Animal

by Casey Sherman

  “Get him too!” came a voice from deep within the alleyway.

  As Barboza lifted the revolver’s long barrel in his direction, Tony Stats slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and sped away from the scene with his head low. Barboza had selected the .357 Magnum as his weapon of choice that evening because he believed it could penetrate the door of Stats’s borrowed Pontiac. However, Barboza was denied a side shot at the vehicle and instead had to line up his target from behind. Knowing that he could not get a clear shot, Joe decided against pulling the trigger.

  Tony Stats got away and drove around for several hours before turning up at the home of his lawyer, Al Farese. Stathopoulos, who clearly was not thinking straight, told Farese that he had accompanied Deegan and Roy French on a score in Chelsea and that the cops now had Deegan. Farese picked up the phone and dialed the Chelsea Police Department.

  “Is it true that you have Deegan?” Farese asked the night watch commander.

  “Yes, we have him with a hole in his head,” the commander replied.47

  Farese decided it was best to take the shaken Stathopoulos back to the scene of the crime, which was now crawling with law enforcement. Once there, they met up with Chelsea police captain Robert Renfrew, who escorted them into the alley. The body of Teddy Deegan lay near the back door of the finance company. He had been shot six times by three different guns.

  When asked by Renfrew what he knew about the shooting, Stathopoulos said nothing. The next day, on the advice of attorney Al Farese and another local mob lawyer, John Fitzgerald, Tony Stats visited the Chelsea Police Department, where he was shown photographs of several gangsters including Barboza, Flemmi, Roy French, Romeo Martin, and Ronnie Cassesso.

  “These are the guys that did it, am I right?” asked one investigator.

  Again, Tony Stats refused to talk.

  “Look, they killed Deegan and they’re gonna kill you too.”

  The investigator told Stathopoulos what he already knew, yet there was no way that he could convince the gangster to cooperate. Tony Stats left the Chelsea Police Department without offering any information on the murder of his friend. He and Fitzgerald then drove over to Al Farese’s office, and Stathopoulos was shocked to find Roy French there. French had also been questioned in the murder. He had been picked up by police at the Ebb Tide Lounge hours after the shooting. French had done little to cover his tracks. He had blood stains on his shirt sleeve and right shoe and had not thought to change out of his clothes after the murder. Since French had not been formally charged with the crime, he was let go. Now both he and Stathopoulos were staring at each other across the lawyer’s office. Tony Stats did not know what to say, but he mustered up something to fill the dead air.

  “How’d you get away?” he asked French.48

  “Over fences and through backyards,” Roy replied.

  Fitzgerald attempted to cut through the tension by pointing out that Stathopoulos had not cooperated with Chelsea police in their investigation. He then instructed the men not to be seen together. Although he did not say it, the request was fine with Tony Stats, who knew that French had set Deegan up for murder and, by extension, himself too.

  Stathopoulos should have fled the area that day, but instead he went home to his apartment and drew the shades and locked the door. Tony Stats stayed in seclusion for several days—his only forays outside were to call John Fitzgerald from a payphone down the street. One night his wife borrowed his leather jacket for a trip to the corner store. As she stepped out onto the street, a car pulled up next to her and continued slowly beside her. She turned and looked at the men inside the car, who then pulled away and parked down the street. The wife kept walking, picked up her groceries, and returned quickly to the apartment. She entered her home shaking and motioned to her husband to look out the window. Tony Stats lifted the shade slightly and saw the vehicle, parked at the end of the street. At that moment, he realized that it would be unhealthy and unwise to leave the apartment again until the police made their arrests.

  Chelsea Police investigators presumed they would wrap up this case quickly. Police captain Joe Kozlowski came forward and described the mysterious car that had pulled away from him about an hour before the murder.

  “I walked behind the car and saw the rear number plate with a Massachusetts Registered number 444,” Kozlowski told his colleagues. “The right half of the plate was folded towards the center obstructing the other three digits. I then walked to the driver’s side of the car and rapped on the window. As I did this the driver took off at a fast rate of speed and took a screeching turn to the right on Broadway. I observed that the man in the back was stocky, had dark hair and a bald spot in the center of his head.”

  Kozlowski had just described the balding Bear. He also identified Romeo Martin as the driver of the vehicle. With this eye-witness testimony and the blood discovered on Roy French’s clothing, the investigation was progressing smoothly, and detectives had no doubt that other dominoes would soon fall.

