Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  A meeting was set up for Barboza and Flemmi to convene with “the Office” in Providence. Barboza was excited; it would be his first face-to-face meeting with Patriarca, a big moment for someone who harbored dreams of becoming a made man.

  They met the Godfather at Badway’s Garage in the Federal Hill section of Providence. Raymond Patriarca showed up looking like exactly what he was: mafia royalty. He wore a lavish, tailored suit and had a diamond pinky ring that caught the light and sparkled.

  The sit-down lasted forty-five minutes. Jimmy Flemmi made the case for killing Deegan. “He’s a sneak, and I don’t fuckin’ trust him,” he told Patriarca.

  Later, the results of this meeting would remain in dispute. Patriarca insisted that he never authorized the Deegan hit but simply told the two killers that if they received approval from Jerry Angiulo, then they would have his approval. Flemmi and Barboza took this as a yes and began planning the hit.

  After the meeting, Flemmi said to Barboza, “You didn’t have much to say in there. What were you thinking?”

  Said Barboza, “I was thinking how I could bite his finger and get that diamond ring.”

  What none of the men at the meeting in Providence realized was that the location where they met to discuss the killing of Deegan was bugged by the FBI’s organized crime division. It was an illegal wire, known as a “gypsy wire,” unauthorized by any court of law but fully sanctioned by Director J. Edgar Hoover.

  There are multiple FBI memos, never revealed until many decades later, that show the FBI knew what was coming next. They sat back and let it happen.

  It was a complicated hit for such an insignificant hood. On the night of March 12, 1965, Barboza, Flemmi, and four other gangsters traveled to Chelsea, where it was known Deegan and two others were to take part in the robbery of a finance company located inside the Lincoln National Bank. One of Deegan’s partners was Roy French. Unbeknownst to Deegan, French was a traitor working in cahoots with Barboza and Flemmi.

  The robbery was an inside job: a contact at the bank was going to leave an alleyway door open for Deegan and French to enter, where a couple bags of cash would be waiting for them to snatch. It was Barboza and Flemmi’s plan to murder Deegan as he was in the midst of the heist.

  Jimmy Flemmi was in the getaway car, with Barboza and two others acting as gunmen. The idea was for Roy French to shoot Deegan, but the killers were leaving nothing to chance.

  Deegan was gunned down in the alleyway. The autopsy revealed that he had been hit with six bullets from three different guns.

  On the night of the murder, the one Deegan accomplice who was not in on the killing was able to escape. Barboza and Jimmy the Bear heard that he was currently in the custody of police. Barboza was worried that this man would rat them out. He told the Bear that they might have to go on the run.

  Jimmy the Bear smiled. It was then that he told Barboza not to worry, he had it covered. The Bear explained that for months he had secretly been meeting with an FBI agent named H. Paul Rico. The Bear was facing charges on another murder he’d done with Barboza, and Paul Rico had suggested to Flemmi that he could make those charges go away if he was willing to become an informant. Jimmy Flemmi had officially signed on as a Top Echelon Informant on March 12, the exact day that he and Barboza murdered Teddy Deegan.

  The FBI was fully aware of what they were getting into with Jimmy Flemmi. On March 9, following Flemmi and Barboza’s secretly recorded meeting with Patriarca in Providence, a memo was sent from the special agent in charge (SAC) of the Boston field office to Director Hoover. The memo stated, “[Jimmy] Flemmi is suspected of a number of gangland murders and has told [the informant] of his plans to be recognized as the No. One ‘hit man’ in this area as a contract killer. . . . Flemmi told the informant that all he wants to do now is kill people, and that it is better than hitting banks. . . . Informant said, Flemmi said he can now be the best hit man in the area and intends to be.”

  The memo further stated, “[Flemmi] is going to continue to commit murder, but informant’s potential outweighs the risk involved.”

  Hoover authorized Jimmy Flemmi’s role as a Top Echelon Informant knowing that he was a homicidal maniac whose stated goal was to become the biggest hit man in Boston.2

  IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY published in 1975, allegedly written by Barboza with the aid of crime writer Hank Messick, the Animal claimed that he was stunned to hear that Flemmi was an informant. Being a rat for the feds was a violation of the underworld code, a betrayal punishable by death. At least, that’s what the gangsters told each other. In truth, informants were common.

