Animal (17 page)

9

Ruthless Men

God help the beast in me

JOHNNY CASH

Following the murder of Ronald Dermody, there would be seven more mob-related slayings on the streets of Boston and the surrounding suburbs from October through December 1964. The killings were particularly gruesome, and of course most involved alcohol. Gangster William Treannie, a small-time gangster, was shot twice through the back of the head after becoming embroiled in a heated argument with his roommate inside their apartment on Washington Street in Boston. Both men had been out drinking together for much of the day and night. Treannie was then decapitated and dismembered by his roommate and another man, who stuffed his head, torso, and limbs inside three suitcases and a quilt and then dumped the evidence in a vacant lot.

George Ash had been out spreading the yuletide spirit with a friend just a few days after Christmas when he met his untimely demise. The friend was Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi. Ash had much to celebrate and much to fear on that day. The convicted killer from Somerville had just been assigned his secret identification number as an informant for H. Paul Rico and the
FBI
. Ash and Flemmi had a few cocktails and found themselves sitting in a Corvair that belonged to Ash’s sister-in-law outside a church in Boston’s South End. Ash either said or did something to enrage the drunken Bear, who shot him and stabbed him more than fifty times in the back. According to author Howie Carr in his 2011 book
Hitman
, Flemmi stumbled away from the crime scene blissfully unaware that the murder had been witnessed by two uniformed Boston police officers.
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Fortunately for the Bear, both cops were crooked. They immediately went to his brother, Stevie Flemmi, and demanded and received $1,000 for their silence.

If Jimmy Flemmi was on mission to become the Boston mob’s most prolific killing machine, he would face stiff competition in the form of his friend Joe Barboza. The Animal had been told that investigators were still sniffing around the unsolved murders of Harold Hannon and Willie Delaney. Boston police had recently questioned a South Shore bookmaker named Gariton Eaton about the double homicide. Eaton had not been directly involved in the murders, but rumors of McLean’s handiwork were hot in the Boston underworld. The Winter Hill Gang chief asked Barboza to handle Eaton and shut his big mouth. The Animal cornered Eaton in his late model Cadillac on Mingo Road in the town of Malden and sent two .38 caliber bullets whistling through his skull. Somehow word quickly got back to the police that Barboza had been the triggerman on the job.

An attorney friend called Joe immediately and warned him that investigators would arrest him soon if he didn’t skip town. Barboza took the advice and fled to New Hampshire for a few days. It would give the lawyer enough time to conduct a little investigation of his own as to what evidence the police might have had against his client. When he learned that cops had nothing but speculation to go on, the attorney set up an interview with the Malden police. Joe walked into the station, joked with a few officers, and answered a few questions. Did he shoot Eaton? Barboza shook his head no. Did he know who shot Eaton? Again, Barboza shook his head no. With no end to the stalemate in sight and no evidence to hold him on, Malden detectives were forced to let Joe go. The murder of Gariton Eaton was the first directly tied to the Animal. Barboza might have killed before, but there is no record of it. Now without a doubt, he had crossed the bridge from violent gangster to cold-blooded killer. It was at this moment that he also realized that he had a true aptitude for murder.

It was around this time that Barboza first met Henry Tameleo, second in command to Raymond Patriarca at “the Office.” Technically, Tameleo shared the underboss role with Jerry Angiulo, but everyone knew that Patriarca despised Angiulo and that Tameleo was Patriarca’s eyes and ears in Boston. The Animal was introduced to Tameleo at the wake for a gangster friend who had been shot in the back of the head—the result of yet another mob love triangle. Barboza was impressed by Tameleo’s
subtle power. The understated underboss did not feel the need to project his importance to his fellow gangsters. Instead, Tameleo was quiet, thoughtful, and complimentary to Joe. “I learned to admire and look up to Henry more than any man living,”
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Barboza wrote later in his memoir. Although Joe admired Tameleo, he certainly did not fear him. Just a few weeks after their introduction, the two men met again at the Ebb Tide Lounge in Revere, and this time the discussion was not as cordial. Barboza had just beaten a Mafia associate named Arthur Ventola with a baseball bat. It was in retaliation for an earlier brawl inside Ventola’s club, the Ebb Tide Lounge, where a friend of Joe’s had been pummeled for complaining about a watered-down drink. Ventola was a bookmaker who sold sports betting action out of a little shop in Revere called Arthur’s Farm. The shop was about as big as a two-car garage and offered a litany of goods at discount prices. The shop was a popular mob hangout and was also frequented by Boston Patriots quarterback Babe Parelli and several teammates who practiced at a field nearby. Barboza was unfazed by Ventola’s Mafia ties. He had given Arthur a beating to remember, and now the Animal had one more man on his hit list, Arthur’s brother, Junior.

