Animal (31 page)

“My cooperation is causing me big problems,” he told the agents. “I’m confined all by myself, which is like solitary confinement. I can’t even exercise, which is what the other inmates are all allowed to do. If Patriarca wants me dead down here, he’ll probably just poison my food.”
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The agents told Joe that they would discuss his situation with the Barnstable sheriff. Pressure was also mounting on the home front. Claire Barboza felt that she too had been relegated to solitary confinement, and she was beginning to climb the walls of her Swampscott home. Despite her refined appearance, there was no doubt that Claire was attracted to the dark side. Why else would she marry the New England mob’s most prolific killer? During one particular weekend, she begged John Partington to take her out to dinner—at the Ebb Tide Lounge. This was the equivalent of bringing a hen into a fox den. The young marshal told her that it was a bad and potentially very dangerous idea. However Claire was adamant, and Partington needed to do all he could to keep her happy while her husband was sitting in a jail cell on Cape Cod. He discussed the idea with his team, and they came to the conclusion that the danger would be minimal since Mrs. Barboza would be heavily guarded; the last thing the Mafia would ever attempt would be a gunfight with federal agents. Partington also wanted to show the mobsters that he and his team were not afraid of them. This bravado could easily have blown up in Partington’s face. Fortunately for him, they enjoyed their dinner at the Ebb Tide without incident as U.S. marshals positioned themselves around the restaurant and also in the parking lot. Following dinner, Claire asked Partington to join her for a stroll along the Revere Beach boardwalk. She had enjoyed a few cocktails during dinner and was a bit tipsy when she let her guard down and opened up during their walk. Claire Barboza mentioned how “peaceful” it had been without her husband in the house, and began to question their future. They were treading in dangerous waters, this
Partington knew. If Claire were to leave her husband, there would be no way that Joe would go through with his testimony against the Mafia. His family was the only thing that kept him tethered to the
FBI
. Partington promised her that “Uncle Sam” would take good care of her and her family. Hearing this, Mrs. Barboza said that it wasn’t the federal government that was concerning her most at the moment—it was her husband.

“You don’t know him, John,” she warned Partington. “You think you do, but you don’t.”
¹⁰⁷

The Animal got in touch with his wife soon after, and she told him that the U.S. marshal’s protective detail was much too restrictive and that she was nearing a mental breakdown. Claire also told him that she would be willing to break all ties with her friends and family and move down to Cape Cod so that she and Stacy could not be found by anyone outside the
FBI
.
¹⁰⁸
She naively believed that moving eighty miles southeast would keep her beyond the reach of Raymond Patriarca.

Any thoughts of breaking out on her own vanished on June 20, 1967, when Patriarca, Henry Tameleo, and Barboza’s old friend Ronnie Cassesso were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges they had conspired to engineer the murder of Willie Marfeo. Barboza himself was charged as a coconspirator. Although the
FBI
would utilize intelligence it had gathered from the three years of bugging Patriarca’s office, the most damaging evidence against him would come from the man he had called—nigger. In a memo drafted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Harrington discussed Barboza’s key role in the proposed prosecutions of Patriarca and Tameleo:

The establishment of the agreement [to commit murder] will not be based on circumstantial evidence or inferences arising therefrom but rather the very agreement itself will be testified to by one of the individuals [Barboza] who was to participate in its execution. The overt acts which took place in Massachusetts are especially appropriate in a case involving a gangland assassination in that it has always been one of the essential factors in perpetrating a successful ‘’hit” that the contract be given to an out-of-state ‘’torpedo” as a means of minimizing the chance of detection of the assassination and thus lessening the risk that the individual who planned the assassination be traced.
¹⁰⁹

Federal agents moved swiftly, arresting both Patriarca and Tameleo, while Cassesso was notified of the charges while serving time at Norfolk Prison. The special agent in charge of the Boston
FBI
office petitioned Director Hoover in a written memorandum for quality salary increases for both Condon and Rico, as the indictments against Patriarca and others represented “the first major blow to the
LCN
in New England. Patriarca, as
LCN
boss and possible commission member, and his top lieutenant, Henry Tameleo, were felt to be beyond prosecution by top state and local police officials based on what for years resulted in frustration in securing witnesses who would testify.”

