by Dick Lehr
In public, meanwhile, Angiulo continued to strut and swagger, bantering with reporters and trying to bait FBI agents or prosecutors into a war of words. As soon as the trial began on June 11, 1985, his court appearances drew packed audiences, with every twist in the biggest crime story that anyone could remember often leading the news.
He once tried to exploit Debbie Richard in one of his demonstrative displays of wit, but the attempt backfired. Angiulo, always leading an entourage of guards, lawyers, reporters, and groupies, was making his way down the hall toward the courtroom. Richard was standing in the hall waiting to testify, decked out in a lavender ultrasuede suit, with a white blouse and a string of pearls. Angiulo immediately spotted the striking blonde. “Well, I can be guaranteed of one thing, honey,” he said, breaking stride momentarily to speak to Richard and causing those in his wake to jam on their brakes. “I can be assured of one thing—you certainly are not involved with the government in this, because they couldn’t afford you.” Fifteen minutes later, as she took the stand as an FBI agent and swore she’d tell the whole truth, Richard saw Angiulo’s mouth had dropped.
But Angiulo achieved some satisfaction when he succeeded in his bid to unnerve the chief prosecutor of the strike force, Jeremiah O‘Sullivan. Ever since his 1983 arrest, he had begun chiding the intense O’Sullivan by calling him Father Flanagan, a reference to the founder of Boy’s Town. He claimed O’Sullivan had missed his calling in life by not entering the priesthood. It was the kind of cutting commentary Angiulo relished and habitually aimed at opponents, most notably Quinn. But the unflappable FBI agent was always unfazed. O’Sullivan, however, lost his cool after the jury left the courtroom one day, complaining Angiulo was playing “mind games” with jurors. Within seconds, the prosecutor, red-faced with anger, and Angiulo were inches apart, yelling. They accused one another of the same thing: that neither the chief prosecutor nor the chief Mafia figure ever showed the other the proper respect. The judge finally had to separate them, warning he was wearing the robes.
But in the contest that mattered—the RICO trial—O’Sullivan prevailed convincingly. He devised the strategy for presenting the evidence, assigning different crimes to different prosecutors. Diane M. Kottmyer concentrated on loansharking and the structure of the Angiulo enterprise. Ernest DiNisco handled the murders. O’-Sullivan took the gambling operation.
Concerned about the quality of the tapes, they opened the case with the gambling operation. The gambling tapes tended to be clearer, because Frankie Angiulo was usually alone running the office. There wasn’t the crowd of people jabbering away as often happened at night. Besides, if one gambling tape didn’t work for the jurors, they could always roll out another. They had plenty on gambling.
Priming the jurors on the gambling tapes was critical when it came to the talk about murder. The murder conversations were few and brief, and the prosecutors did not want to find the jury struggling to decipher those chilling words.
Throughout the irrefutable tapes, Angiulo, his chin jutting forward, persisted in playing the boss, offering few clues that the setbacks he was experiencing daily were not restricted to a federal courtroom. His rank in the Mafia in New England had plummeted. He was no longer the unquestioned underboss. For months, the soldiers on the street were forging new, tentative alliances in an effort to fill the power vacuum. Just as John Morris had hoped when he had targeted the Angiulo family, the Boston underworld was fragmented. Angiulo had no protégé and he’d taken the intimate knowledge of the numbers racket, which had catapulted him to the top, with him to prison. The result was a scramble among younger mafiosi in Boston; they elbowed one another for pieces of the rackets but tried just as hard to avoid being tagged as “up and comers,” for fear of drawing the attention of federal investigators. Many of the non-Mafia bookies and loan sharks who had paid Angiulo to do business now found themselves pressured by competing mafiosi to make several payments. Disputes flared and dragged on unresolved. Gone was the orderliness of the Angiulo monolith.
