“He was speeding your Honor,”66 Barboza’s mob lawyer Al Farese explained in court. “He was fleeing police officers who thought he was someone else.”
The judge nodded and looked at Barboza. “If he had lived a better life, he wouldn’t be fleeing.”
“He changed his name to Baron so that he can change his life,” the lawyer pointed out.
This drew a laugh from the judge. “Mr. Farese, when Barboza changes we’ll all be on the moon,” the judge replied. Barboza was given a $35 fine and ordered back to Deer Island. Three more gangland murders were committed while Joe was behind bars. One victim was Barboza’s former training partner, Tony Veranis. In the words of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, Veranis coulda been somebody. He coulda been a contender. As a boxer, Veranis was one of the best welterweight prospects ever to come out of Massachusetts. He had fifteen hard-fought wins under his belt, with most victories coming by knockout. But he had also taken a beating in the ring, and the mileage began to show when he started complaining of severe headaches. In his next bout, Veranis was knocked down in every round and was later rushed to the hospital, where he fell into a coma. He recovered just enough to get back into the ring once again, but his best days were clearly behind him. He soon hung up his boxing gloves and fell into a life of crime.
Veranis was a minor criminal who carried major debts with the mob. He was constantly fending off loansharks that had come to collect what they were owed. One gangster continually stiffed by Veranis was Barboza crew member Tommy DePrisco. Veranis, who was fearless and oftentimes drunk, ran into DePrisco’s friend Johnny Martorano at a club opening in late April 1966. The former boxer boasted that he had just kicked DePrisco out of South Boston with his tail between his legs. Veranis told Martorano to fuck off and then reached for his gun. Martorano, who was every bit as capable as Flemmi and Barboza, drew first, shooting Veranis in the head and killing him with one shot. The former boxer’s body was later dumped in the Blue Hills of Milton.
A month later, talk of Veranis’s murder would subside as the Winter Hill Gang was able to hook a much bigger fish. The Hughes brothers were still on the streets and running the show for the McLaughlin Gang. Stevie Hughes had survived a recent ambush at the hands of Wimpy Bennett but had had to have his spleen removed. Stevie had been shot in the chest as he and Connie stepped out of a car across the street from Connie’s home in Malden. Wimpy Bennett fled quickly and so did Connie Hughes, leaving his brother on the street and bleeding badly until help arrived. Stevie of course gave detectives no information regarding his assailants. Brother Connie told police that that Stevie had “been shot, period.”67
Connie was not going to allow the law to settle this dispute. Instead, he hit the streets looking for revenge and looking for information on the whereabouts of Bennett and Howie Winter, the newly minted boss of the Winter Hill Gang. On May 25, 1966, Connie and an associate were inside a Charlestown bar grilling a young gangster for information. When the kid refused to talk, Connie took out a long knife and stuck it into his leg. The interrogation took more than an hour, and another bar patron, a young gangster named Brian Halloran, managed to get word out that Connie Hughes was inside and demanding answers. The Winter Hill Gang mobilized quickly and had two cars in position outside the tavern when Hughes finally departed in the wee hours of the morning. Connie Hughes jumped into his car and drove toward the Mystic River Bridge. The Winter Hill Gang followed. Connie did not appear to notice the tail. Instead, he paid the bridge toll and kept going. The killers drove through the toll gate and sped forward surrounding Connie on his right and his left. They opened fire on the car in the center lane, riddling it and the driver with more than sixty bullets. Connie Hughes was struck twice in the head, killing him instantly. His head hit the steering wheel as the car careened from the center lane toward a bridge abutment where it caught fire. The killers kept going. Moments later, a passerby, thinking he had stumbled upon a horrific accident, stopped his car and rushed over to the wreck. He pulled Connie’s body out of the vehicle just before it exploded into flames. It was then, in the pale light of the roaring fire, that the motorist noticed that Connie had been shot several times.
The newspapers once again tried to tie Barboza to the murder. One reporter claimed that Connie had been given a contract to kill an inmate on Deer Island but that the inmate had somehow managed to strike first. Although he was not named in the article, it was implied to those in the know that Barboza was indeed the inmate in question. When Joe was notified about the hit on Connie Hughes, he celebrated with a filet mignon that he had stolen from the warden’s refrigerator and later some marijuana. As Joe stretched out in his bunk with a joint, he smiled and thought of his friend Buddy McLean, whom he had now avenged, at least in the public’s mind.
