Last Rites (10 page)

Around this same time, the Chelsea Police headquarters building on Broadway was undergoing a complete renovation. At one time, the building housed the police station and the district courthouse. In recent years, a new courthouse had been built across the street, and now the police were taking over the entire building. While construction crews were ripping up the former chief of police's office, the men found a thirty-year-old file that was hidden under the floorboards. The file was for the Edward Deegan murder. Documents in the file stated that Chelsea Police detectives assigned to the case had known the identities of the men involved with the murder within twenty minutes of receiving the case. It stated that Joseph Barboza, Stephen Flemmi, Vincent Flemmi (who died of a drug overdose in 1979) and Roy French (who was actually convicted of the crime) were all responsible for the murder. Meanwhile, Louie Grieco, Henry Tameleo and Ronald Cassesso—who were all innocent—had died in prison. Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone were released in 1997 and 2001, after serving more than thirty years in prison. The FBI had allowed two innocent men to waste away in jail and three known killers to continue to walk the streets of Boston because they were FBI informants. The FBI had even intimidated the chief of police in Chelsea into obstructing justice in order to protect its informants. This type of behavior was an ongoing practice with the Boston FBI office until it was exposed in 2000 because of agent John Connolly and Whitey Bulger.

Barboza had also testified against Bernie Zinna, another Revere mobster, concerning the killing of an ex-boxer in 1968. In April 1969, someone tried to kill Zinna with a shotgun on Route 60 in Malden, but they missed. Zinna was not so lucky on Christmas Eve in 1969, when he was gunned down on Ocean Avenue in Revere with a .38 caliber. He was shot four times in his Cadillac and left behind a widow and three children. Zinna was a low-level mobster whose only claim to fame was that he was tried and acquitted with Angiulo.

After Barboza was killed, J.R. Russo was promoted to capo. Joseph Russo was from East Boston. In the 1950s, he was employed as a taxicab driver and worked with the Taxi Cab Drivers Union in New York. His unofficial job was with the Lucchese crime family, the mob crew made famous in the movie
Goodfellas
. He served under the very powerful capo Paul Vario. Russo stayed with the Vario crew until the 1960s, when he moved back to Boston and served under the Patriarca crime family. After he killed Barboza in 1976, he returned to East Boston, took over a crew and ran most of the rackets around Eastie. Every afternoon, Russo would go into a butcher shop on Revere Street, in the shadow of Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, and eat veal cutlets in the back room.

The two player-victims in this Greek tragedy against a background of violence with Italian and Irish participants were Richard and Carlton Eaton, who were born and raised in Revere. Carlton, who was always in trouble, became an associate of the Winter Hill Gang and close personal friend of Stephen Flemmi during the 1950s. On September 25, 1964, Carlton was sitting in his 1957 customized Cadillac Eldorado on Mingo Road in Malden when he was shot and killed by Stephen Flemmi. He was murdered for holding out on a mob tax that he was funneling through his successful sports collectibles store in South Boston. His brother Richie was just the opposite. He was successful in high school, accepted an athletic scholarship and moved from Revere to Ozone Park, Queens, in the early 1950s. He also attended Notre Dame University. After graduation, he began working with the garment workers' union. It was around this time that he became acquainted with Columbo crime family mobster Dominick Cersani. In 1978, Richie went into business with mob associate Jimmy Burke and was the front man for Robert's Lounge, a hangout for the Vario crew.

Mob associate Henry Hill stated that Richie Eaton was a “hustler on a grand scale.” He was later involved in the 1978 Lufthansa heist and portrayed in the movie
Goodfellas
as the mobster who was discovered in the abandoned refrigeration truck in Gravesend, Brooklyn. It took four days to thaw out his body in order for the police to perform an autopsy. Apparently, Jimmy Burke had hogtied him and tortured his partner, allowing him to slowly strangle to death. Eaton's connection to Revere raises the question, did Patriarca receive a cut of the Lufthansa heist? We may never know.

These men were the major players of the Boston underworld during the time when Gigi Portalla grew up. In this environment, it was difficult to see the world through rose-colored glasses. After all, we live in a society in which profit supersedes people. Consumerism is the ethos of life. Revere was an exciting place during the 1950s and 1960s. The clubs on the beach were constantly being frequented by mobsters, hit men and heavy hitters from Boston and Providence. These men were exciting to be around and were idolized by the local kids. During this time in Revere, everyone would receive one hell of a streetwise education.