Matters had worsened after the death of the godfather of New England’s Mafia, Raymond L. S. Patriarca, on July 7, 1984. Had Angiulo not been been tangling with RICO, he probably would have succeeded Patriarca with little opposition and become the top Mafia man in New England. Even from jail, he vied for the post, but he was up against his old capo, Zannino, as well as Raymond J. C. “Junior” Patriarca. But by that time, Angiulo never really had a chance. He was not only considered stupid for having gotten caught, but many underworld figures were infuriated at the brazen disrepect he had displayed toward them on the FBI’s secret tapes. “Mr. Patriarca gave the Angiulos the rope that they used,” said the eighty-four-year-old Henry Tameleo, Patriarca’s confidant, who was unable to conceal his disgust toward the Angiulos in an interview he gave shortly before he died in prison in August 1985. “They never did anything right. They did it upside down.”
The decades of abuse had come home to roost. Angiulo was disliked in Providence and detested by many of the soldiers who’d suffered his barbs for years. Eventually, Zannino, the diehard organization man, threw his support to the young Patriarca. By 1985, the FBI’s intelligence network had determined that the Mafia’s national commission, composed of the heads of the major Mafia families, had selected Junior.
Jerry Angiulo, on the eve of his RICO trial in mid-1985, had been reduced to the ignominious rank of soldier. Adding insult to injury, the decision-making for the Boston-area Mafia was put into the veteran hands of Revere-based mafiosi who were longtime rivals of Angiulo’s. Junior Patriarca rewarded Zannino for his support by appointing him consigliere to replace the seriously ill and indicted Nick Angiulo.
Jerry Angiulo wasn’t alone among leading mafiosi in the pummeling he suffered from the government. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court backed RICO to fight the mob, the FBI began wreaking havoc within the only known organized crime outfit that operates nationwide and whose gross annual income exceeds an estimated $50 billion.
Between 1984 and 1987, strike forces successfully prosecuted 82. made La Cosa Nostra members and 396 associates. It levied $34 million in fines, obtained $20 million in restitution, and seized more than $800 million in narcotics and $60 million in property from underworld figures.
In early 1985, a federal grand jury in New York City indicted the commission, including the five bosses or acting bosses of the New York families. But the Angiulo tapes offered the richest and most intimate portrait of life inside a Mafia family, illustrating the day-to-day workings graphically and revealing the Boston Mafia’s innermost secrets—the attempts to kill Walter LaFreniere and Harvey Cohen, and the brutal murder of Angelo Patrizzi.
On February 26, 1986, after eight months of testimony, the sixty-six-year-old Angiulo, Frank Angiulo, Danny Angiulo, and Sammy Granito were convicted under RICO. Mike Angiulo was found guilty of running an illegal gambling operation. The RICO case against the Angiulo family marked the first time top Mafia bosses were convicted of operating a criminal racket.
Many of the FBI agents who had worked on Operation Bostar were among those who jammed inside the courtroom for the verdict in the historic case. Even after receiving a verdict that meant he would die behind bars, Angiulo didn’t break character. Escorted into the hallway from the courtroom by a couple of U.S. marshals, Jerry Angiulo turned to his brothers, all in handcuffs. In his inimitable style, he ordered: “Okay, boys, now follow on behind me and march, hut, two, three, four; hut, two, three, four.”
THE OUTCOME in the sensational racketeering case did not mean an end to the legal quagmire for the leaders of the city’s underworld. Missing from the lineup the day Angiulo was convicted was Larry Zannino.
The aging capo was tried separately a year after the Angiulo verdict on gambling and loansharking charges, even though he’d been arrested during the same 1983 roundup that netted the Angiulos. FBI agents nabbed him in a North Shore hospital room, where he was a patient, as family members hissed at them.
Zannino went down fight
ing in court. When the jury, in early 1987, found him guilty, his response sounded like the Zannino of 51 North Margin Street—brash and violent. “I hope the jury dies,” he snarled. But prior to his sentencing at a later hearing, he sounded more like the obsequious Zannino of 98 Prince Street—deferential to Mafia boss Angiulo. To Judge Nelson, he made an emotional appeal that lasted twenty minutes. “I’m guilty of swearing ... but who have I harmed? Why am I the most vicious guy in the world?” he pleaded from a wheelchair, oxygen tubes running to his nose.
Behind him sat his three daughters and his wife. They wept. Seated at the government table with the prosecutors was the impassive Ed Quinn. “I should drop dead in front of my family if I ever shylocked,” Zannino continued. “I feel just like a sitting duck being shot at with a double barrel.”