  The FBI had even more evidence at its disposal. On March 15, 1965, Special Agent Rico typed a memo stating that he had been informed five days prior to the slaying that Raymond Patriarca had put the word out that Deegan was to be “hit” and that a dry run had already been made. Rico also mentioned that a close associate of Deegan’s had agreed to set him up. On March 13, the day following Deegan’s murder, Rico wrote another memo, describing in detail how it had all gone down.

  Informant advised that [Vincent] “Jimmy” Flemmi contacted him and told him that the previous evening Deegan was lured to a finance company in Chelsea and that the door of the finance company had been left open by an employee of the company and that when they got to the door Roy French, who was setting Deegan up, shot Deegan, and Joseph Romeo Martin and Ronnie Cassessa [sic] came out of the door and one of them fired into Deegan’s body. While Deegan was approaching the doorway, he [Flemmi] and Joe Barboza walked over towards a car driven by Tony “Stats” [Anthony Stathopoulos] and they were going to kill “Stats” but “Stats’ saw them coming and drove off before any shots were fired. Flemmi told informant that Ronnie Cassessa [sic] and Romeo Martin wanted to prove to Raymond Patriarca they were capable individuals, and that is why they wanted to “hit” Deegan. Flemmi indicated that they did an awful sloppy job.

  This memo was later disseminated to Chelsea police captain Robert Renfrew. The information backed up the evidence Chelsea police detectives had gained from their own network of reliable informants. Chelsea police lieutenant Thomas Evans told his superiors that he had learned through an informant that Roy French had received a call at the Ebb Tide at around 9:00 p.m. on March 12, 1965, and after a short conversation left the lounge with Joe Barboza, Jimmy Flemmi, Ron Cassesso, Romeo Martin, Nicky Femia, Francis Imbruglia, and Freddie Chiampi. The men returned to the Ebb Tide approximately forty-five minutes later, and Romeo Martin was overheard telling Roy French: “We nailed him.”

  On March 19, 1965, James Handley, the special agent in charge of the Boston office, advised J. Edgar Hoover that Barboza, Flemmi, French, Martin, and Cassesso were responsible for the Deegan murder. According to Handley’s report, Roy French walked in behind Deegan as they were gaining entrance to the building and fired the first shot into the back of his head. Cassesso and Martin then opened fire on Deegan, hitting him five more times in the body.

  Once news of the Deegan hit reached the Office, Raymond Patriarca was outraged. He had not given Flemmi the okay for the murder. Patriarca had told the hitmen not to take any action until he received a thumbs up or thumbs down from Jerry Angiulo. The Boston underboss insisted that he had given no such order. In fact, Angiulo was convinced that Flemmi was a stool pigeon. Angiulo was not aware of the relationship the Bear had built with the FBI but had received information that Flemmi had a close relationship with a Boston police detective named William Stuart. Angiulo told Patriarca that the two had been seen in New York City together. The Boston underboss wanted the Bear hunted down and killed.

/>   Jimmy Flemmi needed some advice. so he reached out to his brother Stevie. The two met at the Mount Pleasant real estate office on Dudley Street in Roxbury.49 Stevie Flemmi owned the building, so the Bear knew that he would be safe. The brothers were joined by their childhood friend and fellow gangster Frank Salemme, also known as Cadillac Frank for his love of fancy cars. The Rifleman wanted some answers for himself. He had known Teddy Deegan for a long time. In fact, the two had pulled off some breaking and entering and burglary jobs together. Their most daring job was robbing the Brookline home of Harry “Doc Jasper” Sagansky, a former dentist who became one of the biggest bookies in America. Because Sagansky lived in a high-rise, Flemmi and Deegan had to rappel their way down from the roof. The Flemmi brothers got into a heated argument as Jimmy tried to convince Stevie that Deegan was killed because he was aiding and abetting members of the McLaughlin Brothers Gang. Jimmy also mentioned the fact that his friend Barboza, Ronnie Cassesso, Roy French, and Romeo Martin had committed the murder, but denied having any involvement himself.

