Animal (33 page)

Partington had thought that reuniting Joe with his family would calm him down, but the marshal also understood the added pressure Barboza had felt thanks to the constant visits from Dennis Condon and Paul Rico. Barboza was brought once again before the secret twenty-one-man grand jury investigating the Deegan murder case in late October. Hours after his appearance, detectives fanned out across the Boston area to make their arrests. They grabbed Roy French across the street from his home in Everett. Joe Salvati was nabbed at the corner of Prince and Hanover streets in the heart of the North End. French knew that his luck would eventually run out, but the arrest came as a complete shock to Salvati, who had played no role in the Deegan slaying. Both men hid their faces from news photographers and other onlookers as they were hauled into the Chelsea police station and booked. Salvati was charged with two counts of conspiracy to murder and one count of accessory before the fact to murder. Henry Tameleo was booked on similar charges in Rhode Island. Roy French was charged with first-degree murder. Soon Louis Grieco and Peter Limone would also be rounded up. Like French, Grieco faced a first-degree murder charge, while Limone was booked on a charge of being an accessory before the fact of murder. Only Roy French had truly taken
part in the hit on Teddy Deegan. And while Tameleo and Limone were high-ranking members of
LCN
and Grieco was a feared mob enforcer, Joe Salvati barely had a criminal record. Barboza and his handlers Condon and Rico looked upon Joe “the Horse” as nothing more than collateral damage in their war against the Mafia.

Focus soon shifted from the murder of Teddy Deegan to the hit on Rocco DiSeglio as the trial of underboss Jerry Angiulo was fast approaching. The two
FBI
agents were preparing the Animal for his final exam, and that meant spending several hours each week going over his story and filling in any gaps that defense attorneys might successfully exploit. During his grand jury testimony, Barboza had proved himself to be a natural born liar. But would his story hold up against a skilled defense lawyer during cross-examination? Condon and Rico could not gamble on such an eventuality. They grilled Barboza day in and day out until the Animal himself started to believe his own lies. The tutoring sessions were interrupted, however, after members of the media found out where Barboza was hiding.

Townspeople in Rockport and Gloucester were stunned to learn that the government had chosen to safeguard an assassin just off their shore. The Mafia was also surprised by the news, but not shocked by the lengths to which the government would go to protect its star witness. Raymond Patriarca proved that he was willing to match the government’s commitment by sending his own assassins into the Atlantic Ocean with the slim chance of silencing the turncoat. Fortunately, vigilant protection by the U.S. Marshal Service and rough boating conditions made the attempt on Barboza’s life an impossible feat. Hitman Pro Lerner’s dream of reaching the island and going mano a mano with Barboza would have to wait. Fat Vinnie Teresa was a swindler who had never been asked to participate in the Mafia’s darker arts, but he did not need to be a professional killer to understand that they had little chance for success aboard the
Living End
. Upon seeing the heavily armed protection detail lined up in formation on the island, Teresa turned the vessel around and headed back to Boston. He later explained the situation to Patriarca, but it did little to quell the Mafia boss’s quest for vengeance. If Patriarca couldn’t kill Barboza by
boat, he and his men would have to wait patiently until he returned to shore. The Man was not in a patient mood, as time was the one thing he could ill afford to lose. The boss was under enormous pressure from his Mafia counterparts around the country, as they looked upon him as the first domino to fall. Joe Valachi’s testimony had placed the mob under a microscope, but there were few if no ramifications in a court of law. Barboza was a much different animal altogether. His words and his lies could send
LCN
leaders to prison. Any success he had might also influence other disgruntled gangsters to turn on the Mafia.
Omerta
would be no more.

The decision was made: Joe Barboza must die before being allowed to testify at trial. But in order for the mob to put down the Animal, they would have to go through John Partington and his U.S Marshals, and those men had an obligation to keep Barboza breathing even at the cost of their lives.

Once the Thacher Island location was exposed, the U.S. Marshal Service decided that it was best to move Barboza and his family back to the mainland. This time they secured a sprawling estate near Freshwater Cove in Gloucester. For the U.S. marshals the move was a major concern, as it would eliminate the added layer of protection provided by the sea. The decision was gleefully supported by Barboza, however, as he felt the island was slowly driving him insane.

The island would have one last laugh on its most notorious guest. On the day of the move, Partington made several trips by helicopter transferring equipment and supplies from Thacher Island to the Gloucester estate. Once Partington felt the new location was secure and ready to hold and protect Barboza, he called for the chopper to take him back to the island to retrieve Joe and his family. By this time, however, heavy fog had shrouded the island, making it impossible for the helicopter to land. Partington had not accounted for the possibility of bad weather. He had shipped all the family’s clothes, and more important, their food to the mainland. To make matters worse, there was no heat in Barboza’s cottage, and forecasters were predicting an autumn frost. Partington radioed the deputy he had left in charge on the island to notify him that Barboza would have to spend one more night on the island with no supplies and very little comfort.

Upon hearing about the situation, an enraged Barboza grabbed the radio from the deputy.

