Animal (19 page)

It was Teddy Deegan’s greed that killed him. In early March 1965, a North End hood named Charlie Moore told Deegan about the Lincoln National Bank in Chelsea, which was a prime target for a big score. Moore explained that the finance company, which was located on the second floor of the building, kept a pile of money in its safe and that they would have access to the building after hours, thanks to Moore’s brother—a local cop who had agreed to leave the back door of the building open for a cut of the cash. The offer was too good for Deegan to pass up. He had been waiting for a score like this for some time. Deegan’s pockets had been a little lighter recently as a result of the murder of his former partner, Harold Hannon, at the hands of Barboza and Buddy McLean. Deegan jumped at the chance and quickly pulled in his friend Anthony “Tony Stats” Stathopoulos to help him on the job. Tony Stats offered to be the wheelman for the robbery, so that meant Deegan would need a third man to help him open the safe. He called on another friend, Wilfred “Roy” French, whom he had used on some previous burglary jobs. French was also a bouncer at the Ebb Tide Lounge. Deegan was confident that his three-man crew could pull off the score, and he also believed that they would encounter no resistance, which is why he decided to leave his gun at home.

On Friday night, March 12, 1965, Tony Stats borrowed his brother’s Pontiac and called Deegan, who then phoned French at the Ebb Tide Lounge.

“You ready?” Deegan asked.

French told him yes, and the two decided on a meeting place where Tony Stats would pick him up for the job. Roy hung up the phone and returned to the bar, where Barboza, Flemmi, and five associates—Romeo Martin, Nicky Femia, Francis Imbruglia, Ronnie “The Pig” Cassesso, and
Freddie Chiampi—were all waiting. French told the Animal that everything was a go. Barboza and his crew went out the back door of the Ebb Tide toward Romeo Martin’s car, while French took off for his rendezvous with Deegan and Stathopoulos.

Barboza opened the trunk of Martin’s car and reached for a bulletproof vest and a bag of disguises. Joe applied a phony mustache and put on a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses while Cassesso did the same. The Animal had strategically mapped out the hit on Teddy Deegan with the forethought of a field general. He would use two cars for the job; one to block traffic and another to make a hasty retreat from the scene. Neither vehicle was known to police, unlike Barboza’s own Oldsmobile Cutlass, which was dubbed “the James Bond car” by local cops because it was equipped with a hi-tech alarm system and a mechanism that spewed thick black smoke from the tailpipe. Femia was ordered to take one car and park it around the corner from the Lincoln National Bank. He had the vehicle in position to make a hard right and stall it in the middle of the street, thus blocking the route from the Chelsea police station if he had to. Barboza, Flemmi, Cassesso, and Martin placed the other car in position down the street at a parking meter between Broadway and Luther Place with its front wheels turned out to the street ready for a speedy getaway. Barboza and his team had also bent back the plates on the front and back of the car, leaving only a few numbers exposed. The men were sitting in the car with the motor running when Barboza noticed a man in a topcoat and scally cap walk by the vehicle and stop a few paces ahead. The man turned around and headed back their way.

“What does this motherfucker want?’ Joe asked aloud.
⁴⁵

The man leaned down and rapped on the window, giving Barboza a good look at him.

“Hey, your plate is bent,” the man said.

Barboza’s stomach tightened. The passerby with the keen eye happened to be a well-known Chelsea police captain named Joseph Kozlowski.

Barboza’s crew didn’t take any time answering Kozlowski. Instead, Romeo Martin pulled out onto Broadway with tires screeching and took off down the street. Kozlowski didn’t think too much of it. It was just another Friday night in Chelsea. He was not on duty at the time, so he didn’t pursue. However he did get a good look at the driver and the man in the
backseat of the vehicle as it drove away. Martin took a quick left turn and parked the car further away from the alley. The men then doubled back and got into position in the darkness.

Roy French stepped off the curb in nearby Revere when he saw Tony Stats pull up in his brother’s Pontiac.

“You guys bring any weapons?”
⁴⁶
French asked as he climbed into the car.

Both men said no. Deegan was armed only with a screwdriver.

They proceeded to the finance company at Fourth Street and Broadway in Chelsea.

Chelsea police officer James O’Brien was on patrol in the area that evening and walked by the alley in back of the bank at around 9:00 p.m. He failed to notice that the back door of the building had been left slightly ajar but did notice that the lights in the back alley had been turned off, so he turned them back on and continued on his beat. Moments later, someone turned the lights out again.

The burglars arrived at the location thirty minutes later and parked on the opposite side of the street. Tony Stats stayed in the Pontiac as Roy French and Teddy Deegan climbed out of the vehicle, crossed the street, and disappeared into the pitch-black alleyway. Tony Stats scanned the street for potential witnesses but saw no one.

His eyes then reverted back to the alleyway, where he suddenly saw several muzzle flashes light up the dark alley and heard a volley of gunshots. Seconds later Roy French ran out of the alley to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, where the getaway car was parked. French looked directly into Tony Stats’s eyes and simply shrugged his shoulders. At that moment, Joe Barboza walked out of the alley wearing a dark coat and carrying a .357 Magnum in his left hand.

“Get him too!” came a voice from deep within the alleyway.

