Last Rites

by William J. Craig

  The building in the foreground is where Angiulo ran his entire empire on Prince Street in the North End. This is the same headquarters that the FBI was able to bug and bring forth an ironclad case against the Boston mob.

  The FBI’s greatest dilemma came when it became caught in a deadly chess game over the fate of a grand jury witness. Walter LaFreniere’s involvement with the Angiulos began innocently enough in late 1980, when he went to a “bartooth” dice game in the North End with his father-in-law. His father-in-law was Louis Venios, who was the owner of the Mousetrap. LaFreniere’s troubles began when his luck turned cold at a dice table and he went to the house for credit. Venios spoke to Jason Angiulo, Jerry’s son, and received a $2,000 loan right at the table. Within a few weeks, LaFreniere became a pawn between the FBI and Angiulo. Only eighteen days after the FBI had planted the bug in the headquarters, LaFreniere walked into Angiulo’s headquarters at 98 Prince Street and discussed his overdue loan with Frank Angiulo. The conversation was listened to intently by the FBI. The former Strike Force attorney, Wendy Collins, who handled the grand jury, stated, “We just picked Walter, just some guy to subpoena. He was bringing money in. No big deal.” In addition, “Jerry Angiulo became so obsessed with it. Once Jason got implicated, man, he was off the wall.” Once Jerry got wind of the grand jury, he immediately returned from Fort Lauderdale. It seems that Jason had broken the most sacred of the rules: he did business with a stranger who could tell the tale. He was supposed to use a soldier as a buffer. A wiretap had picked up Jerry Angiulo saying to Jason, “Frank and I made you the boss [of the bartooth game]. Nevertheless, you were the only boss with insulation. Skinny, Johnny O. and Candy. How did you allow yourself to sit at a table with Louis Venios’s son-in-law that he could ask you right at the table for the fucking $2,000?”

  As Jerry Angiulo plotted his strategy to combat the grand jury, the agents listened to his plans and formulated counter measures. On March 19, 1981, Jerry Angiulo pulled Richie Gambale aside as he entered 98 Prince Street. As he, Gambale and Peter Limone huddled near the blaring television and cheap vinyl chairs in the front office, he turned the television even louder. It was 9:29 p.m., and the FBI agents were listening from the bug that they had installed right above where the three men were standing. Gambale was a thirty-nine-year-old enforcer who knew what the meeting was about. Jerry Angiulo was heard saying, “Sh, sh, sh, sh. Don’t you ever raise your voice with me…You don’t have to make the decisions. That’s why I’m the boss.”

  The agents listening in were in an apartment in Charlestown. They received the signal from the bug through a scrambled radio signal. As the agents listened, it became more apparent that a future hit on LaFreniere was being discussed. The FBI high command had to be sure and then they needed to act quickly. If they notified LaFreniere of the hit, it would tip off Jerry Angiulo that a bug was in his office, and the next morning surveillance equipment would be thrown all over Prince Street. Angiulo reviewed his options on how to deal with LaFreniere. It seems that LaFreniere was into Gambale for money that he was collecting for Jerry Angiulo’s brother Donato, who was the major loan shark in the North End. This meant that LaFreniere’s testimony could possibly put Gambale away too. Jerry Angiulo ended the conversation by saying, “You ain’t got a hot car. You ain’t got nothin’. You think I need tough guys? I need intelligent tough guys. Well what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say to you—do it right or don’t do it…Tell him to take a ride, okay?…You stomp him. Bing. You hit him in the fucking head and leave him right in the fucking spot. Meet him tonight…Just hit him in the fucking head and stab him, okay. The jeopardy is just a little too much for me. You understand American? Okay, let’s go.”