  Neither Stevie nor Salemme believed it. Still, the Rifleman had to protect his brother from those who wanted to put him behind bars and those who wanted to put him in the ground. Stevie was as vicious as his younger brother, but twice as smart. He knew that Jimmy had created a major problem, and he also knew that there were two men who could help him get out of it. A few days later, Stevie asked Barboza to meet him at Walter’s Bar in Dorchester to discuss an urgent matter. Joe got ahold of crew members Chico Amico and Nicky Femia and the three of them drove from East Boston to Dorchester to meet the Rifleman. Flemmi jumped into the backseat of Barboza’s car and gave him the news.

  “This is red hot. The law has a bug on Jerry Angiulo’s phone and so do we,”50 the Rifleman explained. “I listened to the tapes myself and I heard Jerry say he was gonna have you killed no matter what.”

  “What else did you hear?” Joe asked.

  “Everything points to the fact that he is paying to have you killed. I got in touch with you as quickly as I could.”

  Stevie Flemmi made no reference to his brother, who was the real target of the Mafia’s scorn. In an attempt to protect his Top Echelon Informant, H. Paul Rico worked behind the scenes with Stevie Flemmi to convince Barboza that the Mafia was gunning for him. In a battle between Angiulo and Barboza, Rico, a chronic gambler, was putting his money on the Animal.

  After the conversation with Stevie Flemmi, Barboza sought the counsel of his mentor Henry Tameleo. The two met at a mob-run joint called the Tiger Tail Lounge, and Barboza could hardly contain his outrage. He understood that he had made himself a target because of the Deegan murder, and that investigators were shaking the trees of the Boston underworld for information, thus causing problems for everyone.

  “I can’t help the heat I get from the law,” he told Tameleo.51 “People are trying to kill me and until these people are gone or don’t want to kill me no more, I have to say Fuck the law. I’d rather have the heat and be alive than have no heat and be dead.”

  Barboza’s anger was apparent as his eyes began to well up.

  “Don’t mistake these tears in my eyes for fear, because they’re not.”

  Tameleo asked Barboza to calm down and then got right to the root of the problem.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Jerry Angiulo is trying to kill me.”

  “Where did you hear this?” Tameleo asked.

  “Friends of mine got it from the law and from tapes of a bugged phone conversation they heard themselves.”

  Tameleo asked Barboza if he had heard the tapes. Joe told him no, but that the information came from his friends.

  “Jerry couldn’t plan a hit without Raymond’s say so, and if Raymond knows about it, then I’d know about it,” Tameleo explained. “If Jerry does a hit without Raymond’s okay, Jerry dies.”52

  Tameleo promised Barboza that he would step in and prevent any move against him. Joe wasn’t quite convinced, so he reached out to his friend Buddy McLean. The Winter Hill boss quickly summoned thirty of his most capable gang members for a meeting with Joe at McLean’s Somerville headquarters.

  “I want everybody here to know that I’m sending word to Raymond that Joe is my partner,” McLean told his men. “If anybody tries to kill him, I’ll try with my life to stop it, and if he dies I’ll avenge his death.”

  Barboza was relieved to hear these words, because he understood how powerful they were. He knew that even the mighty Patriarca would think twice before tangling with Buddy McLean and his band of experienced killers.

  Joe Barboza was taken off of Jerry Angiulo’s hit list, but his friend Jimmy Flemmi was not. If the Mafia was tracking the Bear, Jimmy Flemmi wanted to make sure they knew exactly what they were up against. He placed a phone call to Angiulo’s top muscle, Larry Baione, and laid his chips down.

  “There’s too many of us for you, Jimmy,” the Mafia soldier warned Flemmi.53

  “I promise you this,” the Bear countered in a controlled fury. “Before I get it—nine of you will be dead, and you might be in the bunch!”

  Flemmi would not make good on his threat. On the night of May 3, 1965, the Bear was en route to a meeting with Barboza when he was shot while leaving his Roxbury home. He had walked outside with his hand in his side pocket, his fingers wrapped tightly around his gun. He knew that Angiulo and Baione would be coming for him, he just didn’t know when. Flemmi was heading for his car when he noticed three men approach from across the street. Before he could draw his weapon, the assassins opened fire with two shotguns and a pistol. The impact knocked Flemmi off his feet momentarily before he somehow managed to get up and fire back while staggering. Flemmi collapsed seconds later with eight bullet holes in his chest, stomach, and side.

