Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  And so they did, to the shock of the local prosecutor in the case. Years later, the prosecutor would admit, “We thought we had a pretty good capital murder case. . . . And we got to the end and we’re having FBI agents suddenly appear as almost character witnesses. . . . [T]hey had damaged our case to the point we didn’t think the jury was going to convict on a first-degree murder case.” So worried was the prosecutor that he immediately halted the trial and offered Barboza a plea deal. They would reduce the charge to second-degree murder, and the defendant would get off with a sentence of five years.

  Joe Barboza took the deal and did his five years. When released from prison, he settled in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, on the night of February 11, 1976, he was murdered, gunned down in the street by a professional hit man who was believed to have been sent from Boston.

  IN THE EARLY 1970s, Paul Rico was transferred to a field office in Miami. He maintained contact with his old partner, Dennis Condon, who was more active than ever in the FBI’s ongoing battle against organized crime. As a stomping ground for racketeers who had an unyielding tendency to kill each other, Boston was still the place to be. What had started out as the McLean-McLaughlin gang war in the mid and late 1960s shifted to the Killeen-Mullen gang war of the early 1970s. Condon, along with Rico, had served as handler for a variety of informants from Charlestown and Somerville, including Barboza and the Flemmi brothers, but Condon did not have a single major informant in South Boston. That is where Whitey Bulger came into the picture.

  Ever since Bulger’s return to the neighborhood from prison, Rico and Condon had had their sights on the Killeen gang’s bodyguard, who seemed to be slightly more intelligent than the average hood. He spoke reasonably well and read books. He was a physical fitness buff who seemed to have a personal sense of discipline that was sometimes the province of men who had served time behind bars. He was the kind of person smart enough to see the value in forging a covert relationship with the criminal justice system.

  In May 1971, Condon met with Bulger. That same month, he opened a confidential informant file on the gangster. After a few secret meetings between the two, Condon became frustrated and, in an internal FBI memo dated July 7, 1971, he wrote:

  Contact with this informant on this occasion was not overly productive and it is felt that he still has some inhibitions about furnishing information. Additional contacts will be had with him and if his productivity does not increase, consideration will be given to closing him out.

  Subsequent meetings between Condon and Bulger were no more fruitful for the FBI, and in August, after only three months, Bulger was officially closed as an informant.

  Put simply, Condon did not have Rico’s skills for developing and manipulating street-level informants. If the FBI field office in Boston hoped to maintain its standard as the most heralded in the bureau, they needed to come up with the next generation’s H. Paul Rico. There was one potential candidate—a young agent who had been born and raised in the same housing project as Bulger. His name was John Connolly.

  Connolly was close to the Bulger family. A former English teacher at South Boston High School, he had joined the FBI in 1968, partly on the advice of Billy Bulger, a childhood friend. In order to expedite his confirmation as an agent, Billy Bulger had helped Connolly secure a letter of recommendation from Speaker of the House John McCormack, the same politician who had written letters to federal prison authorities on behalf of Whitey Bulger. Connolly had worked on Billy Bulger’s initial campaign for state representative and remained a vocal supporter of Southie’s new rising star.

  With an air of confidence bordering on cockiness, and a feel for the rhythms of the street, Connolly was cut from the same cloth as Rico. He even dressed in the same flashy style. Since 1970, Connolly had been assigned to an organized crime squad in New York City, but his real dream was to be assigned to his hometown office.

  Rico and Condon had conversations with Connolly; they knew he was trying to get back to Boston. This dovetailed nicely with their own belief that the young agent was the right man to continue what they had started in the organized crime division of the Boston office. But Connolly was a junior agent. He did not have the juice within the bureau’s rigid bureaucracy to choose his own assignment.

