Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  When Frank Capizzi took the stand, courtroom spectators might have guessed they were in for a show. Capizzi was seventy-nine years old, with his white hair in a ponytail. He wore an out-of-date sport coat, and had a voice out of central casting. He spoke in the gravelly tones of the late actor Michael V. Gazzo, who played the character Frank Pantangeli in The Godfather: Part II—a voice so redolent of the streets that for generations after that movie was released, young Mafiosi who thought they sounded tough were merely doing an imitation of Michael Gazzo.

  Capizzi, on the other hand, was an original. His time in the underworld predated both Godfather movies.

  He took the stand with a wild-eyed look, as if taking the stand in a criminal court preceding was something he had feared his entire life. He glanced in the direction of Bulger but seemed disoriented, as if everything about the environment he was in suggested that he had arrived prematurely at his own conception of hell on earth.

  The prosecutor, Zach Hafer, sensed the witness’s discomfort and sought to put him at ease. “Sir,” he said, “before we get to the substance of your testimony, I want to ask you a few questions about your medical condition, if I could. Do you have a condition, sir, that causes something referred to as audio interruption?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Capizzi.

  “Could you explain that?”

  “After I had encephalitis meningitis, I got a condition. When I hear you speak, I have to stop and think about what you’re saying, because what you’re saying to me comes over in the Sicilian language. Some words are English, some words are Sicilian, and I have to decipher.”

  Oh boy: audio interruption. Did such a thing exist? There were titters in the courtroom among the jury and the spectators. It sounded like the beginnings of a comedy routine. Said Hafer, “If you need me to repeat anything or slow down, just let me know.”

  Capizzi was there to serve the same function as Diane Sussman de Tennen, Ralph DeMasi, and others who had survived Winter Hill gangland mayhem from the time of the gang wars and could now provide sinew and flesh to crimes that might otherwise be perceived as remote or outdated.

  Back in 1973, like a lot of gangsters in Boston, Capizzi found himself caught up in the Winter Hill Mob’s murderous hunt for Indian Al Notarangeli. In Capizzi’s case, he was in a car one night with a couple of members of Notarangeli’s crew, Al “Bud” Plummer and Hugh “Sonny” Shields. They had just pulled up to a stoplight at the intersection of Commercial and Hanover streets, in the heart of the city’s North End.

  Capizzi felt safe on Hanover Street. He’d been born and raised in a cold-water flat at 452 Hanover Street, on the exact corner where he now sat in the backseat of Al Plummer’s car. This was his neighborhood. His parents had come here from the same town in Sicily, only they didn’t know that until they met on Hanover Street. They both found work in the garment industry. But Capizzi’s father, who was a tailor, died suddenly when Frank was in his late teens, and his mother passed away a year later. Frank was on his own. In 1952, he joined the U.S. Coast Guard, and for a time was stationed at a Coast Guard facility located, of all places, at the corner of Commercial and Hanover streets. After leaving the Coast Guard, young Frank Capizzi became a numbers runner and a gambler and, according to law enforcement, a made member of La Cosa Nostra.

  Before he was sitting in the backseat of Al Plummer’s car, at an intersection near where much of his life seemed to have taken place, Capizzi was at a bar having a drink. He decided to go see his Sicilian grandmother. “She still lived in the North End, and thinking about this, I knew she never slept. So it was ten o’clock at night, and I was going to pay her a good-night visit. She was about eighty-five, I think, or eighty-eight at the time. And she still lived on Hanover Street.” So he was on his way to give his grandmother a good-night kiss on the cheek, and he’d enlisted Al Plummer to give him a ride.

  Asked Hafer, “What happened after you got into the car with Plummer and Shields on March 19, 1973?”

  Capizzi paused; the prosecutor’s words seemed to be bouncing around inside his head. “Excuse me. I was just deciphering what you were saying.”

  “No problem. Take your time. After you were in the car driving towards Hanover Street, did something unusual happen?”

  “Unusual?” The witness seemed insulted by the word’s inadequacy. “A firing squad hit us,” he proclaimed. “For maybe two and a half minutes, about a hundred slugs hit the automobile, and it imploded.”

  “Could you tell from the noise how many guns were firing at you?”

  “I’ll speculate. It sounded and felt like maybe two automatic weapons and maybe a couple of rifles or pistols.”

  The jury had heard about this event from one of the men on the other side of the guns—Martorano—who testified that he and Howie Winter did the shooting from one car, with Bulger and others providing backup in another.

  “What did you do when the shooting stopped?” asked Hafer.

  “Unbelievably, although I had been hit in the head and could feel warm blood running down my neck and excruciating pain in my back, I said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of this car. Bud, come on.’ And I put my hand into his neck where his head should have been.” Plummer’s head had been obliterated by the fusillade of bullets.

  Capizzi’s testimony was dramatic, and as he explained being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency surgery—which saved his life—he warmed to the idea of having a captive audience. Capizzi told the jury and everyone in the courtroom that after that fateful day in 1973, which resulted in the death of Al Plummer, he left the city of his birth and never returned.