  This conversation caused three agents to head directly over to the Mousetrap club in Park Square to inform LaFreniere and possibly flip him to the side of the government. About midnight, three agents walked through the door of the strip club. Agent Quinn, who had served LaFreniere with a summons ten days earlier, scoured the smoke-filled club looking for him. Quinn then left the club and called LaFreniere’s wife at their Woburn home from the lobby of the Park Plaza Hotel. His wife lied and said that he wasn’t home, so Quinn hung up the telephone and headed for Woburn. From a Purity Supreme parking lot near LaFreniere’s home, they called him again, and this time he answered. He informed Quinn that he didn’t want to talk. Quinn stated, “Fine. I don’t want you to say anything to me. I just want you to listen. It’s a matter of life and death, specifically yours. You don’t have to believe me just hear me out.” After Quinn informed him of what was about to go down, LaFreniere hung up the telephone and raced to the parking lot to meet with Quinn.

  When he arrived at the lot at about 2:00 a.m., he exited his vehicle and clambered into the backseat of Quinn’s car. After LaFreniere received the details of his possible execution, he informed the agents that he had been called by the Angiulos already and had a meeting set up with them in the morning. LaFreniere then promised to call Quinn the next morning, but he never did. Instead, he reached out to his father-in-law, who put him in touch with Danny Angiulo, who sent him to the family’s attorney, William Cintolo. He informed LaFreniere not to talk and relayed all questions from the grand jury to Angiulo. Cintolo was later convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice.

  By 4:00 p.m. on March 20, Angiulo had been briefed on Gambale’s aborted attempt to meet up with LaFreniere and kill him. He reassessed the situation and decided to tell LaFreniere to shut his mouth and do eighteen months for contempt. In early April, Cintolo attempted to represent both Angiulo and LaFreniere. However, Strike Force attorney Wendy Collins argued successfully that it was a conflict of interest since LaFreniere was supposed to have been killed to save Jason Angiulo. Angiulo had a high regard for Venios, who had been paying the Angiulos juice for years. Every Saturday, Venios would get in his green Lincoln sedan and drive to the North End from his Combat Zone business. Although he was highly regarded as a standup guy, when he was behind on debts that carried 200 percent interest, he got no sympathy. When Venios was critically ill on oxygen in the hospital, Angiulo sent his brother Mike to go and inform him that it was in his best interest to be sure that he paid the money to Angiulo as soon as he left the hospital. Angiulo tried and tried to figure out how the government knew his every move, but he couldn’t figure it out. He assumed that the FBI had bugged Gambale’s car. He eventually found out through his network of eyes in the North End that the FBI was videotaping his office. He never had a clue about the wiretaps in his headquarters. Near the end, when the FBI was kicking in doors in the North End and grabbing evidence of gambling to go with the tape recordings, Angiulo would bring it all back to LaFreniere. Angiulo said, “Soon as that kid got a fucking summons, that was the beginning. We all fell asleep…It was like, it was like God sending us a fucking message, and we couldn’t read it.” He went on to say, “Why should I go to jail in this fucking thing, you know how many fucking things I did worse than this?”

  Unwittingly, Angiulo gave the government what he was determined they would never have—evidence of his direct participation in criminal conspiracies. In many ways, the carefully considered decision to call in the enforcer Richie Gambale was a needless risk that cost Angiulo his empire. He would lose everything over a strip joint bartender who never posed any real danger to him. Nevertheless, decades of secrecy and stealth had led to a kind of paranoia that turned a mild threat into a fatal obsession.

  The FBI eventually compiled enough evidence to bring charges forth. Prosecutor Diane Kottmyer compared Angiulo and his co-defendants to a highly sophisticated and structured Fortune 500 company. The audiotapes had Angiulo bragging about his illegitimate profits and his unlimited power to be able to bribe any official. During his trial, Angiulo mumbled under his breath, “Splice, splice,” to his lawyer, while the prosecution was playing the wiretap tapes.

  Jerry Angiulo was being held in the outdated Charles Street Jail in Boston while on trial because he was perceived as
a possible flight risk. The Charles Street Jail was an overcrowded, one-hundred-year-old dilapidated stone jail on the banks of the Charles River. The inmates were living among the most horrid and unsanitary conditions imaginable. Rats were known to come up through the toilets and bite inmates, windows were broken out for ventilation in the summer and the heat worked intermittently in the winter. The jail was a sort of funhouse for psychopaths and deviants. But Angiulo wasn’t just any inmate, and his status afforded him certain luxuries, such as never having to wait in line to use the telephones, having food brought in so he didn’t have to eat the usual slop and bribing the guards to get a better cell. Life in prison is different for wise guys than other people. While a guest of the “Graybar Motel,” he bought all the inmates on his cell block television sets so they would be quiet while he was consulting with his lawyers on his case. Another time, he bailed out a section of the jail so he could have peace and quiet at night.