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6

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Joseph Russo, Vincent Ferrara and Robert Carrozza needed to eliminate their underboss, William Grasso. He was fifty-eight years old and known to have a close relationship with all five of the New York crime families. The FBI believed him to be the real power in New England. On June 16, 1989, William “the Wild Man” Grasso was found on the banks of the Connecticut River with a bullet in the back of his head. The attempted murder of Frank Salemme on Route 1 in Saugus took place five hours after police found Grasso's body. Law enforcement believed at first that the Genovese family had sanctioned the hit because Grasso had muscled in on some of their rackets in Springfield, Massachusetts, but this was not the case. These three capos were able to kill Grasso, but the failed attempt on Salemme, which was originally planned by Angelo “Sonny” Mercurio, caused further problems. They now had a major problem. The botched hit was unsanctioned and could now cost all three their lives. They decided to keep a low profile and hope that the hit team would not rat them out.

Everybody loves a gang war, whether via television, radio, newspapers, magazines or movies. Everybody, that is, except the gangs. While the general public finds gang wars exciting and fascinating, the gangs find them expensive and dangerous. Mob wars are caused by many things: young hotshots trying to push out older people, personal vendettas, expansion of turf. This soon-to-be war stemmed from the inevitable weaknesses that flow from bureaucratic inertia and the pursuit of self-interest. The New England mob had become lost after Patriarca Sr. died and Angiulo went to prison. The replacements lost sight of the game plan that was established by Patriarca Sr. When Salemme took power, he was out to get what he thought he was owed, and that meant increasing the street tax and alienating those soldiers who were in the trenches hustling the streets and earning day in and day out.

On October 29, 1989, the FBI secretly recorded a mafia induction ceremony. Present were J.R. Russo, Vinnie Ferrara, Bobby Carrozza, Dee Dee Gioacchino, reigning boss Raymond Patriarca Jr. and twelve other mafia made members. The induction ceremony took place in the dining room of an associate's home at 34 Guild Street in Medford. The following is a partial conversation between Raymond Patriarca, Biagio DiGiacomo, Joseph Russo, Angelo Mercurio and Vincent Federico.

Patriarca: “We're all here to bring in some new members into our family and more than that, to start maybe a new beginning. Put all that's got started behind us. 'Cause they come into our family to start a new thing with us. Hopefully, that they'll leave here with what we had years past. And bygones are bygones and a good future for all of us. I'll, and I'll greet you later.”

DiGiacomo: “Can we open our [unintelligible] 'cause we should open it up.”

Unidentified speaker: “Yeah, Yeah.”

DiGiacomo: “
In onore della famiglia la famiglia e' aparta
[in honor of the family the family is open]. It means anybody want to say something [unintelligible].”

Russo: “Anything we want to discuss first? Any questions about anything first?”

Patriarca: “Yeah, I have something to say. Last week I met with Joe, to ah, kind of like, resolve ah, a few problems we had, and I want anybody to speak up [TV in the background] 'cause, 'cause I kind of like to resolve this. I appointed Joe, not only is he counselor, but he has the authority to more or less handle business in Boston when I leave [unintelligible] more or less like Jerry did when he was here. And this way you people go direct, and whatever decisions he goes by, I'll abide by. Completely. More or less for a dual purpose [unintelligible]. I hope we're all in agreement with that and I think he'll do a good job.”

Mercurio: “Good luck, Joe.”

DiGiacomo: “Good luck.”

Federico: “Good luck [applause in background].”

Russo: “Will everybody that's being presented today, because it means Richie Floramo, Vinny Federico, there's Carmen Tortora, as well as [unintelligible]. Most of us know most of them, but some of us don't know any of these. Any remarks anybody wishes to [unintelligible] bring up [unintelligible]?”

