Black Mass

by Dick Lehr

Eventually the Wolf hearings even changed locations, from the building in Post Office Square, which had housed the federal court for sixty-five years, to a new $220 million facility overlooking Boston Harbor, an area known as Fan Pier, right in South Boston.

  The hearings were shut down for a recess in July, and by the time they resumed in early August a key participant was absent. Frank Salemme took his seat next to Bobby DeLuca, and next to DeLuca sat Stevie Flemmi. But Johnny Martorano was gone. He’d heard more than he could take. He’d sat grim-faced as agents, cops, and officials testified about Bulger’s deal. He’d listened to how the FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi from the 1979 horse race-fixing case while the rest of the gang, including Martorano, were indicted. He’d learned that after fleeing to avoid arrest and living on the lam in Florida for more than a decade, he’d been found by the FBI because Bulger and Flemmi told the agency where he was. Disgusted, Martorano agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against Bulger and Flemmi. Quietly, he was moved out of cellblock H-3 in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility on Thursday, July 20, 1998, where he’d been kept along with the others, and was ushered to a secret “safe house” for a debriefing. Martorano was busy telling investigators about the murders that he, Bulger, and Flemmi had committed that had long gone unsolved. The defection shook up Flemmi.

  Nevertheless, even after months of the FBI testimony, the colorful Connolly sideshow, and the sharp reversal by Martorano, only when Stevie Flemmi took the witness stand did the lengthy hearings finally reach a climax. His back against the wall, he’d launched the “informant defense,” and he had to persuade Judge Wolf that the government had promised not to prosecute him. It was tricky business whenever a criminal defendant took the witness stand, and in these pretrial hearings Flemmi and Fishman wanted Flemmi to go into deep detail about his deal with the FBI while avoiding admissions to any crimes—except crimes he insisted were approved by the FBI.

  FLEMMI usually wore a black-and-white nylon jogging suit to court. But on the day he took the stand, August 20, 1998, the bespectacled crime boss wore a crisp white shirt and maroon tie under a gray, herringbone sport jacket.

  “Mr. Flemmi, it may be easier if you pick that microphone up a little,” the judge instructed a few minutes after Flemmi had begun his testimony.

  Flemmi adjusted the mike. “How’s that, Judge?”

  “And pull the seat a little closer.”

  Ken Fishman, handling Flemmi carefully, opened right where it mattered most to the defense—at the dinner at John Morris’s house in the spring of 1985, during which, Flemmi said, Morris had promised that the gangsters could freely commit any crime “short of murder.” Fishman walked Flemmi through his history of the work he and then Bulger did with Paul Rico, John Connolly, John Morris, and Jim Ring. Throughout, Flemmi, at Fishman’s encouragement, emphasized the protection the FBI promised—a central tenet to the deal from day one.

  “It was one of our themes: how much protection do we have? We’ve always stressed that, and they’ve always answered that in the affirmative, that we were protected, we wouldn’t be prosecuted,” Flemmi said just minutes into his first day on the witness stand. “We insisted on it. We wouldn’t be involved if we weren’t protected. It’s common sense. I wasn’t proud of it, and I wanted assurances. And with that I can speak for Mr. Bulger.”

  There were times when Flemmi even waxed patriotic. “I believe I was performing a service for the United States government in my role as an informant,” he told Fred Wyshak once the prosecution’s turn came to ask the questions. Flemmi said he and Bulger had helped the FBI “to destroy the LCN, and I believed whatever I was doing I was doing in the interest of the United States government.”

  The government’s chief prosecutor winced.

  “Do you think it was in the interest of the United States government to control the flow of drugs into South Boston?” he asked. “Is that what you think, Mr. Flemmi?”

  “I’ll assert the Fifth on that.”

  Wyshak was no friend of Flemmi’s. The two sparred for hours over Flemmi’s “public service” as an informant.

  “You had a good deal going,” chided Wyshak, pushing Flemmi to cut the phony high-minded spin. “You were committing crimes at will, putting money in your pockets, and, in your view, being protected from prosecution?”

  FLEMMI: You’re forgetting one thing, Mr. Wyshak. The LCN was taken down. That was their [FBI’s] main goal. They were completely satisfied with that. We fulfilled our bargain.