In March 1966, Special Agent H. Paul Rico was assigned exclusively to the development of Top Echelon Informants. He also received glowing praise from his superiors, who stressed that Rico had “exceptional talent in his ability to develop informants and his participation was considered outstanding.” A year later, Joe Barboza would help to enhance Rico’s reputation tenfold.
13
The Hit Parade
There’s a killer on the road …
JIM MORRISON
Less than a month after the fiery murder of Connie Hughes, another Boston gangster would also die in his car. The hit on Rocco DiSeglio was a classic case of what can happen when you bite the hand that feeds you. DiSeglio was yet another in a long line of boxers turned mobsters in the New England underworld. DiSeglio had first come to the Mafia’s attention during his brief prizefighting career when he proved all too willing to take a dive for the mob. But after his boxing career, DiSeglio felt that the Mafia owed him more than just a debt of gratitude. When Mafia money and opportunity didn’t flow Rocco’s way, he began to hold up mob-controlled dice games around Massachusetts. DiSeglio worked from the inside, making sure the doors to the joint where the high-stakes games were played were left unlocked. When Jerry Angiulo found out about the robberies, he pulled in one of the robbers and gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Kill DiSeglio, or be killed yourself. The robber quickly accepted the assignment and lured DiSeglio into a car ride of which he would not be coming back. The robber shot DiSeglio three times in the head, tearing apart half of his face. Another bullet traveled through the back of his head and exited out of his eye socket. The body of Rocco DiSeglio was dumped, along with his wife’s Ford Thunderbird, in the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary in the idyllic town of Topsfield, Massachusetts. Although he had not taken part in the hit, Barboza knew all about it. In fact, Angiulo had originally blamed Barboza for the dice game stick-ups, claiming that one of the robbers bore a resemblance to Joe’s associate Chico Amico. Hours after the shooting, Barboza called an Irish cop he knew and told him where to find DiSeglio’s body.
When Joe was finally released from Deer Island in the summer of 1966, his crew had grown to include not only the Frizzi brothers (Connie and Guy) and Chico Amico but also Tommy DePrisco, Nicky Femia, and Arthur “Tashi” Bratsos. Femia was all brawn and no brains, but as loyal as a German shepherd. Tashi Bratsos was also brought aboard because of his loyalty to Barboza and because he had a brother who was a police officer. Like all mobsters, Barboza understood the benefit of having an informer from the other side of the law. One man whose loyalty had now come into question was Guy Frizzi, who had been with Barboza the longest. The other crew members hated him, and Guy had a habit of beating women, which did not sit well with Barboza. Frizzi felt the growing tension and decided to take a sabbatical to California.
“You’ve had a five-month vacation,” he told Barboza. “Now it’s my turn.”68
While Guy Frizzi was vacationing out West, a girlfriend approached Barboza with a warning. She told Joe that Frizzi had been talking behind his back constantly and that Guy believed that he should be the leader of the crew, and that he should be the one traveling down to Providence to confer with Raymond Patriarca. T
his was all Joe needed to hear. Guy Frizzi would leave the gang quietly, or he would leave in a coffin.
“I’m buying you out,” Barboza told Frizzi.
Tashi Bratsos bought Frizzi’s end of the shylocking business for $15,000 with an agreement to pay an additional $10,000 in the future. At first, Frizzi refused to sell and went around to the gang’s customers begging them to come with him. But the customers were loyal, and, more important, fearful of Barboza. Guy Frizzi took the cash and left the gang with a chip on his shoulder and a score to settle with the Animal.
While Guy Frizzi could be both conniving and vicious, he still knew how to run a bookmaking business and, equally important, he knew how to steer clear of the law. This could not be said of Barboza’s other crew members, who were too quick to decide a dispute with a knife, a gun, and even their mouths. This lack of discipline would continue to plague Barboza. Shortly after his release from jail, Joe was picked up on a phantom gun charge while at a club in the South End. The Sahara Club was raided by cops one night and a gun was found in the back office. Police fingered Barboza for the weapon and placed him in cuffs. Joe knew the charge was bullshit so he kept his cool, which could not be said for his friend Chico Amico.
“You can’t leave him alone, can you?” Amico shouted at the officers as they placed Barboza in a waiting cruiser. “You won’t be satisfied until they find some of you on the streets with your heads blown off!”69
Boston police officers did not take kindly to the overt threat, so they kept Barboza in stir for several hours before they let him go. Immediately afterward they went looking for Amico, who managed to escape but not before spraining his ankle in flight.