Condon and Rico each received incentive awards of $150 for, as the
FBI
put it, “developing and skillful handling of several confidential sources of great concern to the Bureau in the criminal field.”
¹¹⁰
One lingering problem was the fact that the
FBI
had never conducted a full investigation into the background of its star witness. Director Hoover alerted the Boston office to this issue and demanded that Barboza be put through a rigorous vetting process. Obviously, a killer like the Animal had real skeletons in his closet, but Hoover wanted everything laid out on the table in order to help mitigate questions about Barboza’s character that would undoubtedly be raised by Patriarca’s defense. A report compiled by Boston
FBI
agent Thomas Sullivan and sent directly back to Hoover stated that Barboza had murdered both Joseph Francione and Romeo Martin and was responsible for the massacre of Ray Distasio and John O’Neil at the Mickey Mouse Lounge in Revere. The memo also suggested that Barboza had “bumped off” Teddy Deegan. J. Edgar Hoover did not blink when faced with the Animal’s murderous past. Instead, the grisly details only elevated Barboza’s status in the director’s eyes. The major task now was keeping him alive through the trial.

Boston Herald
crime reporter James Southwood had recently broken the story that Barboza was now being kept in solitary confinement at the Barnstable House of Corrections and that only two
FBI
agents had access to him. The Animal’s secret location was no longer a secret, and he feared that it would only be a matter of time before Patriarca sent out a hit squad to finish him off.

“The big people like Angiulo, Baione and Patriarca won’t handle it themselves,” he told Condon and Rico. “Instead, they’ll farm it out to
some of the suckers they have working for them, guys willing to do hits to ingratiate themselves with the Office.”
¹¹¹

Barboza stressed once again that Patriarca could pay somebody to poison him. He also wasn’t impressed with the security at the prison and felt like a sitting duck. He warned the agents that an assassin could walk right into the jail and kill him if they wanted to. The Animal put his concerns on paper in a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in which he explained that he would not testify unless something was done about the situation:

To Whom it May Concern:

Why is it that because of doing something nobody has dared to do, am I being punished? You people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars checking on Raymond and came up lame. But I came forward “not denying to help myself too” & for coming forward & putting my life in & out of danger, also having to run for the rest of my life with my family, I still from the same people I am working with have been put away so tight that I am being punished. I am here 24 hours a day with all kinds of pressure all alone. I might add that I am like a sitting duck up here because I am not too hard to be had. In fact it is easy. But you people don’t want to be bothered. The food at Walpole was 100 times better than here. I could see my wife two times a week at Walpole for 2½ hours a visit. Because of maybe testifying & with all the newspaper talk, I can’t sell my house & if I do I lose 3 or 4 thousand dollars. The people with my wife sit in my dining room worth $3,000.00 and make it their clubhouse. And then after telling my wife to move to the Cape and the feds would pay all expenses, now it can’t be done. Everything I have been promised in the start turned out to be lies. Ask Mr. Rico if I am guilty of the 4 to 5 years I am doing & the talk heard all over the city concerning how I got framed… . I’ll either be killed or will have to kill to save myself. I put my faith in you people … but whether I get on the stand is up to you people. You broke every promise you made me, caused me to be punished… . Is this how you’re going to treat my family & I after this is all over? Well I’ve always been considered a cuckoo anyways & believe me, before I’ll be used and played for a “Mickey the Dunce,” I’ll refuse to testify… . You take everything away from me,
leave me alone with my thoughts, make me lose money on my house, drive my wife crazy, break promises & yet you expect me to testify because you have me fenced in… . Before I’ll be used like this I will not testify. So put me in the Can framed, & get somebody else… . My life is ruined, even if I was freed. Because I have to run all my life. I am no threat to the law because I’ll be too busy running… . I don’t think I’m asking for too much. But you people don’t want to be bothered. Well neither do I!

JOE BARON
¹¹²

When Barboza handed the letter to Condon and Rico, he also asked them to push authorities to grant him a pardon for the weapons conviction for which he was currently serving time and provide him immunity for the murders of Carlton Eaton, Joseph Francione, Romeo Martin, Ray Distasio, John O’Neil, and Teddy Deegan. The immunity request was shot down immediately, as the so-called Immunity Bill was still being debated in the Massachusetts legislature.