  WYSHAK: Did you think, Mr. Flemmi, that you and Mr. Bulger singlehandedly took the LCN down?

  FLEMMI: I’ll tell you something, Mr. Wyshak, we did a hell of a job.

  WYSHAK: That’s what you think?

  FLEMMI: I think we did. The FBI thought we did.

  WYSHAK: And when the FBI did that, you and Mr. Bulger were top dog in town, weren’t you?

  FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.

  WYSHAK: And that was really your goal throughout this entire period, was to gain control of criminal activities in Boston? Isn’t that true, Mr. Flemmi?

  FLEMMI: We had formed a partnership, the FBI and I. How we benefited from it with their assistance or with their okay—yes, we did all right.

  There were even times when Flemmi got mixed up—especially about whether he was supposed to view the leaks he’d gotten from FBI agents as either legal or illegal acts. The leaks, he argued, were proof of his claim of FBI protection. But would it matter to Judge Wolf if the leaking were illegal? Flemmi more than once wasn’t sure what position to stake out. At one point Wyshak was pushing Flemmi on the range of services Connolly provided Bulger and Flemmi—from warning the crime bosses about wiretaps to burying complaints against them, such as the extortion of Stephen and Julie Rakes—when the prosecutor suddenly asked: “You knew Mr. Connolly was breaking the law in his relationship with you, didn’t you?”

  FLEMMI: Yes.

  WYSHAK: In fact, do you know Stephen Rakes—Stippo?

  FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.

  WYSHAK: Well, you told us that—

  FLEMMI: Excuse me, Mr. Wyshak. I just wanted to clarify one thing, when you asked me a question about did I know he was breaking the law. As far as I’m concerned, everything he was doing was legal—illegal—excuse me, legal.

  WYSHAK: Now you’re saying you didn’t know he was breaking the law?

  FLEMMI: No. I’m saying that everything that I believe he did, he as far as —it was consistent with his job. He was protecting us.

  WYSHAK: Did you think it was consistent with his job to violate the law, yes or no?

  FLEMMI: Whatever he was doing was legal.

  WYSHAK: It was legal to tip you off on investigations?

  FLEMMI: That’s correct.

  Most of the time Flemmi had kind words for John Connolly, but he did express disappointment that Connolly had neither gotten him out of the current fix immediately following his arrest nor taken the witness stand during the hearings to defend their deal.

  FLEMMI: He should be up here testifying on our behalf.

  WYSHAK: So .... he’s committed the cowardly act?

  FLEMMI: Obviously—that he’s not here. I feel he should be here.

  WYSHAK: So you feel he’s betrayed you also?

  FLEMMI: I feel that we’ve been abandoned.

  WYSHAK: Because if what you’re saying is true, he would have been knocking on the U.S. attorney’s door on day one, isn’t that true, Mr. Flemmi?

  FLEMMI: He should be.

  WYSHAK: Should have been knocking on my door and saying: “Hey, Fred, you made a mistake; this guy has immunity?”

  The prosecutor’s near-constant mockery notwithstanding, the bottom line of Flemmi’s ten days of testimony, covering the career criminal’s murky collusion with the FBI, was that an FBI promise to protect was a covenant in perpetuity. Flemmi felt that he “would be protected for crimes past, present, and future.” If nothing on FBI paper existed to codify the deal, no matter. “We
had a gentleman’s agreement,” he said about the arrangement he and Bulger had with Connolly, Morris, and the other agents.

  “We shook hands. To me, that was an agreement.”

  Perhaps the most dramatic moment came when Flemmi was asked if he’d been tipped to flee just before his indictment in 1995. With a sly smile, Flemmi replied, “That’s the big question, I guess.” Despite the torrent of evidence that pointed to John Connolly, Flemmi tried to convince the judge that John Morris was the one who obstructed justice by leaking a grand jury indictment. Flemmi apparently hoped this feeble scenario might lure Connolly to the witness stand to back his claim to an immunity defense. But many in the courtroom rolled their eyes. The most visible disbelief came from codefendant Frank Salemme. Until then, despite the close quarters in court and in prison, Salemme had managed to keep his deepening disdain for Flemmi in check during his week on the stand. Salemme had even weathered Flemmi’s denial that he was the one who ratted to the FBI Salemme’s New York location when he was arrested back in 1972.