  In 1972, Rico got a hot tip via “Jack from Boston,” that is, Steve Flemmi. While on the lam, Flemmi had had a falling-out with Frank Salemme. It was a hazard of the profession: two hoodlums entangled together, cooped up in motel rooms and on long drives—the opportunities for discord are many. Plus, they had committed a murder together while on the run, in the Nevada desert. Their partnership took a bad turn. Flemmi headed to Montreal; Flemmi hunkered down with contacts in New York City.

  Frank Salemme was a Ten Most Wanted fugitive. When Flemmi told Rico that Cadillac Frank was in New York, where John Connolly just happened to be stationed with the FBI organized crime squad, Rico seized on the opportunity.

  The FBI agents devised a scheme so that Connolly could apprehend Salemme, but it had to look good. It could not be an arrest based on Connolly receiving information via someone else; it had to appear as if Connolly apprehended Salemme based solely on his own initiative.

  The official story would become that, on a snowy day in December 1972, Connolly was walking down a street in midtown Manhattan and happened to spot Frank Salemme. He chased down the Ten Most Wanted fugitive on the street, cuffed him, and placed him under arrest.

  With such a daring apprehension of a high-ranking criminal, as a reward Connolly was allowed to select a posting of his choice. He chose Boston, and, in 1973, was assigned to what was known as the C-3 Unit, Paul Rico’s old organized crime unit.

  Having Connolly in town was crucial to Rico, Condon, and others who had become custodians of the criminal justice system’s dirty little secrets in Boston.

  Now that John Connolly was securely ensconced in Boston, he undertook the heady task of following in the footprints of a legend, H. Paul Rico. He would do so by fulfilling his potential as the one man capable of bringing gangster Jim Bulger into the fold.

  The legend is that Connolly approached Bulger and that, seated together in a car at Quincy’s Wollaston Beach, they chatted about how a mutual arrangement would work to both of their advantages. This story, first made public in the book Black Mass by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, is clear in its suggestion that Connolly alone is the man who convinced Bulger that he should go to work for the DOJ.

  There was, however, another factor that may have been crucial in Bulger’s decision to enter into a relationship with the U.S. government.

  By this time, Bulger had formed a partnership with Steve Flemmi. As a former Top Echelon Informant (TE) who was the brother of another TE, few knew the benefits of being a government rat as much as Stevie. He knew that the government had allowed Joe Barboza to lie to protect his brother, and he knew that the government had been willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect Barboza. Not only that, Flemmi had himself received tremendous benefits from his role as a TE. He had been tipped off about pending indictments that made it possible for him to stay a few steps ahead of the law. And more recently, in 1974, he had been told by Paul Rico that it was safe to return to Boston.

  Flemmi had been somewhat suspicious about that; he was afraid it might be a trap. But Rico told Flemmi that the Wimpy Bennett murder charge would be dismissed, as would be the charges against Flemmi for the bombing of the lawyer Fitzgerald’s car.

  It was almost too good to believe. Flemmi knew that, given the nature of his alliance with the FBI, he would be expected to deliver something in return.

  Could it be possible that what they expected in return was for Steve Flemmi to help Rico, Condon, and now Connolly secure the cooperation of Jim Bulger as an FBI informant?

  Within months of his return to Boston, Flemmi met Bulger at a bar in Somerville. They had met once before, briefly, in the late 1960s. They were both known on the street as “capable,” the pr
eferred word in the local underworld for someone who was willing and able to kill, if necessary. Each had attributes that the other did not: Flemmi had connections in the Mafia, which was a potential source of work assignments and revenue. Bulger had a level of intelligence and managerial skill that Flemmi would never have. They formed a partnership and soon became affiliated with the Winter Hill Mob.

  According to Flemmi, at the gang’s Marshall Motors headquarters in Somerville, Bulger informed the crew that he had been approached by John Connolly at Wollaston Beach. He was hesitant to take Connolly up on his offer.

  Flemmi knew the benefits of the agent-gangster relationship in a way the others did not. He knew all the advantages. But there was also something more.