  In the days of the Boston gang wars, paranoia was running high. Gangsters were constantly looking for an edge, and one way to be “in the know” was to have contacts in law enforcement, an exchange of information that could possibly save your life. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, was a philosophy steeped in treachery, because it meant the criminals were also leaking information to the lawmen, though no one in the underworld was supposed to know.

  According to Barboza, Jimmy Flemmi suggested to the Animal that he too should become an FBI informant. It was the smart thing to do.

  Barboza later learned that Flemmi’s brother Stevie had also signed on with Paul Rico as a Top Echelon Informant.

  Barboza was reluctant. He met Paul Rico but did not yet know the agent well enough to feel he could be trusted. The Animal needed reassurance, which he was to receive a few months later, in October 1965.

  For many months, Barboza and his gangster affiliates had been looking to kill members of the Charlestown faction, most notably the McLaughlin brothers. Bernie McLaughlin had already been whacked, and a hit team that included Barboza, Steve Flemmi, and Cadillac Frank Salemme, who was Flemmi’s partner, had been hunting for Punchy McLaughlin. On one occasion, they had come close to nailing Punchy. In August 1964, in the parking lot of Beth Israel Hospital, Steve Flemmi and Salemme, disguised as Hasidic rabbis, snuck up on McLaughlin and opened fire with a sawed-off shotgun. Punchy was hit in the side of the face with buckshot, but before the two hit men could finish the job a potential witness stumbled upon the scene; Flemmi and Salemme were forced to flee. McLaughlin survived the hit.

  On another occasion, the hit team of Flemmi and Salemme ambushed McLaughlin while he was driving on a rural roadway near Dedham, Massachusetts. Flemmi and his crew pulled up alongside Punchy and opened fire. They blew off part of McLaughlin’s hand, which later had to be amputated. Spewing blood, Punchy veered his car onto the wrong side of the road and escaped, then went into hiding.

  Ever since, the hit men had been looking for yet another opportunity to take out Punchy, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Special Agent Rico had become conversant with the Flemmi brothers, Salemme, and assorted other Boston hoodlums. In his quest to recruit new informants, he occasionally socialized and drank at known mobster locations and became entangled with various players.

  Rico had a personal beef with the McLaughlins, especially George, Punchy’s brother, who had been picked up on an FBI gypsy wire calling him a “fag.” George drunkenly alleged that Rico had been involved in three-way sex with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his close associate Clyde Tolson, who was rumored to be Hoover’s lover. It was an absurd accusation, but Rico, a family man with four kids, took umbrage. When Rico received information about where George McLaughlin was hiding out (many Boston gangsters seemed to be on the lam or in hiding during this period), he took matters into his own hands.

  According to Steve Flemmi—who had at the time only recently signed on as a Top Echelon Informant—Rico and his FBI partner, Special Agent Dennis Condon, came to him one day with an extraordinary request. Decades later, Flemmi revealed the nature of this request to federal investigators Wyshak and Kelly. The information was recorded in Flemmi’s confidential file, known as a DEA-6:

  RICO asked FLEMMI for a throwdown handgun. He explained that the agents were about to arrest George MCLAUGHLIN, who had been an FBI Ten Most Wa
nted fugitive since March 1964. RICO added that the arresting agents were planning on shooting MCLAUGHLIN as they took him into custody. The agents were going to plant the gun on a dresser next to MCLAUGHLIN and claim that [he] had reached for the weapon. The agents were planning on shooting MCLAUGHLIN and claiming self-defense. FLEMMI told RICO and CONDON to return a short while later, at which time he supplied them with a .38 caliber handgun. After MCLAUGHLIN’s uneventful arrest, RICO explained to FLEMMI that there were five agents involved in the arrest, but that while four were in agreement to kill MCLAUGHLIN, the group was uncertain about a fifth agent on the arrest team, and the plan was dropped. FLEMMI added that RICO never returned the firearm to him.