  On cross-examination, the witness became feisty, as if he were once again a gangster back on the streets. When defense attorney Carney asked if Jerry Angiulo was the head of a criminal group in the North End, he answered, “That’s what the papers say.”

  “Do you know that yourself?” asked Carney.

  “You know, ask me a more specific question. Did I know that? The question should be, Who doesn’t know that?”

  The courtroom erupted in laughter. Capizzi smiled; he was getting the hang of this. But then Carney started asking about specific criminal activities, and Capizzi’s audio interruption kicked in. “Say that again?” he responded to a question about illegal gambling, which he theoretically heard half in Sicilian and half in English. And to another question, “Would you repeat that again—slowly? I wanna get every word,” to which jurors and spectators again burst into laughter.

  When Carney asked Capizzi about whether Al Notarangeli made his living from bookmaking forty years ago, he responded, “Forty years ago? Who remembers a lot of what we did forty years ago? He probably gambled like the rest of us.”

  Then Carney got specific: “Were you involved in any way in illegal bookmaking?”

  Capizzi gave the lawyer a hard stare, the kind he may have given to late-paying gambling clients back in the day. He turned to the judge. “Your Honor, I’m going to invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment.”

  The judge tried to explain to Capizzi that he already had immunity to testify; he didn’t need to claim the Fifth. He could not be prosecuted for anything he might say. But Capizzi wasn’t buying it. He asked to see a court-appointed lawyer. So he was removed from the stand until a lawyer could be found to explain the situation. Meanwhile, other minor witnesses were brought to the stand to give testimony.

  After a few hours, Capizzi was brought back to the witness stand. He was ready to resume. But, in the intervening time, defense lawyer Carney had apparently decided that this witness, with his audio interruption and selective memory, was more trouble than he was worth. Capizzi took the stand, and Carney said, “Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

  “Mr. Capizzi,” said Judge Casper. “You don’t have to get comfortable. Examination is completed. You’re excused.”

  Capizzi seemed positively thrilled. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  As the ag
ing Mafiosi stood up, there were chuckles of appreciation in the courtroom. He looked out at the people, as if a standing ovation might be in order. “Thank you, everyone,” he announced. “I appreciate it. It’s been an experience.”

  And then he left, a minor though memorable player in the trial of Whitey Bulger.

  7

  THE BIG SLEAZE

  WAS THE DEFENDANT a Top Echelon Informant, or was he not?

  If the defense had their way, this question should have dominated the trial. Weeks earlier, in his opening statement, Jay Carney had planted the seed, hoping that it might produce a tuber or a spore all on its own, since precious little had been done so far to nurture its growth. Through witness testimony and legal posturing among the competing sides, Whitey’s status with the FBI had been little more than a stalking horse—derided by some witnesses, speculated upon by others, or accepted as a given fact.

  The man who would serve as the catalyst for bringing Whitey’s informant status to the forefront was James Marra, a most unassuming bureaucrat. Marra worked for the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General. Before that he worked at the U.S. Office of Social Security; the Labor Department; and the Treasury Department, all as a special agent with the Inspector General’s Office.

  A little-known federal agency that is empowered to investigate accusations of corruption, fraud, and waste within agencies of the federal government, the Inspector General’s Office proudly flies below the radar. Their agents do not carry guns or do stakeouts or make arrests. Marra had been with the Inspector General’s Office for twenty-nine years. Since he is a man in his late forties, it’s fair to say that he was weaned at the bosom of the federal law enforcement bureaucracy.

  In 2004, Marra was assigned to investigate matters of internal corruption surrounding Bulger’s relationship with the FBI. Over a nine-year period, he had become an expert on all government documentation pertaining to the relationship between the FBI and Bulger. Marra testified at Connolly’s 2008 murder trial in Florida, and even before he took the stand at the current Bulger trial, he was in the courtroom nearly every day monitoring the proceedings. Very little happened in regards to the prosecution of Bulger that was not duly noted and recorded by Marra, who then reported to his supervisors in Washington, D.C.

  Like a character out of a John le Carré novel, he was an anonymous figure buried deep within the machine, until the day arrived that he was called upon to step forward into the light. Day eight of testimony in the Bulger trial was that moment for John Marra. He was the vehicle by which the prosecution would enter into evidence the informant file for BS-1544, otherwise known as James Joseph Bulger Jr.

  On a large screen, the prosecution projected the image of government exhibit No. 354, which Marra identified as Bulger’s informant index card. On the card were the date Bulger was first enlisted as an informant—September 1975—and the name of his “contacting agent,” John Connolly. This information was highly confidential, noted Marra. “The identity of individuals who are cooperating with the federal government, their names would not be disclosed in most reports. This would be on a strict need-to-know who that person was. It would be limited usually to the people that are working the informant, supervisors, and agents that are working the case.”

  About Bulger, Marra said, “During the approximately fifteen years that the file existed on him, at different times he was considered an Organized Crime Informant, was elevated to Top Echelon Informant, then he was closed. He was reopened as an Organized Crime Informant, but again he’s elevated to Top Echelon Informant based upon the information he’s providing to the FBI.”

