Last Rites (4 page)

The Plymouth Mail Robbery took place on August 14, 1962, on Route 3 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The take from the heist was $1.5 million in cash. The robbers fenced the money to Jerry Angiulo for $0.60 on the dollar. Angiulo would bury the money somewhere for ten years or so until it cooled off and then spend it. This incident illustrates the power that Angiulo had throughout the New England area.

His crew was extremely efficient and disciplined, and its monthly profits were staggering. Angiulo's eventual demise came from his own greed and arrogance. FBI agents were tipped off on how to bug his headquarters by Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. The two informants gave the FBI the layout of the headquarters, and the agents began to plan the bugging of his office. Once the bugging was authorized by a judge, the agents went to work. They blocked off Prince Street with a car with its hood up, appearing to have broken down. The bugging team then entered the office in the very early morning hours. They had to do this twice, and both times the plan worked perfectly. They were able to get in and out undetected. The agents also planted several cars outside of the club. In the cars' grills they planted video cameras so that they could watch who entered and left the office. These cameras ran on ten freshly charged batteries, enough current to keep the cameras running for almost twenty-four hours. The autos were switched each morning at about 3:00 a.m. The agents actually began their day at midnight at a garage in Woburn. They would charge the batteries and place them in the trunk or under a pile of junk in the back seat. When it came time to switch the cars, one agent would walk to the vehicle, get in and watch in the rearview mirror. Once the agent saw the replacement vehicle approach, the parked car would pull out and the replacement car would park in the same spot. The driver would then exit the vehicle and disappear into the North End. This system ensured that the FBI would always have an unobstructed view of Angiulo's headquarters. At one point, a member of the Angiulo crew walked up to one of the vehicles and peered into the windows and grill but never detected the camera. There were other problems as well, like when the tires were slashed or the neighborhood kids would sit on the fenders and the camera would bounce up and down. The preferred cars for the job were a 1974 Nova, a 1972 Impala and a 1965 Rambler.

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.