When Barboza finally caught up with Chico, he squeezed the bad ankle until the man screamed out in pain. “You and your big mouth,” the Animal scolded him.
Amico should have heeded Joe’s warning. Instead, he brought heat on the gang once more when he stabbed a man outside the Tiger Tail Lounge in Revere. The victim, twenty-three-year-old Arthur Pearson, had become embroiled in a shouting match with the club’s bouncer when Amico, Barboza, and Nicky Femia entered the fray.
“We don’t like you, guy,” one of the men whispered into Pearson’s ear from behind. Pearson also felt something sharp against his back.
After the dust had settled, Pearson left the bar only to find Barboza’s crew waiting for him outside. Without a word, Chico Amico stepped forward and stabbed Pearson in the stomach. The victim was rushed to the hospital while police rounded up the usual suspects, which in this case meant Amico, Barboza, and Femia.
Pearson survived the attack and gave a statement to police while lying in his hospital bed. He told investigators that all three men had been involved in the stabbing in some way. Pearson also said that two of them walked over to him while he was lying on the ground and warned him not to talk or he would be killed. The victim was happy to share his story with police at the hospital, but when it came time to testify before a grand jury Pearson suddenly grew silent. Barboza’s threats were real, as was the $10,000 he had given the victim’s father to ensure his silence. The case was eventually dropped, but Joe’s faith in the competency of his crew grew even more suspect.
In July 1966, as some were beginning to question the control Raymond Patriarca had over the rackets in New England, the Man answered his doubters in a big way. Patriarca had learned that a bookie named Willie Marfeo had gone into business for himself on Federal Hill in Providence. This was a major no-no. To make matters worse, Marfeo had refused to pay tribute to Patriarca. When the Man sent underboss Henry Tameleo to warn Marfeo that he had better pay up or else, Tameleo was greeted with nothing more than a slap in the mouth. The insult was a slap in the face to Patriarca, who sent out the order that Marfeo had to go. The only question now was how to do it. Marfeo knew all the muscle that Patriarca employed, so it would be nearly impossible to get a jump on the bookie with local hitmen. Patriarca decided to bring in an outside assassination squad for the job. The boss provided the killers with weapons, cars, and an escape route. He also selected the best possible place to find Marfeo flatfooted. The assassins caught Willie Marfeo enjoying a slice of pizza at a joint called the Korner Kitchen on Atwells Avenue in Providence. After ordering all the patrons to lie down on the floor, the killers grabbed Marfeo and shoved him into a phone booth. They closed the door, raised their guns, and unloaded on the bookie—killing him with four gunshots to the head and chest. The Marfeo hit proved to those inside law enforcement, and inside the mob, that Raymond Patriarca’s bite was still every bit as deadly as his bark.
Two years later, in April 1968, the Man ordered the murder of Willie’s brother. Rudy Marfeo shared his brother’s stubborn streak and had also been interfering with Patriarca’s gambling business. Adding to the size of the target on his back was the fact that Rudy had sworn revenge against his brother’s killers. For this gangland hit, Patriarca did not subcontract the violence; instead he used five of his own men, including Maurice “Pro” Lerner. The assassins found out that Marfeo always did his grocery shopping at a certain market on Pocasset Avenue in Providence. The killers had conducted surveillance on the grocery store for several weeks while trying to determine the right time to strike. The delays frustrated Patriarca. “I don’t want to hear anymore stories,” he told one of the hitmen. “I just want him (Marfeo) killed.”70
On a bright Saturday afternoon soon thereafter, the hit squad donned Halloween masks and followed Rudy Marfeo and his bodyguard Anthony Melei into the market, where they opened fire with a carbine and sawed off shotgun. The killers fled in a stolen car that they ditched in the parking lot of a nearby golf course. After wiping the stolen car clean of fingerprints, the assassins drove away in a maroon Buick.
Sibling loyalty often proved fatal in the New England mob. What the Marfeo brothers had found out, the Hughes brothers would soon learn. Stevie Hughes would outlive his brother Connie by only four months. Each man had a criminal career that had spanned over two decades. Police in Charlestown had been chasing after them since they were in knickers. For the Hughes brothers, crime was a family tradition that had been passed down by their father, Stevie Sr., a shipyard electrician who had served time at Walpole for possession of a machine gun. Crime was in their blood, and it was also in their neighborhood. Most of Connie and Stevie Hughes’s early capers, which included robbery and car theft, were committed with their childhood friends Bernie and Punchy McLaughlin. The McLaughlins and the Hugheses were peat from the same bog. Now three of them were dead, George McLaughlin was on death row, and Stevie was the only one left on the street to ensure the gang’s survival.