  Prosecutor Wyshak swiftly immersed the witness into what would become known colloquially as Bulger’s “rat file.” Again, on the screen were projected facsimiles of reports known as 209s or 302s, internal memos, most of them filed by Special Agent Connolly.

  Wyshak would instruct Marra to read from a portion of the file, which he did with little or no inflection. It was an instructive process. The Bulger files contained seven hundred pages and read like a who’s who of the Boston underworld. The official story had always been that Bulger was enlisted by Connolly to rat on the Mafia, but even a cursory sampling of the files revealed information on Bulger’s own partners:

  Joseph “Joe Mac” McDonald—On 1/16/83, BS 1544-OC advised that the weapons that Joe McDonald was carrying were two converted Ingram .380 semiautomatic weapons which had been converted to fully automatic weapons. McDonald also had home made silencers with him. Source advised that McDonald was transporting the weapons to Queens, New York City, and they were going to a first cousin who is active in raising money for the IRA.

  The Winter Hill Mob—On 8/15/80, BS 1455-TE advised that Joe McDonald is supposed to be drinking heavily and the word is that Johnny Martorano is spending time with him to straighten him out. Source advised that the Hill people will back away from McDonald if he cannot control his drinking. Source considers McDonald to be an extremely dangerous and volatile individual. . . . NOTE: Same source in past insert advised that Martorano was in the Miami, Florida area.

  On 1/26/83, BS 1499-OC advised that Joe McDonald and/or Jimmy Sims are attempting to be assigned to Leavenworth Penitentiary to get with Howie Winters. Source advised that one or both may try to pull some strings politically to wind up in the same penitentiary as Winters.

  The Joe Murray Crew from Charlestown—On 2/8/82, BS 1544-OC advised that Joe Murray, who owns Murray Towing Company in Charlestown, is the biggest importer and distributor of marijuana on the East Coast and possibly the whole country. Source advised that Murray is a “real sleeper” and is probably “the best kept secret in organized crime.” . . . Source emphasized that Murray has high level Coast Guard personnel on the “pad.”

  On 4/20/88, BS 1544-TE advised that the conventional wisdom in the underworld is that the Liberty Bank burglary score was taken down by the Joe Murray crew from Charlestown. Source advised that Michael Murray, an acknowledged alarm expert, handled that end of it with Gigi Eatherton, Jimmy Murray, and John McCormack also participating.

  Depositors Trust robbery—On 6/25/80, BS 1544-TE advised that the word on the street is that two police officers, a Medford sergeant named Doherty and an MDC police captain named Jerry Clement were “in” on the Depositors Trust score. The set-up guy is supposed to be Bucky Barrett who, in turn, is supposed to have brought in other unknown help. The talk is that Barrett has control over the majority of the gold and diamonds. There is supposed to be over 80 pounds of gold.

  Tommy King—On 12/31/75, source stated that the word is out that Tommy King has been taken out. Source stated that various rumors are flying about as to whether or not he is actually dead and the reason for it. Source heard that King had gone “kill crazy” and was putting people’s lives in jeopardy in that he was talking crazy about killing various people including police officers. Source stated that King gave them no alternative but to make a move on him.

  From the lips of Jim Marra came what had once been viewed as an unprecedented treasure trove: names, dates, and references to criminal activities of which Whitey Bulger had privileged, inside information. There were sheets of paper, now being projected onto a computer screen in the courtroom, filled with underworld intelligence and gossip. Some of this information had contributed to the securing of warrants and court-authorized wiretaps and other investigative techniques that could and did, on occasion, lead to indictments and arrests—though Bulger’s name was never linked to any of these actions.

  Marra had taken the stand on a Friday, and on Monday his direct testimony continued with little contention until Wyshak asked a question for which he’d spent numerous hours laying the foundation: “Mr. Marra, based on your review of these particular files, is there any doubt in your mind that Mr. Bulger was an informant for the FBI?”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” interjected Hank Brennan.

  The entire proceeding had reached a cul-de-sac, one that had been inevitable ever since the defense first
claimed in open court that the defendant, contrary to public legend, never was an FBI informant. Up until now, everyone had been able to ignore this claim, but the time had arrived to confront the beast.

  Judge Casper dismissed the jury and the witness.

  The lawyers and spectators stood as the jurors filed out of the courtroom. Once the jurors were gone, Casper said, “Everyone can be seated. Counsel, I know there was an objection. I’ll hear Mr. Wyshak.”

  The prosecutor stood before the court. “Your Honor, I understand that for whatever reasons, whether it’s the ego of the defendant or attempting to preserve his reputation, he does not want to be called an informant. But I am not going to tailor my questions in a manner that preserves that ridiculous contention.” Normally, Wyshak spoke with the common sense of a corner druggist, but here his voice had an unusual tone, a trace of exasperation—some might say a whine—in reference to Bulger.

  “It’s not as though we have one report or two reports. We have fifteen years of reports from Mr. Bulger. As a matter of fact, the exercise that I’m currently going to undertake is to demonstrate that not only did Mr. Bulger report to Mr. Connolly, but he reported to Mr. Morris, he reported to Mr. [James] Ring, he had meetings with the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in 1980. He reported to another special agent, Nick Gianturco.