  But the Morris story was too much to bear. Salemme viewed it not only as a farce but as a threat to the immunity defense that could benefit all the defendants, not just Flemmi. In a game within a game, Flemmi looked to be currying favor with Connolly by protecting him. It put Salemme over the edge. During a break Salemme’s suppressed ire flared in the court’s holding cell. He went after the smaller Flemmi, lifting him up and screaming in his face. “You piece of shit,” he shouted. “You’ve fucked me all my life, and now you’re screwing everyone around you. You’re scum, and you’re gonna die.” Bobby DeLuca jumped in between the former partners in crime and broke it up. Salemme abruptly walked away from Flemmi and never spoke to him again.

  THE hearings seemed to lose steam once the drama of Flemmi’s testimony ended. More FBI agents were among the remaining witnesses, including experts testifying about the FBI’s guidelines for handling informants. Debbie Noseworthy—who was now Debbie Morris—appeared briefly to corroborate John Morris’s account of the day John Connolly gave her $1,000 of Bulger’s money for plane fare. But the remaining witnesses were anticlimactic compared to the sight of a mob boss of Flemmi’s stature testifying in federal court. By October the months of testimony were winding down, and everyone had pretty much had their say.

  Except John Connolly.

  Thinking Judge Wolf was done, he launched a media blitz to rehabilitate a reputation that for months had taken a beating. Though he had been talking sporadically to reporters during the hearings, Connolly wanted the last word. He appeared on talk radio, on television, and as a centerpiece in magazines he’d selected to grant interviews. Each interview and article was friendly and supportive, a chance for Connolly to sound off virtually unchallenged. The headline on the cover story of the October 27 issue of the Boston Tab boldly announced: “Connolly Speaks Out,” and the cover featured a large photograph of John Connolly, dressed in his trademark tailored suit and wearing sunglasses, standing outside 98 Prince Street, the former Mafia headquarters. The meaning of the photo was clear: here was the G-man who took out the Mafia. “I’m Proud of What I Did,” screamed another headline, in bold print. But no interview was more fawning than the one Connolly had on WRKO-AM during the afternoon of Saturday, October 24, 1998. The host, Andy Moes, announced at the start that Connolly was an old friend, “a fine son of South Boston,” and “a man I know to be an honorable and decent man.” Then came Moes’s breathless ode to Connolly.

  MOES: Man, oh man. What has happened? Last time your name came up it was hero John Connolly. I’ve only heard your name referred to as, like, Prince of the City. Every supervisor, everybody I know who knows you in the FBI talks about what an incredibly smart, streetwise agent John Connolly was. John Connolly did the impossible. He was able to break through and literally bring down La Cosa Nostra to their knees in Boston, something the bureau was very proud of. And happy to take credit for. Those were the last stories I heard about John Connolly. All of a sudden, I’m hearing whispers, and they are whispers, that are done in back rooms, quietly: “He’s a rogue agent, you know. He was a rogue agent.” You a little tired of hearing that? You a little sick and tired of having people assassinate your character?

  CONNOLLY: It’s wearing a little thin.

  Like a politician, Connolly had certain “talking” points he seemed to want to get across each time he was interviewed: that he’d never done anything wrong in handling Bulger and Flemmi; that the crime bosses were merely a “gang of two” who helped the FBI take out the Boston branch of an international criminal organization; that Bulger and Flemmi did have permission from the FBI to commit certain crimes—gambling and loan-sharking—while gathering intelligence; that John Morris was “an evil guy”; and that prosecutors Wyshak, Kelly, and Herbert had no business indicting the FBI’s informants back in 1995. Connolly called the prosecutors “cowards” who violated the FBI’s promise—and most important, Connolly’s promise—not to go after Bulger and Flemmi. “I never would have given my word to anyone had I ever thought there was a chance that the government would break it,” Connolly told Moes, his voice slowing to a crawl to put extra emphasis on his words. “They broke their word,” he growled. “Shame on them, the prosecutors here. But they had no right to break my word.”