Everyone understood that a successful hit on Stevie Hughes would bring an end to one of the bloodiest gang wars in American history. There were no shortage of volunteers as members of the Winter Hill Gang, the Mafia, and others all offered themselves up for the plum assignment. Stevie Hughes knew that he was vastly outnumbered and that his time was running out. He asked his close friend Sammy Lindenbaum (Sammy Linden) to make peace with Barboza and the other mob killers. The Animal would never accept such a deal, knowing that Stevie Hughes had killed Joe’s friend and mentor Buddy McLean. “Tell him to go fuck his mother,”71 Joe told Lindenbaum.
Barboza was surprised that Lindenbaum had reached out to him, as the loanshark had been on Joe’s hit list just the year before. Raymond Patriarca had wanted Lindenbaum killed, and the contract had originally been assigned to the Bear. But after Jimmy Flemmi had been ambushed and shot, Barboza felt that it was his responsibility to see the assignment through. He had asked Lindenbaum for a tour of his house overlooking Revere Beach. Lindenbaum had just put the place up for sale, and Barboza said he was interested in buying. The Animal’s real plan was to lure his victim to the home and kill him inside with no witnesses. When Lindenbaum arrived at Barboza’s East Boston headquarters to pick him up for the tour, he brought two small dogs with him—a red flag for the Animal, who knew the damned things would yip and yap and draw at
tention once Joe had clipped Lindenbaum. As he was trying to figure out a way around the situation, Barboza got a call from his friend Ronnie Cassesso, who had participated in the murder of Teddy Deegan. Cassesso told Joe that the Office had revoked the order but that no reason had been given by Patriarca. Joe later discovered that the Man wanted to keep Lindenbaum alive just long enough to borrow $80,000 from him, with no intention of paying it back. Joe Lombardo had also wanted to keep Sammy alive because he was deemed good for business.
Lindenbaum was a walking cash machine, with money on the streets of at least twenty cities and towns in Massachusetts. Along with running numbers, the squat, dough-faced crook was also a popular abortionist who could “fix” a problem for as little as $450. Sterilization and safety were foreign concepts to the sixty-seven-year-old Lindenbaum, who would correct his medical mistakes by simply making the patient disappear. Now, a year after the hit was called off, it was back on, and with any luck the mob would rid themselves of Lindenbaum and Stevie Hughes at the same time.
The Pearson stabbing case was still unfolding, and Barboza was under pressure by his lawyer to stay out of trouble. When Joe learned that Lindenbaum’s demise was imminent, he skipped town for New York and left the hunt to fellow predators Stevie “the Rifleman” Flemmi and Cadillac Frank Salemme.
The two killers pounced on their prey on a Friday afternoon in late September 1966. Lindenbaum and Stevie Hughes had just enjoyed a long lunch after making the collection rounds in Lawrence and were traveling along busy Route 114 just two miles from the town of Middleton when a black sedan appeared virtually out of nowhere. The car overtook Lindenbaum’s Pontiac Tempest at the top of a hill near the Three Pines Inn. The passenger-side window of the black sedan was rolled down and sticking out of it was the barrel of an M-1 rifle. The gunman opened fire with at least seven shots. One bullet ripped the fingers off Lindenbaum’s hand. Screaming in pain, he let go of the steering wheel and the Pontiac veered dangerously close to a steep embankment. Stevie Hughes reached inside his trench coat for his own gun but was cut down by bullets. The 1965 Pontiac Tempest hit the embankment and plummeted ten feet into a swamp. The black sedan kept going. The manager of the Three Pines Inn heard what he thought was a car backfiring and looked out a window. When he saw that the guardrail had been torn down, he yelled to a waitress to call the police for help. The manager then rushed outside, crossed the street, and maneuvered his way down the steep embankment to the wreck, where he discovered that not only had both men been killed but that they had been shot several times each. When a tow truck finally arrived to haul the car away, the driver discovered Lindenbaum’s two dogs, a Chihuahua and a mutt, alive and hiding under a seat.
Animal Page 16