As Barboza lifted the revolver’s long barrel in his direction, Tony Stats slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and sped away from the scene with his head low. Barboza had selected the .357 Magnum as his weapon of choice that evening because he believed it could penetrate the door of Stats’s borrowed Pontiac. However, Barboza was denied a side shot at the
vehicle and instead had to line up his target from behind. Knowing that he could not get a clear shot, Joe decided against pulling the trigger.

Tony Stats got away and drove around for several hours before turning up at the home of his lawyer, Al Farese. Stathopoulos, who clearly was not thinking straight, told Farese that he had accompanied Deegan and Roy French on a score in Chelsea and that the cops now had Deegan. Farese picked up the phone and dialed the Chelsea Police Department.

“Is it true that you have Deegan?” Farese asked the night watch commander.

“Yes, we have him with a hole in his head,” the commander replied.
⁴⁷

Farese decided it was best to take the shaken Stathopoulos back to the scene of the crime, which was now crawling with law enforcement. Once there, they met up with Chelsea police captain Robert Renfrew, who escorted them into the alley. The body of Teddy Deegan lay near the back door of the finance company. He had been shot six times by three different guns.

When asked by Renfrew what he knew about the shooting, Stathopoulos said nothing. The next day, on the advice of attorney Al Farese and another local mob lawyer, John Fitzgerald, Tony Stats visited the Chelsea Police Department, where he was shown photographs of several gangsters including Barboza, Flemmi, Roy French, Romeo Martin, and Ronnie Cassesso.

“These are the guys that did it, am I right?” asked one investigator.

Again, Tony Stats refused to talk.

“Look, they killed Deegan and they’re gonna kill you too.”

The investigator told Stathopoulos what he already knew, yet there was no way that he could convince the gangster to cooperate. Tony Stats left the Chelsea Police Department without offering any information on the murder of his friend. He and Fitzgerald then drove over to Al Farese’s office, and Stathopoulos was shocked to find Roy French there. French had also been questioned in the murder. He had been picked up by police at the Ebb Tide Lounge hours after the shooting. French had done little to cover his tracks. He had blood stains on his shirt sleeve and right shoe and had not thought to change out of his clothes after the murder. Since French had not been formally charged with the crime, he was let go. Now both he and Stathopoulos were staring at each other across the lawyer’s
office. Tony Stats did not know what to say, but he mustered up something to fill the dead air.

“How’d you get away?” he asked French.
⁴⁸

“Over fences and through backyards,” Roy replied.

Fitzgerald attempted to cut through the tension by pointing out that Stathopoulos had not cooperated with Chelsea police in their investigation. He then instructed the men not to be seen together. Although he did not say it, the request was fine with Tony Stats, who knew that French had set Deegan up for murder and, by extension, himself too.

Stathopoulos should have fled the area that day, but instead he went home to his apartment and drew the shades and locked the door. Tony Stats stayed in seclusion for several days—his only forays outside were to call John Fitzgerald from a payphone down the street. One night his wife borrowed his leather jacket for a trip to the corner store. As she stepped out onto the street, a car pulled up next to her and continued slowly beside her. She turned and looked at the men inside the car, who then pulled away and parked down the street. The wife kept walking, picked up her groceries, and returned quickly to the apartment. She entered her home shaking and motioned to her husband to look out the window. Tony Stats lifted the shade slightly and saw the vehicle, parked at the end of the street. At that moment, he realized that it would be unhealthy and unwise to leave the apartment again until the police made their arrests.

Chelsea Police investigators presumed they would wrap up this case quickly. Police captain Joe Kozlowski came forward and described the mysterious car that had pulled away from him about an hour before the murder.

“I walked behind the car and saw the rear number plate with a Massachusetts Registered number 444,” Kozlowski told his colleagues. “The right half of the plate was folded towards the center obstructing the other three digits. I then walked to the driver’s side of the car and rapped on the window. As I did this the driver took off at a fast rate of speed and took a screeching turn to the right on Broadway. I observed that the man in the back was stocky, had dark hair and a bald spot in the center of his head.”

Kozlowski had just described the balding Bear. He also identified
Romeo Martin as the driver of the vehicle. With this eye-witness testimony and the blood discovered on Roy French’s clothing, the investigation was progressing smoothly, and detectives had no doubt that other dominoes would soon fall.

The
FBI
had even more evidence at its disposal. On March 15, 1965, Special Agent Rico typed a memo stating that he had been informed five days prior to the slaying that Raymond Patriarca had put the word out that Deegan was to be “hit” and that a dry run had already been made. Rico also mentioned that a close associate of Deegan’s had agreed to set him up. On March 13, the day following Deegan’s murder, Rico wrote another memo, describing in detail how it had all gone down.

Informant advised that [Vincent] “Jimmy” Flemmi contacted him and told him that the previous evening Deegan was lured to a finance company in Chelsea and that the door of the finance company had been left open by an employee of the company and that when they got to the door Roy French, who was setting Deegan up, shot Deegan, and Joseph Romeo Martin and Ronnie Cassessa [
sic
] came out of the door and one of them fired into Deegan’s body. While Deegan was approaching the doorway, he [Flemmi] and Joe Barboza walked over towards a car driven by Tony “Stats” [Anthony Stathopoulos] and they were going to kill “Stats” but “Stats’ saw them coming and drove off before any shots were fired. Flemmi told informant that Ronnie Cassessa [
sic
] and Romeo Martin wanted to prove to Raymond Patriarca they were capable individuals, and that is why they wanted to “hit” Deegan. Flemmi indicated that they did an awful sloppy job.