  Barboza learned about the shooting when he arrived in Roxbury’s Dearborn Square about an hour later. A friend of Flemmi’s ran up to Joe’s car and said there had been some trouble at the Bear’s house. Joe called the home immediately and was informed by a crying babysitter that Flemmi had been shot. Barboza followed Stevie Flemmi and Wimpy Bennett to City Hospital, where a doctor informed them all that Flemmi’s chances for survival were marginal at best.

  Hearing this news, the Animal went ballistic. He kicked the wall, shouted obscenities at the top of his lungs, and shoved aside anyone who tried to calm him down. Barboza was hell-bent on driving over to the North End to massacre Angiulo and every member of his crew. Boston police understood that they had a potential bloodbath on their hands, so they decided to round up Barboza, Stevie Flemmi, Bennett, and others who wanted to exact immediate revenge.

  Stevie Flemmi learned a few hours later that his brother was going to live, but that did little to cool anyone down. A short while later detectives brought in Connie Hughes, who was a triggerman for the rival McLaughlin Brothers Gang and who Barboza believed might have carried out the contract on the Bear. Joe spent the next several minutes trying to figure out a way to get close to Hughes so that he could kill him right in the middle of Boston Police headquarters. Barboza knew that such an act could land him in the electric chair, but at the moment his fury could not be tamed. Wimpy Bennett tried to calm the Animal down and told him that Connie had an airtight alibi for the shooting. Bennett believed that Connie’s brother Stevie was more likely the culprit. The Hughes brothers were the tip to the McLaughlin Gang’s spear. Two of the most feared men in Charlestown, Connie and Stevie Hughes worked as a team, although they were never seen together in public unless they were getting brought in by police for questioning.

  Barboza got as close to Connie Hughes as he could and told him that Jimmy Flemmi was going to live, and that Joe was going to kill whoever was involved in the botched hit.

  Police kept the Animal in a cage for six hours, while they released Connie Hughes and escorted him safely back to Charlestown. Barboza’s plan for revenge would have to wait until he got the full story as to what had happened from the Bear himself.

  Joe got to vi
sit his friend a week later in the hospital and was horrified by what he saw. Flemmi had tubes running out of his lungs, and there was a wire net inside his stomach to hold the intestines in. The Animal was surprised to hear his wounded friend arguing with his brother Stevie about a guy who owed him money. Barboza could only smile.

  “You’re all right, you bald-headed fuck, when you can start worrying about money,”54 he told his injured friend. Joe asked him to recount the assassination attempt.

  Flemmi told him that Wimpy Bennett was right—one of the shooters was indeed Stevie Hughes. The hit squad also included Punchy McLaughlin and another pug ugly named Jim O’Toole.

  Hughes and McLaughlin both had shotguns, while O’Toole was armed with a pistol. The Bear said that he was struck by the shotgun blasts, causing him to flip over and somehow land back on his feet with his gun still in his hand. Flemmi said he fired off several shots himself as O’Toole unloaded his pistol while running away. Barboza absorbed the information as he stared down at his friend on the hospital bed and could only envision the Hughes brothers lying side by side on slabs. Flemmi’s chest and stomach were a roadmap of stitches and bandages. The Animal and the Bear were evil cold-blooded killers and should have been natural rivals, but instead they shared a predator’s bond and a friendship that no one else could explain.

  For the next seven nights, Barboza and his crew waited in the bushes near Connie Hughes’s house, but neither brother appeared. Joe would have continued the stakeout, but he’d gotten himself thrown in jail after a fight outside the Ebb Tide. Coincidently, Anthony Stathopoulos just happened to be in the next cell. Tony Stats refused to leave his cell while Barboza was there. However, he tried to cozy up to the Animal in an attempt to save his own neck. Tony Stats told him that Connie Hughes visited a bank in the North Shore Shopping Center the first of every month to cash his veteran’s check. Once he was sprung from jail, Barboza ordered his associates Guy Frizzi and Chico Amico to stake out the parking lot. Sure enough, the men spotted Hughes as he was coming out of the bank. Amico wanted to shoot Connie then and there, but Frizzi persuaded him to wait until Hughes got back on the highway. That turned out to be a big mistake. Frizzi followed Hughes to the highway but could never get close enough for Amico to unload his M-1 carbine from the backseat. Hughes spotted his rivals and took them on a high-speed chase through nearby Chelsea. Amico managed to fire one shot, which blew out the back window of Connie’s car. Hughes escaped the attempt without a scratch. Once Barboza learned of this, he hit the roof. He’d have to take care of Connie Hughes himself.