  Flemmi knew that, in New England, becoming a federal informant meant you were being asked to keep hidden the seeds of corruption first planted by J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Rico, Condon, and others who had decided long ago that the best way to take down gangsters was to become like them. Part of this meant becoming an inheritor of the Big Lie, the secret history of the framing of Joe Salvati and others. Making sure that this diabolical history remained hidden had become a partnership between the upperworld and underworld in Boston.

  If you were willing to sign on as a player in this ongoing conspiracy, you could not be touched. Because if someone within the conspiracy sought to take you down, they risked exposing their own involvement in the conspiracy. Therefore, fellow members in the conspiracy had an interest in protecting each other, doing favors for each other, and generally covering each other’s ass; it was in their own self-interest to do so.

  Because of this, to become an FBI informant in Boston was cosmic in nature. It was mind-blowing. You would be protected by the system at every turn. You would become invulnerable in ways that outsiders would not be able to comprehend. You would become God.

  It was this arrangement—how it came into being and how it was protected and advanced during the Bulger era—that the defense lawyers, Carney and Brennan, at Bulger’s insistence, were hoping to put on the public record. Their client, it seemed, was determined that if he were to go down, the entire system would go down with him. He would rip the scab off the wound, and the entire festering infection would be exposed.

  The prosecutors had other ideas. Using a scalpel, and with great precision, their plan was to separate Bulger from the larger organism, to leave little or no trace of Barboza and how his legacy had helped to foster the Bulger era.

  So far, in the first week of the trial, their strategy was working. But it was about to get its first real test with the calling to the stand of someone who was steeped in Boston’s underworld history, a man who had known Barboza and had benefited greatly from the city’s unusual bonds of corruption: John Martorano.

  5

  JUDAS UNBOUND

  IN THE SECOND week of the Bulger trial, John Martorano strolled into the courtroom like a man without a care in the world. Which is not easy to do when you weigh close to three hundred pounds and are about to take the stand to testify against a man you once considered among your closest friends. There was no sweat on Martorano’s brow. Dressed in a dark blue silk suit, light blue shirt, with a polka-dot tie and hanky in the breast pocket, he lumbered onto the witness stand and took a seat.

  On this day, Bulger was dressed in a white, long-sleeved dress shirt with an open collar. It was odd seeing the defendant adopt this sartorial style. In all the surveillance photos and videos of Whitey over the years, he is invariably wearing a tight T-shirt. The possibility that this more formal look might be in deference to the importance of Martorano as a witness was undercut by Bulger’s demeanor. As Johnny walked past the defense table and took the stand, Whitey glanced up only briefly, without any trace of emotion.

  A seasoned witness who had testified at all Bulger-related trials to date, including, in 2008, the Miami murder trial of John Connolly, Martorano was aware of the physiological side effects. Knowing that the salivary glands easily become parched during moments of stress, he reached for a nearby decanter of water and poured himself a drink. He sipped the water and settled in before Fred Wyshak had asked his first question.

  “Good morning, Mr. Martorano,” said Wyshak.

  “Good morning,” said the witness, in a gravelly monotone.

  “Could you please state your full name and spell your last name?”

  “John Martorano. M-A-R-T-O-R-A-N-O.”

  “How old are you, sir?”

  “Seventy-two.”

  “And where were you born?”

  “Cambridge, Mass.”

  “Can you describe your educational background?”

  “High school.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No. Divorced.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Are you currently employed?”

  “No.”

  “How do you make a living?”

  “Social Security.”

  “Are you testifying here today pursuant to a plea agreement with the United States?”

  “Correct.”

  Martorano’s answers reflected his seasoning as a witness: give as little as possible, say no more than what is asked, betray no emotion. As with all witnesses, the introductory questions elicited mundane facts of life. They were polite, with answers that reflected a shared commonality with the human experience. There were no indications of the horrors that lay just around the corner.