Quinn turned his head to look at the mobster, the incredulous-ness barely showing on his face. But Zannino spotted the agent, saw something, and snapped, “You can grin, Mr. Quinn. You testified you spoke to me for twenty minutes, but I never spoke to you in my life.” He rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’m not lily white.... I grew up in the South End where you had to fight to live and eat. ... I’m no altar boy. But who did I hurt? All I’m saying, your honor, is how long do I got? You don’t know, only the Guy upstairs knows.” He pointed back to his wife seated in the courtroom. “Give my family a little hope, a chance that I might come home. You are sentencing a man who is dying. I’m not afraid to die. What I want is hope for my family, so they can say, We might see Daddy on the street again.” He insisted he was not begging and, pounding the table, claimed, “I’m not guilty of these charges. I’m guilty of swearing.” He began to ramble and repeat himself. “I’m very, very tired, your honor.”
Zannino sat down, leaned to his lawyer, and whispered, “How’d I do?” The lawyer nodded in approval. Judge Nelson then gave Zannino thirty years.
As reporters rushed out to file their stories, Zannino stood to join his family for a moment. “That’s the system,” he told them. “That’s their system!” one of his daughter’s shouted. “That’s their system!”
The Zannino family huddled into a fist, giving the prosecutors and Quinn just enough room to get past them to exit the courtroom. “I hope you’re happy, Mr. Quinn,” Zannino said. “Why don’t they just kill you right here in the courtroom?” another daughter shouted, pointing at the government team. “The judge showed no sympathy for you. Shit.”
The mercy plea, played and replayed that night on television newscasts across Massachusetts, brought smiles to many of the agents and investigators who’d dogged Zannino. To them, Zannino had made a mockery of the justice system, claiming for ten years he was on his death bed. Citing an ailing heart had helped him to avoid prosecution of a pending gambling charge for a decade. But if he was always so sick how come investigators found him at sporting events? “How you feeling, Larry?” they’d ask. “I’ll outlive you all,” Zannino promised sarcastically.
“I loved it,” remarked one of the investigators who watched Zannino’s dramatic monologue on the tube. “Him begging. Screw him. He’s a killer.”
ZANNINO became the twentieth casualty of the FBI’s secret bugging operation. Following Angiulo’s indictment, the others had gone down in waves of arrests. Twenty-two mobsters were charged in all, although two never went to trial. Nicky Angiulo died in 1987. Ralph LaMattina disappeared.
Jerry Angiulo got forty-five years for racketeering; Frankie got twenty-five; Danny got twenty; Mikey got three; and son Jason got three for gambling. William J. Cintolo, the family lawyer, got two years for conspiring to obstruct justice.
Some of the soldiers who fell included Richie Gambale, twelve years for conspiring to murder a witness, racketeering, loansharking, and obstructing justice; James “Fat Peter” Limone, twelve years for racketeering, loansharking, and conspiring to kill a government witness; John C. Cincotti, eighteen years for racketeering; William J. “Skinny” Kazonis, six years for conspiring to impede a grand jury investigation; and James “Jimmy Jones” Angiulo, one year and a $10,000 fine for running the family’s numbers operation.
Most of the agents on Operation Bostar moved on to new assignments and other cases. Shaun Rafferty went to New Hampshire to run a branch office there. John Connolly hit the street again to track a mob that, having lost its top tier, was struggling to find its footing. Jack Cloherty took over media relations for the Boston office. Pete Kennedy became the firearms instructor. Debbie Richard quit the bureau and went into real estate in Florida. John Morris, long before Jerry Angiulo was even arrested, was assigned to run the office’s public corruption unit.
That left Ed Quinn. The steady and unflappable case agent became a fixture in court. With an instant recall of dates, facts, and snatches of conversation, he provided the thread linking the myriad parts in the government’s ongoing cases against Jerry Angiulo. And the two had one last dance.
It came in December 1987. Angiulo was brought back to Massachusetts from the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, to face a state trial for ordering the execution of Angelo “Hole in the Head” Patrizzi. Nearly a decade after Morris had handed him the ticket on the Angiulo case, Quinn was on his feet in the witness stand, arms folded. “He’s seated at the end of the table there,” Quinn pointed, when asked to identify Angiulo. The men’s eyes locked briefly, but then Quinn looked back to the prosecutor to field the next question. Angiulo just kept staring, reluctant to let go of the energizing hatred.