  Rico was aware that Barboza, Flemmi, and Salemme had been hunting for George McLaughlin’s brother, Punchy, with no luck. As an agent who was constantly on the lookout for ways to cultivate potential informants, Rico saw an opportunity. Again, from Flemmi’s file:

  FLEMMI stated that he was standing on the sidewalk on Dudley Street, when H. Paul RICO walked up to him. . . . RICO told FLEMMI that Punchy MCLAUGHLIN could no longer drive since his hand had been amputated. So he had begun taking the bus every morning from the Spring Street, West Roxbury T station, in Pemberton Square. Rico said that prior to this, MCLAUGHLIN’s girlfriend had driven Punchy directly to the courthouse. RICO then said he wouldn’t be working the following day and was going golfing. FLEMMI recalled that RICO then took a make-believe golf swing.

  Flemmi took the hint; Rico was telling him that tomorrow, while he was out of the office, would be a good day for Flemmi and his team to take out McLaughlin.

  On the morning of October 20, 1965, Punchy McLaughlin stood with a handful of commuters waiting for the bus at the exact spot identified by Rico. He held in his hand a brown paper bag that contained a gun.

  The team of hit men used two cars, one for the shooters and the other a “crash car” driven by Joe Barboza.

  Wearing wigs and fake beards, Steve Flemmi and Frank Salemme jumped out of the lead car and opened fire at McLaughlin. They hit him five times, once in the heart, lung, liver, and spleen. The last shot, as he lay on the pavement, was fired directly into his groin. The hit men fled. Punchy was found dead at the scene.

  To Barboza, Paul Rico had revealed himself to be a valuable co-conspirator by providing crucial information that led to the murder of Punchy. But the Animal still played coy and refused to sign on as an official FBI snitch.

  More than ever, Rico needed Barboza. In the fall of 1965, he lost Jimmy the Bear Flemmi as an informant when Flemmi shot a man and was identified by the victim as the shooter. The Bear went on the run and hid out in Vermont.

  “In view of the fact that informant Jimmy Flemmi is presently a local fugitive, any contacts with him might prove to be difficult and embarrassing,” Rico wrote in a memo to his FBI superiors. “In view of the above, this case is closed.”

  Over the next year, as the Boston gang wars continued to yield a staggering body count, Rico continued his pursuit of the man who had become his grand obsession. Eventually, surmised the master recruiter of street informants, he and Barboza’s needs would converge, which is exactly what happened in October 1966.

  In Boston’s notorious vice district known as the Combat Zone (which no longer exists today), Barboza was arrested on gun possession charges while cruising in his car. Over the following months, as the Animal stewed at Walpole prison, several of his crew were killed by the Mafia. Barboza was feeling vulnerable and paranoid, but still he was refusing to meet with Rico and Condon. So the FBI agents enlisted the help of their newest Top Echelon Informant, Steve Flemmi.

  Director Hoover approved Flemmi as an informant especially for this assignment. The date was February 14, 1967, Valentine’s Day. The arrangement would prove to be a toxic love connection between mutual deceivers.

  Many years before Flemmi ever formed his partnership with Whitey Bulger, he was hooked in with the FBI. This is a crucial fact often overlooked by people who seek to portray Bulger as the central figure in Boston’s narrative of corruption. It was Flemmi who first established the key link between various spheres of corruption on both sides of the law, an inheritance he would later share with Bulger.

  Flemmi’s initial task as an informant was an important one: he was sent by Rico and Condon to visit Barboza at Walpole prison. The purpose of the visit was immortalized in a memo from Special Agent John J. Kehoe Jr., supervisor of the Boston division’s organized crime squad, to the division’s Special Agent in Charge (SAC) James L. Handley, who initialed the memo and sent it on to Director Hoover. Kehoe and Handley put special emphasis on the contributions of the division’s two star agents, whom they were recommending for a “Quality Salary Increase”:

  Realizing the potential that [redacted name] might one day be victim of a homicide, SAs Condon and Rico have continued vigorous attempts to obtain additional high quality LCN [La Cosa Nostra] sources. Accordingly, BS 955 C-TE [Steve Flemmi] was developed by these agents and via imaginative direction and professional ingenuity utilized said source in connections with interviews of JOSEPH BARBOZA, a professional assassin responsible for numerous homicides and acknowledged by all professional law enforcement representatives in this area to be the most dangerous individual known. SAs Rico and Condon contacted Barboza in an effort to convince him he should testify against the LCN. Barboza initially declined to testify but through utilization of [Flemmi], the agents were able to convey to Barboza that his present incarceration and potential for continued incarceration for the rest of his life, was wholly attributable to LCN efforts directed by Gennaro J. Angiulo, LCN Boston head. As a result of this information received by Barboza from [Flemmi], said individual said he would testify against LCN members.3

  Steve Flemmi had delivered. Barboza saw the writing on the prison wall; he signed a deal with Rico and Condon to become a “cooperating subject.”