  In the end, the jury convicted him on twelve crimes under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, including extortion, loan sharking, obstruction of justice and racketeering. When he was sentenced to forty-five years in Leavenworth and fined $120,000, he responded, “Thank you, your honor. Do you mind if I sit down?” As he was exiting the courtroom after unsuccessfully arguing for a reduction to his sentence so he wouldn’t have to die in jail, he said, “We’ll have to outlive them all.” While in prison, he managed to keep his sense of humor intact. As he was going into the prison theatre one day, he commented, “What’s this, The Great Escape?” The guards didn’t find it funny, however. The comment landed him in solitary confinement for one day. It seems that a fellow inmate who worked in the clothing room with him had escaped a few days prior.

  Angiulo was released from federal prison in 2007 after serving a total of twenty-one years. He left the Devens Federal Medical Center in the early morning hours under the cover of darkness with as little fanfare as possible. He quietly resided in Nahant with his second wife, Barbara. He had two sons, Jason and Jerry, and a daughter; his eldest daughter died of a brain aneurysm. He quietly faded into obscurity and passed away on August 29, 2009, from kidney failure. His passing was hardly covered by the media due to the attention paid to Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy’s funeral.

  Reflecting back on Angiulo’s turbulent years of crime illustrates that although he tried to resolve mob problems without taking lives, there were necessary exceptions to this rule to protect the stability of the business. One particularly violent example occurred on November 12, 1959, when a worker in the Everett dump discovered the body of North End criminal Joseph “Augie” Demarco with six bullets in his head. The Everett dump was located about a mile from the city of Revere. Demarco was last seen in an after-hours club in Boston called the Coliseum, which was owned by the mob. A grand jury was convened in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge. The grand jury called six witnesses: Jerry Angiulo; Larry Zannino; Phil Waggenheim, a contract killer; Henry Noyes, a mob soldier; Peter Jordan, mayor of Revere; and Phil Cresta. No indictments were handed down. However, the unofficial story was that Augie Demarco was robbing Angiulo bookies. Augie’s death served as a warning to other would-be criminals that Angiulo bookmakers were off limits. The fact that Revere mayor Peter Jordan was called to testify helps establish that the mob was firmly entrenched within the city of Revere and had protection from its politicians.

  The Ebb Tide Lounge on Revere Beach Boulevard was a lounge and nightclub that was popular with the residents of Revere. The club was often frequented by off-duty Revere Police officers who were seeking an enjoyable night out with their wives or girlfriends. Often, the club would have live entertainment and a free buffet for the club-goers. Officially, the club was owned by Richard Castucci. His wife held the liquor license on the club because of his criminal record for forgery and various other charges. In later years, Richard Castucci was a FBI informant. One evening, a young Turk by the name of Joseph Barboza gave Castucci and his uncle, Arthur Ventola, the owner of Arthur’s Farm, a hard time. Castucci spoke to Henry Tameleo and asked for protection. Tameleo granted the request. Almost immediately, word hit the street that the club was protected by the mob. The club was in operation from the 1950s until the 1970s. During this period, the club was owned and frequented by members of the New England mob. In fact, they used to have card and dice games upstairs. One night, Fats Domino went upstairs and decided to try his luck after playing to a sold-out crowd. While upstairs, he lost the money he had made for the evening and sold the house his jewel-encrusted cuff links so he could keep playing.

