control at the highest levels.

  On August 28, Harrington met with Barboza at Walpole prison, and later, in a memo to FBI Director Hoover, he wrote:

  [Barboza] stated that it was his original intention to inveigle members of the underworld into giving him money on the pretext that he would recant his testimony given in previous trials and that, when he received the money, he would leave the area without recanting.

  Within weeks of this memo, the charges against Barboza were dropped. But before Barboza was released from custody, his benefactors had an even more serious problem on their hands. In California, where Barboza had lived under a false identity for a year before returning to Boston, he had murdered someone. In Sonoma County, Barboza was indicted and, in February 1971, he was extradited to California to face trial on a first-degree murder charge.

  A reasonable person might ask: why didn’t the FBI and prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts wash their hands of Joe “the Animal” Barboza? Obviously, he was a dangerous recidivist criminal.

  The answer is that the agents and lawyers were wedded to Barboza. In the Deegan case, they had knowingly been party to a grave injustice, and as long as Barboza was disgruntled, or in a jam, there was the potential that he would expose their
entire conspiracy of deception.

  In California, the case against Barboza was strong. The local prosecutor had an eyewitness to the murder, in which Barboza killed a man in a dispute over stolen security bonds. Barboza’s defense was that he didn’t do the shooting; the entire scenario was a mafia setup to get revenge for his having testified against Patriarca back in Boston.

  On March 25, Harrington flew to California and visited Barboza in jail. The Animal told Harrington that he did shoot the person but that it was in self-defense. Harrington did not believe him. What Harrington did next, spelled out in a memo to his supervisor, is extraordinary:

  [I] will do nothing to attempt to dissuade the prosecution from bringing its case but will alert them of the possibility that the murder is a mafia frame. The fulfillment of this obligation is also in the practical interest of the government as [Barboza] may otherwise determine that the government has failed him in his time of need and, it is my judgment, that he will then retaliate against the government by submitting false affidavits to the effect that his testimony in the Patriarca and Deegan cases was in fact false, and thus tarnish those most significant prosecutions.

  The wording of the memo is accurate except for the word false. Based on their involvement with Barboza thus far, it seems reasonable to conclude that the government was not concerned that Barboza would submit false affidavits; more likely they were worried that he might finally tell the truth.

  The government went even further: Harrington notified Barboza’s defense lawyer that he and FBI agents Rico and Condon would be available to testify on behalf of his defense. On the stand, they would detail Barboza’s cooperation in cases against the Mafia, and verify that the Mafia both in Massachusetts and California had threatened his life.