  A cooperating subject was different from a Top Echelon Informant in that they were not being asked to circulate on the street and surreptitiously provide criminal intel. Rather, they were being asked to testify in court, a far more visible and direct form of underworld betrayal.

  News of Barboza’s cooperation rocked the Boston underworld. The Animal was moved to a compound on Thacher Island, a rugged, fifty-acre pile of rock about a mile off the coast of Rockport, Massachusetts, and kept under twenty-four-hour guard by armed U.S. marshals. Among his only visitors were Rico and Condon, who began the process of interviewing and prepping Barboza in anticipation of making a case against the target of their dreams, the top man in the New England Mafia, Raymond Patriarca.

  FOR A LONG time, J. Edgar Hoover had denied there was such a thing as the Mafia operating in the United States. Throughout much of the postwar years, the primary focus of the FBI was what it called “subversives”—alleged communists, labor organizers, and civil rights activists. In the 1950s, a major focus of the bureau was bank robbers, who, because they often crossed state lines while fleeing a robbery, had been a primary target of the FBI since the days of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. But in November 1957 an event that took place in upstate New York changed all that.

  The conference in Apalachin, about fifteen miles west of Binghamton, was a seminal event not so much in the history of the Mob, but in the history of federal law enforcement’s understanding of the Mob. When a local police officer in rural Tioga County stumbled upon a large-scale summit meeting of Mafiosi from all around the United States, the estimated eighty gangsters scattered into the woods. Some had outstanding warrants, and many were rounded up and detained. For those, like Hoover, who had been dismissive of the idea that there existed a ruling body of mobsters that met on a regular or semiregular basis, it was a dramatic public rebuke.

  This revelation was further underscored several years later when mobster Joseph Valachi testified in front of a senatorial committee in Washington, D.C. A low-level mafia soldier from New York City, Valachi testified live on television. With his gr
avelly Bronx accent and colorful detailing of mob jargon and underworld folklore, his testimony captured the public imagination.

  Valachi’s cooperation was a major coup for Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who presented the Mafioso’s testimony to the public, and an embarrassment to Hoover. When it came to the Mafia in America, it looked as though the FBI was years behind the curve. Hoover and his boys had some catching up to do.

  In April 1961, Hoover dictated and sent out a memo to each of the SACs of various field offices around the country emphasizing the importance of intelligence gathering in the field of organized crime. The memo stated that it was “urgently necessary to develop particularly qualified, live sources within the upper echelon of the organized hoodlum element who will be capable of furnishing the quality information required.”

  Thus, the Top Echelon Informant Program was born.

  Paul Rico was in an excellent position to benefit from the FBI’s newly energized mandate. Already, in his first decade as an agent, he had distinguished himself as a cultivator of informants. It was an informant that had tipped him off as to the whereabouts of James J. Bulger back in 1957, leading to the young bank robber’s arrest and imprisonment. Rico had been polite and deferential during the arrest, on the outside chance that the kid might be a viable informant somewhere down the line.

  Getting criminals to trust you and pass along usable information is a unique and highly valued skill in law enforcement. Especially in the FBI, which had been designed by Hoover as an elite division of law enforcement, with agents chosen to give the impression of propriety, someone who could operate at the street level with real hoodlums was a rare item. Rico had the gift.

  Born into a lower-middle-class household of Portuguese, Italian, and Irish ancestry, he was a microcosm of the New England criminal class. He would be described in later years as Runyonesque, like a character out of Guys and Dolls. Even Barboza, the Flemmi brothers, and some of the most hardened gangsters in Boston thought of him as one of their own.