  Another little-known secret of the club took place every Thursday afternoon. A nondescript vehicle would pull up to the club and a man would exit the vehicle and enter the club. A short time later, the man would leave the club and drive away. Unbeknownst to law enforcement, the man would then head to Rhode Island to give Patriarca his weekly share of what had been collected from local bookmakers by Angiulo. The Ebb Tide served as a collection facility for the Angiulo operation. Angiulo now had a very powerful partner, Raymond Patriarca.

  A field report written by an unidentified agent of the FBI, dated April 15, 1975, stated that Castucci had recently purchased the Squire strip club located in Revere and that the previous owner was paying Anthony Cataldo, aka Max Baer, $250 per week in protection. Castucci, who also owned the Ebb Tide, was already paying Bulger weekly protection. Therefore, Castucci refused to pay Baer and Baer recruited his nephew, Butchie Cataldo, a Massachusetts state representative, to spearhead a crusade to try to close down the Squire or at least get the topless and bottomless dancers banned. The mayor of Revere at the time was William Reinstein, whose motto was “Let Revere be Revere.” At the time, Reinstein was indicted in a corruption scandal involving the city’s new high school. He survived three mistrials. His field report raises an important question as to why Castucci was paying Bulger when originally he was paying protection to the mob. This bit of information should have tipped off the FBI that Bulger was starting to push the Italian mob out of its long-held territory. It may have also helped to give them some insight into the fact that the Patriarca-Angiulo reign was in jeopardy. On the other hand, it may have been that the Italian mob and the Winter Hill Gang were working together and splitting the take by the mid-1970s. Unfortunately, the FBI field reports don’t give a clear and decisive answer either way.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE EARLY YEARS

  Sometime in 1955, a seventeen-year-old neighborhood kid with a propensity for violence began working for the Angiulo faction as a debt collector. His name was Edward “Big Eddie” Marino, and he stood at six feet, two inches, with a solid muscular frame, thick, curly, dark hair and movie star looks. Big Eddie was extremely well liked in the neighborhood; he was friendly, outgoing and always willing to help anyone in trouble. By 1960, at the age of twenty-two, he was married and living in an apartment on Everett Street in East Boston with an infant son, Edward, and his wife Corrine was expecting again. Big Eddie was steadily moving up within the Angiulo organization, proving himself to be loyal and trustworthy. In other words, he was a man among men. However, he was not yet a made man.

  On the night of September 24, he found himself in the Famous Café, a bar in the South End of Boston. That night, he was drinking with a man when a fight broke out between the man and a woman. When the man began beating the woman unmercifully, Big Eddie stepped in and proceeded to give the man a taste of his own medicine. The fight was quickly over, and Philip Spataro—a thirty-five-year-old resident of Hanover Street in the North End of Boston who was a bartender and co-owner of the Famous Café—ordered the man to leave.

  The fighting man walked back into the bar at close to closing time, completely unnoticed by the patrons, who had put the earlier altercation behind them. The man saw Big Eddie at the bar still sitting there, talking and laughing with his friends. He approached the bar and opened fire. Eddie collapsed to the floor, clenching his midsection, while the remaining twe
nty-five patrons ducked for cover. After the second shot, Spataro jumped over the bar and began to wrestle with the gunman, attempting to disarm him, when the gun discharged, hitting Spataro in the groin. The gunman then ran out of the bar on to Washington Street, where he fired another shot into the air before running up Dover Street. Boston Police Lieutenant John Donovan of the homicide squad said that police officers arrested a thirty-two-year-old South End man in a house on Middlesex Street. The gunman was in custody within two hours of the shooting. He was arrested by Sergeant George Bausch, Detective Thomas Carney, Patrick Hamilton and Edward Twohig. According to the police, the man was booked on suspicion of murder and assault and battery after being identified by Spataro at City Hospital. Spataro underwent surgery and eventually recovered from his wounds. Police thoroughly searched the premises on Middlesex Street, but the weapon was never found. Eddie died at the scene from two small caliber bullets lodged in his abdomen. The next day, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured by the Soviets, Ted Williams announced his retirement, John F. Kennedy was preparing for his debate with Nixon and the Boston American’s front-page headline read “Man Slain in S.E. Bar.” This one tragic event would have a devastating impact twenty years later.