  The prosecutors’ number-one priority in presenting Martorano to the jury was to delve into the murders of Roger Wheeler and John Callahan. These two murders, one of which took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the other in South Florida, had represented something new for the Winter Hill Mob. Neither of the victims was a gangster but rather they were legitimate businessmen who had become entangled with the gang. And the fact that both these killings had taken place far from Boston was unprecedented. The investigation of these two murders—both of which were committed by Martorano, allegedly at the behest of Bulger and Flemmi—were what would eventually bring down the entire mob underworld in Boston.

  Before Fred Wyshak could get to these crimes, he had a lot of work to do with his witness. There were eighteen other murders committed by Martorano. And also, more immediately, Wyshak had to put forth to the jury an explanation of how it was that the most murderous gangster in Boston history was now on the stand as a free man.

  “Your Honor,” said Wyshak, addressing Judge Casper, “at this time I’d like to show the witness what’s been marked government exhibit eleven fifty-nine for identification.”

  “You may approach,” responded Casper.

  Wyshak walked over to Martorano and handed him a piece of paper. The witness removed reading glasses from his breast pocket and looked over the document.

  Said Wyshak, “Showing you what’s been marked government exhibit eleven fifty-nine for identification, do you recognize that?”

  “Yes,” said Martorano.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my plea agreement.”

  Wyshak and Martorano spent the better part of the next hour attempting to put the plea agreement in context, though the explanation would be as noteworthy for what was left out as for what was explained.

  John Martorano received one of the best plea deals in the history of gangland prosecutions. In 1997, after agreeing to cooperate with the government and admitting to twenty murders, he received a sentence of fourteen years. He was released after serving eight, a sentence of roughly seven months for each of his twenty murders.

  The man who negotiated the mob hit man’s deal was attorney Martin “Marty” Weinberg, whom Martorano invariably referred to on the stand as “a great lawyer” or “the best.” Indeed, Marty Weinberg had, back in the late 1990s, proven to be a legal magician; by engineering Martorano’s cooperation, he was in many ways the man who paved the way for the Bulger prosecution.


  In 1995, Martorano was a gangster in exile living in Delray Beach, Florida. He had been on the lam since 1979, when an indictment on charges of fixing horse races in various northeastern states had resulted in the arrest and conviction of more than forty crime figures in New England. Johnny and his girlfriend at the time took off. He lived under various assumed names—Richard Aucoin, Peter Connolly, and Vincent Mancourt, to name a few. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, he regularly received money from Bulger and Flemmi, who still considered him part of their organization. He communicated regularly with Flemmi but rarely with Bulger, who considered it too much of a risk to talk on the phone. Martorano continued to function as a criminal, running a modest bookmaking business in Florida and, of course, the committing of two murders—Wheeler and Callahan—in consort with his Boston partners.

  In 1995, in the wake of Bulger’s indictment and disappearance on the lam, Martorano was apprehended outside his home in Delray Beach. He was brought back to the District of Massachusetts to face the music, including his old indictment from 1979, which carried a twenty-year sentence. This is where Marty Weinberg came into the picture.

  The two men—lawyer and indicted felon—were seeking to cut a deal with the government, but their position was weak. Then, a neutron bomb hit Boston: Steve Flemmi and Whitey Bulger were outed as longtime FBI informants. The Wolf hearings began to unfold. Flemmi was attempting to escape prosecution by claiming he’d been given immunity by his FBI handlers. Weinberg and Martorano realized they had better act fast. If Flemmi were to strike first by copping a plea and cutting a deal with the feds, there would be no deal left for Martorano to cut.

  It was Weinberg who devised the strategy. He posed the question: who was it the feds wanted most? Answer: Bulger. But Bulger was in the wind, to perhaps never be seen again. Question: who was the next-highest target? Answer: John Connolly. If the feds could prosecute Connolly, they could contain the toxic spill that was the FBI-gangster arrangement in Boston, stopping all further investigations from potentially spreading and implicating the entire criminal justice system in New England.