  By this time John Connolly had emerged as the kind of quintessential public figure for the 1990s, a decade increasingly obsessed with style and celebrity. It was as if Connolly had decided that if he self-assuredly proclaimed himself the true hero in the story—and he made this swaggering claim unabashedly, even tenaciously—then it would be true. Forget about the mountain of evidence before Judge Wolf and the hours of incriminating testimony. And for the most part Connolly did have his way during his media blitz. Just about the only bump in the road he encountered, albeit briefly, was a question posed by Peter Meade of WBZ-AM, who stopped Connolly to ask about an FBI actually condoning violence.

  MEADE: Isn’t violence an inherent part of loan-sharking?

  CONNOLLY: Well, uh. Not really. I mean, loan-sharking? Yeah, I mean, you know, violence is an explicit part of loan-sharking. Uhh. If someone doesn’t pay you, people hurt them. But, um, they, the deal with these two individuals and anyone else was—no violence. No murders. No violence.

  During the blizzard of interviews Connolly piled up public relations points. He even turned up his rhetoric about the ongoing hearings before Judge Wolf. During most of the year he’d taken the position that, as much as he wanted to tell his side, he couldn’t testify without immunity, not when the prosecutors had him under investigation. But now that the hearings seemed to be over, Connolly was saying, immunity be damned—he didn’t want it, he didn’t need it. “I do not need immunity for corrupt acts,” he told the Boston Tab. “I did not commit corrupt acts. I would refuse immunity for those reasons. I don’t need it.

  “They can stick it,” he added.

  The overheated talk proved to be a misstep.

  Both the defense attorneys and the prosecutors suddenly asked Judge Wolf to summon Connolly back to court, now that he was repeatedly saying that he no longer wanted immunity. It was one of those rare instances when Cardinale and Wyshak agreed. “It’s time to put Mr. Connolly’s feet to the fire on this issue,” Cardinale told the judge. Wyshak’s colleague Jamie Herbert noted that during the media interviews Connolly “has lied about what takes place in this courtroom and outside this courtroom.”

  The lawyers had called Connolly’s bluff, and on the morning before Halloween, October 30, John Connolly returned to federal court, his lawyer Robert Popeo at his side. The broad-shouldered Connolly cut a striking pose on the witness stand. He wore a dark, fitted suit, a smart-looking yellow silk tie, and a white handkerchief was neatly arranged in his breast pocket. His hair appeared recently cut and styled.

  Tony Cardinale cut right to the chase.

  “Mr. Connolly, in 1982, did you give any cash to an FBI secretary named Debbie Noseworthy, now Debbie Morris?”


  Cardinale was looking to provoke Connolly. “I was hoping his arrogance would get the better of him,” he said later. He wanted an angered Connolly to blurt out a denial—no, he had not delivered Bulger’s money to Morris! “Then boom—there would have been an instant indictment for perjury,” said Cardinale. “It would have made my day, after what he’s done to my client and to so many other people in his so-called role as a defender of the law.”

  The two men locked eyes, and the question that Cardinale had asked in his baritone voice echoed in the courtroom. Then Connolly shifted in his seat and removed a card from the pocket of his suit. He held the card in his right hand, delicately between the tips of his index and middle fingers.

  “Upon advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer at this time and rely upon my rights under the United States Constitution not to give testimony against myself.”

  CARDINALE: On April 30 of 1998, as the Court has pointed out, Mr. Connolly, you appeared before the Court and refused to answer questions, asserting your Fifth Amendment privilege, is that correct?

  CONNOLLY: That’s correct.

  CARDINALE: Since that time, you’ve been interviewed by a number of media representatives . . . have you not?

  CONNOLLY: Upon advice of counsel, I repeat. . . .

  Cardinale did not let up, firing off a string of questions: have you personally committed any criminal offenses with regard to any promise made to Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi? Did you at any time give Mr. Morris around Christmas a box of wine containing $1,000? Did you warn Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi of any existing investigative efforts that were targeting them? Did you know an individual by the name of Brian Halloran?

  Each time, Connolly took the Fifth.

  Then prosecutor Jamie Herbert had a turn.

  HERBERT: Good morning, Mr. Connolly.

  CONNOLLY: Good morning.

  HERBERT: Mr. Connolly, you know what the term “bribery” means?

  CONNOLLY: I assert my Fifth Amendment rights.