Once Tameleo learned of the situation, he brought Barboza to the nightclub for a talk. With Tameleo’s power, he could have sent a gang of men after Joe in order to teach him a lesson, but the underboss was keenly aware of Joe’s reputation and knew that such an order would only lead to more bloodshed. Tameleo asked Joe to give up the chase for the other Ventola brother with the promise that he would always be shown respect by Tameleo and the Office. The two men shook hands and the issue was dropped—but for only a short while. A few nights later, Barboza was back at the Ebb Tide having a drink when Junior Ventola walked in and ordered Joe to leave. Barboza could hardly believe his ears.

“Henry said I wouldn’t ever be insulted again in here,”
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Joe reminded the gangster.

“I don’t care, I want you out,” Ventola replied with confidence.

Barboza did not want to make a scene in the middle of the Ebb Tide.

“Let’s go into the kitchen, you motherfucker,” he whispered.

Ventola followed Joe into the kitchen and once there, the Animal swung around with his .38 automatic. Barboza stuck the gun under the man’s chin.

“Now pull your right hand out of your pocket … or I’ll blow your tonsils out of the top of your head.”

Barboza was about to kill Ventola then and there, but was talked down from his state of fury by others at the club. When Tameleo later found out about the incident, he put his support behind Barboza and bought out the Ventola brothers’ interest in the club. This show of trust and friendship was something Joe had always yearned for. It was one thing to have the respect of gangsters like Jimmy Flemmi and Connie Frizzi, but a show of support from Henry Tameleo brought Barboza one step closer to his ultimate goal. He had always been fascinated by
La Cosa Nostra
, but Joe had found himself on the outside looking in. He was Portuguese, after all. He had long been in the frustrating throes of class envy, much like a Catholic or Jewish student at Harvard who was prohibited from joining the best social and academic clubs. Joe had made a promise to himself early on that he would one day be inducted into the Mafia—even if he had to kill his way in.

The Animal went to work on his career advancement immediately. Tameleo had sent Barboza on the prowl for a hood named Joe Francione, who was supposed to deliver to him a shipment of stolen furs. Instead, Francione sold the furs down in New York and pocketed the cash, leaving Tameleo embarrassed and seeking revenge. A friend of Barboza’s had also been screwed in the deal, so for Joe the contract was also personal. Barboza learned that Francione was staying in an apartment in Revere, Massachusetts. With the nonchalance of a traveling salesman, Joe approached the apartment in broad daylight and knocked on the door. Francione was in the middle of a phone call with his partner when he heard the knocks. He placed the phone receiver down and went to answer the door. Listening intently on the other line, Francione’s partner heard him scream: “No, don’t do it!” The doomed man turned his back on Barboza in a desperate attempt to flee. The Animal shot Francione once through the back of the head and then two more times for good measure. Francione’s partner, who had just heard his friend die, marched right down to the police station and turned himself in on an outstanding warrant. He knew that it was better to be in jail than out on the streets within reach of Joe Barboza.

Barboza’s enemies feared him, and police were frustrated over their inability to put him and his fellow mob killers behind bars. In fact, of the fifteen mob murders committed over the previous ten months, authorities had made only one single arrest in one of the crimes. Boston police commissioner Edmund McNamara threw his hands up over the situation.

“In killings of this type, where vengeance may be part of the motive, one usually leads to another. There’s no telling how many more there will be or who will be next,”
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McNamara told a reporter from the Associated Press. “And these are the tough ones to solve. Whenever ruthless men are involved, as in these cases, nobody knows anything. Nobody sees anything. Nobody hears anything.”

The past four years had been especially taxing on Boston area police detectives, who were forced to divide their time between investigating the gang war and the sensational strangling murders of eleven women that had left the Greater Boston area in a panic. Authorities had little to show for their efforts in either crime spree.

Deputy Police Commissioner Herbert F. Mulloney confirmed to the public what was already widely known among law enforcement officers—that much of the bloodshed could be traced to the McLean and McLaughlin gangs. “We think that sometimes a killing is to show personal strength. One gang wants to show another that it is strong, so they kill a member of a rival gang,”
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Mulloney said. Although these comments were elementary to the situation, they were made to show that the public was not at risk, unlike the Boston Strangler murders.