Behind and all around Quinn were poster-size photographs revealing the inside world at 98 Prince Street. Across the room, several large tape recorders were hooked up to speakers. Once again, he testified about how he stalked Angiulo, how the team of agents penetrated the Angiulo fortress, how the video cars worked, how the tapes showed that Angiulo was an accessory in the murder of wiseguy Patrizzi.
During cross-examination, Angiulo shook his head and quietly cursed Quinn, then later called another FBI agent who testified a “fucking liar.” Angiulo had spent the last four years behind bars and had lost weight, but the Mafia boss still displayed moments of his old combative self. “Fuck you,” he told two reporters who approached him during a break in the trial. “Didn’t they tell you my answer?” he said, referring to Leavenworth prison officials and his response to a letter the reporters had written months earlier about seeing him. Angiulo had crumpled up the letter and thrown it back at the prison guards. “Go fuck yourself,” he told them at the outset of a brief interview in court, but ended it by saying “I’m glad someone is still interested.”
During the playing of the tapes, he sat forward at the defense table, galvanized by the proceedings. He took notes and often whispered animatedly to his two attorneys. Turning pages of a document, he licked his fingers. His mannerisms were precise, almost fastidious. In this state trial, he’d been able to block the government request to have jurors use transcripts to follow the voices—a legal victory that gave Angiulo some reason to hope he might win this round.
During the recesses, he was restless. He sought out a photographer from a local newspaper. “Did you take this picture?” he asked, holding up a clip he’d removed from his notebook. “Now that’s a very nice picture. I’d like a glossy. That’s the kind of picture that should be published.” Pointing to the government’s poster-size photos of his office, he cracked, “Maybe I should get those pictures. Dress up my cell.”
He conferred with his brother Mike, who attended each day of the trial, often bringing Angiulo papers to review. Mike Angiulo was living in a halfway house, completing his sentence. “Pants getting loose, Mike. You eating okay?” Angiulo asked. For several sessions, his son Jason appeared.
But even though Angiulo kept up his swagger, much had changed. His stage had shrunk. He no longer drew the capacity crowds that had attended the federal racketeering trial. Although the Patrizzi murder was the most grotesque material in the FBI’s massive case against Boston’s La Cosa Nostra, only a dozen or so spectators watched
the proceedings.
The numbers swelled only when word spread that the jury had reached a verdict. Dressed in a blue blazer and gray slacks, Angiulo made his way through the lobby, accompanied by two state troopers in plainclothes. “What do you think?” Angiulo asked as he passed Richard J. Connolly, the veteran crime reporter at the Boston Globe. “I think it looks good for you,” Connolly said, reflecting the view of the reporters covering the case that, without transcripts, a jury would not be able to understand tapes that sounded like a ship-to-shore broadcast.
Noticeably absent from the courtroom was Quinn. Unlike the RICO trial, where he and the other agents assembled for the outcome, Quinn stayed away from this one. Word filtered back to the office that a verdict was in, but he had no intention of racing to the courthouse. Not that he’d lost any interest in the Angiulo case, but, as supervisor of the squad of agents who investigated bank robberies and hijackings, the consummate bureau man had plenty of work to do. Besides, he had a hunch that Angiulo would go down once again. Even if he were acquitted, Quinn knew the underboss would not be going anywhere, not while doing forty-five years for RICO.
Inside the courtroom, Mike and Jason sat in the front row, directly behind Angiulo. The moment Angiulo was seated the cameras started clicking. “Smile,” Jason joked feebly. Angiulo frowned at his son. He shrugged his shoulders and made a series of faces to his brother—body language that said, Who the fuck knows?
“Guilty,” the foreman declared.
Angiulo, on his feet to receive the verdict, did not blink. He stood straight, without expression. The jurors sat down, and Angiulo did too. He remained still, his hands resting on the table. Finally, he moved a hand, to adjust his glasses, but he moved so deliberately, so tightly, his face was so stiff—these were the slightest tremors from a man who’d spent a lifetime refining the ability to show nothing, to repress everything.