In this conversation we can almost hear the tension of the internal problems through their conversation. The ceremony was part of Patriarca's ongoing effort to ease tensions between competing factions and establish a better working order in the post-Angiulo era. This ceremony was a wealth of information for the FBI; not only did they learn who the new members were, but they also learned about the unease between the factions. During this ceremony, Patriarca attempted to put the killing of Grasso and the attempted killing of Salemme in the past. In this business, there is a strong incentive to keep things running in the black. Deficits mean death, and the Patriarca family could not afford to have internal problems at this point in time. It was Patriarca's intention to attempt to smooth things over and help unite both factions. Had his father still been alive and in power, certain people certainly would have been killed. Patriarca Jr. believed that by initiating four new people into the family, this would appease the rival faction. When it was later revealed that Angelo Mercurio, Patriarca's driver, had helped bug the ceremony, this helped vindicate Patriarca as a bumbling idiot among his peers. Since the elder Patriarca died and Angiulo went to jail, the FBI had been exerting constant pressure on the New England mob, which had been bad for business and decimated the ranks of experienced mobsters. The induction ceremony was believed to be successful in uniting the two factions.

Unfortunately, the hazards of doing business in crime still encroached upon the mob. Less than a month later, in November 1989, Russo Ferrara and Carrozza were arrested and held on a federal indictment in Plymouth County Correctional Facility.

In March 1990, Raymond J. Patriarca Jr. was added as a defendant in a superseding indictment. Earlier, he had stepped down as family boss, a position he had held since July 1984, when his father died. According to Johnny “Sonny” Castagna, a FBI informant, in a 1989 meeting presided over by Joseph Russo and Carrozza they warned Patriarca to step down or he would be killed. When Patriarca gave up the position as head of the family, Nicholas Bianco replaced him. In a 1990 trial, Bianco was sentenced to eleven years on RICO charges. With the boss, ex-boss and consigliere all behind bars, Salemme was now heir to the throne, and with his crowning the power base moved from Providence back to Boston for the first time in thirty-seven years.

According to FBI sources, Frank Salemme took over the reins of the New England mob officially in September 1991. It is widely believed that Salemme held the title unofficially until the New York families could sit down together and give their official blessing on the nomination. In December of that same year, the FBI was able to tape a meeting at a Boston hotel between Salemme and Gambino family capo Natale Richichi. This meeting was set up to discuss how to possibly repair the growing rift between the feuding factions.

After that morning, it didn't take long for Salemme to start settling problems. During 1991 and 1992, six murders took place. At first, the FBI believed that they were related to regular mob business—until the Russo-Carrozza faction began to fight back. The first Salemme-sanctioned murder was on August 16, 1991. Howard Ferrini, a professional gambler, was beaten to death in his home and tossed into the trunk of his 1988 Cadillac. He and his car were found at Logan Airport five days later, dripping blood and emitting a foul odor. On October 3, restaurateur Barry Lazzarini was brutally beaten to death and found tied up in his home in Manomet. For at least a year, the killings seemed to have stopped. Then, in September 1992, Kevin Hanrahan was found shot to death in Providence, Rhode Island. A month later, Dedham Police found Rocco Scali, a North End restaurant owner, shot to death in his car in the parking lot of a pancake house. In December 1992, there were three more killings. Vincent Arcieri, another restaurant owner, was killed in the driveway of his East Boston home. Steven DiSarro, a South Boston nightclub owner, also turned up missing and was presumed dead.

The Russo-Carrozza contingent of the mafia retaliated on February 5, 1992. Gigi Portalla and Dennis Othmer, a twenty-five-year-old from East Boston, were driving on Blackstone Street at about 3:30 p.m. Gigi pulled up next to Dennis Caldarelli, who was also driving on Blackstone Street, and opened fire on him. Caldarelli abandoned his car and attempted to flee on foot through the North End of Boston. Gigi pursued him in a blue 1988 Chevy through the streets of Boston and finally caught up with Caldarelli at the corner of Fleet and Hanover Streets. Gigi hit him in the head with the 9 mm as he pulled alongside him. Then Gigi fired several more rounds as Caldarelli fled through backyards and alleyways. Later that evening, Gigi and passenger Dennis Othmer turned themselves in at the Revere Police Station. They informed the officer that they had not realized the police were looking for them until Gigi received a call from his mother. According to Gigi, his mother had seen on the evening news that the police were seeking her son. Gigi had only been out of prison for a short time when this incident occurred. He was convicted once again for pistol whipping and shooting at Caldarelli. Apparently, Caldarelli had insulted him and called him a nobody. Gigi was sent to Leavenworth for eighteen months. Here he was reunited with Jerry Angiulo and he started reading the works of Niccolo Machiavelli.