Now alone in his cell without much hope for a pardon, the Animal could only think about those who had wronged him. He had already put the federal government on notice that he would not carry its water unless prosecutors were willing to cut him some kind of deal. Now his thoughts centered on the man he had once respected but now despised. Raymond Patriarca had underestimated him and had undervalued his survival instincts. The Mafia boss was now tucked away in a jail cell probably no bigger than Barboza’s. If their battle were a ten-round fight, the first round had gone convincingly to the underdog. Round two was about to begin, and Patriarca would need to advance more cautiously. He asked World War II hero turned leg breaker Louis Grieco to deliver a message to Barboza through attorney Al Farese. Grieco told the lawyer that the Office was now prepared to buy Barboza’s silence. They would give him $50,000 plus the $25,000 that had been taken from Tashi during his illfated visit to the Nite Lite Café. Grieco also promised that the mob would straighten out the Pearson stabbing case, which was still pending against Barboza. The Mafia would even be willing to prune its low hanging fruit. According to the deal on the table, Barboza could testify against anyone as long as he didn’t testify against Patriarca and Tameleo.

Now who’s shitting their pants?
Barboza thought. The Animal refused Grieco’s offer.

“Tell Raymond to go fuck his mother in the mouth,” Joe growled.

Next, Jerry Angiulo applied pressure on Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi to discredit Joe’s testimony about Angiulo’s alleged involvement in the murder of Rocco DiSeglio and dissuade Barboza crew member Nicky Femia from following his boss’s lead. The Bear found himself in a tough situation, because he owed Angiulo $10,000. Convincing Femia not to testify was an easy task, but Flemmi was not about to challenge his best friend, seeing as Barboza had vowed to protect the Bear from prosecution in the Deegan case. In the end Flemmi remained loyal to Joe, and that meant bad news for Angiulo. On August 9, 1967, the underboss was arrested with three other gangsters and charged by District Attorney Byrne’s office with organizing the hit on DiSeglio. Knowing that he would be held without bail until his trial, Angiulo showed up for his court arraignment with his toothbrush and shaving kit.

With the hierarchy of the New England Mafia now behind bars, federal and state authorities were in position to strike a death blow against the “Italian organization” in the territories north of Connecticut. The gangland murder of Teddy Deegan was about to resurface in a big way.

Anthony “Tony Stats” Stathopoulos, a key witness in the Deegan murder case, was still hanging around, and there was word on the street that his old friend and accomplice Roy French was now gunning for him. Police detectives played to his fears and convinced Stathopoulos that the best way to stay alive was to help them put French and others behind bars. Like the Animal, Stathopoulos was also preparing to testify before the grand jury. John Doyle, a detective assigned to the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, drove Tony Stats down to Cape Cod for a face-to-face meeting with his would-be killer, Joe Barboza.

Stathopoulos and Barboza discussed the Deegan murder while Doyle, Condon, and Rico took notes. The two mobsters talked for several minutes before Stathopoulos finally brought up Jimmy Flemmi’s alleged involvement in the murder. Barboza responded with a cold stare.

“I’m keeping the Bear outta this thing,” Barboza told him. “Look, he’s a good friend of mine and he’s the only one who’s treated me with respect through this whole thing.”
¹¹³

Stathopoulos and Detective Doyle were taken aback by Joe’s comments, but Condon and Rico stood unfazed. The last thing the
FBI
wanted was for one of its informants to go down for a murder rap for a crime he had committed while in the employ of the federal government. The Bear had been a Top Echelon Informant after all. During private conversations, Barboza had suggested they focus on one of Joe’s most hated rivals—Peter Limone. Limone was Jerry Angiulo’s top bodyguard, and Barboza convinced Condon and Rico that Limone was in line to succeed Angiulo if the Boston underboss was convicted for the murder of Rocco DiSeglio. In truth, Limone would have faced a stiff challenge from Larry Baione for the top spot, but Barboza told the feds that ultimately Limone’s brain would outmatch Baione’s brawn. Of course Barboza had personal reasons to take Limone off the chess board. Limone was one of the rare few who had never backed down from the Animal. The men had gotten into a heated shouting match on a North End street that to everyone’s surprise did not end in bloodshed. Instead, each man went back to his neutral corner, but never forgave nor forgot the other. For Condon and Rico, it also made sense to go on the offensive against Limone, because both agents had been previously told that Limone had warned Teddy Deegan that Jimmy Flemmi was planning to kill him. Together, Barboza and the
FBI
agents concocted a story to incriminate Limone in the Deegan murder. They tested the story out on the detective from Suffolk County, who appeared to buy what they were selling.