“You really fucked this up right,” he growled at Partington. “John, I’m not blaming you but you fucking left me. My baby, my baby is out here!”
¹²¹

Barboza also threatened to pummel Robert Morey, the top U.S. marshal for Massachusetts, who had originally conceived the plan to use Thacher Island as sanctuary for the mob killer. Morey had planned to meet with Barboza upon his relocation to the estate at Fresh Water Cove. Partington relayed the threat to his superior and tried to dissuade him from meeting Barboza until Joe had a chance to cool down. Morey was unfazed and wanted to remind the Animal that he was not a hotel guest but a prisoner with no rights of his own. The next morning Morey stood stone straight as the chopper carrying Barboza landed on the plush lawn of the Gloucester estate. Barboza leaped from the helicopter like a soldier heading into combat and began making his way toward Morey with fists clenched. Sensing the impending confrontation, Partington grabbed little Stacy Barboza from her mother’s arms and handed her over to Morey, the little girl serving as a human shield against her father’s rage. Seeing his daughter’s bright smile, the Animal uncoiled his fists.
Not here, not now
, he thought. Joe would have to wait for another opportunity to express his anger to Morey. That moment came later in the day in a private meeting at the estate. Barboza unloaded a laundry list of gripes to Morey, who nodded occasionally but showed little or no emotion. When Joe was finished and nearly out of breath, Morey began to speak in a slow and deliberate manner.

“Now Joseph, you have a very nice place here,” he said, waving his arms around the lavish room. “You see this place you have here? It’s a lot nicer than that Barnstable County jail, right?”

Barboza nodded reluctantly.

Morey’s soft voice suddenly grew louder. “Now if you don’t like it, your ass can go down to Barnstable.”
¹²²

Morey stood from his chair and walked out of the room, leaving Joe speechless. The U.S. marshal was not one to be fucked with.

“Everything’s cool,” Barboza bellowed a few seconds later, loud enough for Morey to hear.

The security detail was increased from a dozen men to twenty. The
U.S. marshals ran barbed wire along the seawall and planted flare bombs with trip wires along the tree line. Spotlights were set up outside the four houses on the estate, while four German shepherds, a gift to Joe from the U.S. Marshal Service, patrolled the perimeter.

Their cover was almost blown again when a reporter living nearby got curious and began poking around the estate. The marshals sat the newspaper man down and negotiated a deal with him. They would grant the reporter the first behind the scenes story of exactly what was happening at Fresh Water Cove if the man maintained his silence for the time being. The reporter recognized the potential for a big scoop and signed off on the agreement.

Another agreement was also in the works involving one of the suspects in the Deegan murder case. Lawyers for Louis Grieco were so confident of their client’s innocence that they agreed to have him take a polygraph test administered by police. Subjecting a client to a lie detector test is always a risky move, especially when the client is a career criminal. But Grieco had nothing to hide, at least not in this case. He sat down for the polygraph test and calmly answered questions as to where he had been on the night of Teddy Deegan’s murder.

“I was in Florida and nowhere near Chelsea on March 12th, 1965,” Grieco told police.
¹²³

The polygraph indicated that the gangster had answered truthfully to the question. The results of the test were problematic for
FBI
agents Condon and Rico, as was the news that the mob was applying added pressure to Barboza’s attorney, John Fitzgerald. First, Fitzgerald’s law partner, Al Farese, who represented a number of gangsters, said that he had tape recorded some of his conversations with Barboza and that he was prepared to testify against the Animal for obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald’s wife, Carol, then received an anonymous call informing her that her husband had taken up with Dottie Barchard, the notorious gangster moll who had inadvertently gotten her boyfriend Ronnie Dermody murdered a few years before. The same caller also reached out to Dottie and warned her to stay away from Fitzgerald or that she and her children would be killed. Barchard was still married to convict Jimmy O’Toole, and the Office had promised to have the man killed if Fitzgerald would help them weaken Barboza. The attorney had danced too close to the mob’s flame for years,
and now he was paying a price that could cost him his family and even his life. He met with Paul Rico at a restaurant in Dorchester to relay his growing fears. In Rico’s eyes, Fitzgerald was a shaken man.

“Recently, a couple guys came to my office and asked where the ‘Barboza braintrust’ was,”
¹²⁴
Fitzgerald confided. “I wasn’t there at the time, but my secretary later told me that one of the men was about 5'7", paunchy and in his mid-fifties. I think it was Henry Tameleo’s brother.”

Fitzgerald told Rico that he blamed his law partner, Al Farese, for his latest troubles.

“I told Al about what I was gonna do to Patriarca and others for causing Joe and me all of this trouble, and Al turned around and told the Office. Now I’m on the hit parade.”

Rico knew that if the Mafia could not get to Barboza or his family—they would go after his closest friends, and at this point Joe had no more trusted confidant than Fitzgerald.

The lawyer was an easy target. Despite the threats, he did not keep a low profile. Fitzgerald refused to be taken into protective custody and instead paraded around the city in Barboza’s James Bond car, with one and sometimes two mistresses on his arm. To make matters worse, he continued to confer with mob killers like Larry Baione. The two met at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts. Baione had heard that Barboza was trying to bury him along with Patriarca, Anguilo, and the Deegan suspects.

“I need to know what Joe is telling the law,” Baione explained to Fitzgerald. “It’ll be worth a lot of money to you if you can find out and help me.”
¹²⁵

Fitzgerald would not budge. “I hold no influence with Joe Barboza,” he replied. “I’m only his legal counsel. I don’t discuss any of these matters with Joe and I cannot help you.”
¹²⁶

These were pious statements made by a lawyer who had carved out a successful career as Barboza’s personal consigliere. Fitzgerald then leaned forward and whispered a message for Baione to take back to Raymond Patriarca. “You tell that diabetic asshole in Rhode Island that if he doesn’t lay off me, I’ll testify against him myself.”
¹²⁷

The harassing phone calls to Fitzgerald’s wife and girlfriend began soon after this meeting. Paul Rico knew that blackmail was just the first
lever to be pulled by the Mafia, which would soon resort to murder if it didn’t get what it wanted.