Animal (37 page)

RFK
made no public statements following the conviction of Raymond Patriarca. His focus now was on ending the war in Vietnam and closing the economic and racial gaps that existed in the United States. Still, the guilty verdict must have been music to Kennedy’s ears. Only a year before,
RFK
had discussed the Mafia boss with John Partington as the two drove to a funeral Mass for Rhode Island congressman John E. Fogarty in Providence. “How do we get that bum on the hill?” Kennedy asked Partington, who had been given the assignment of chauffeuring the senator from the airport to the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.
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Kennedy talked about Joe Valachi and how his testimony before congress had forced the Mafia out of the shadows. Still, more must be done, Kennedy told the young marshal. Partington agreed wholeheartedly but was surprised to learn shortly after their conversation that he had been named to lead the newly formed Witness Protection Program. Partington never asked but certainly believed that Kennedy had been influential in landing him the new position.

“So thanks to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there,”
RFK
told an adoring crowd of supporters who had packed themselves inside the Embassy Room ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to hear his victory speech after winning the California and South Dakota primary elections. Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy and his security detail followed the hotel maitre d’ toward a back exit through the kitchen, where employees lined both sides of the passageway for a chance to shake the candidate’s hand. Kennedy smiled and waved to his well wishers and then stopped and turned around to look for his wife, Ethel, whom he feared had gotten separated in the crush of people chanting, “We want Bobby! We want Bobby!” At that moment, a Jordanian citizen and long-time California resident named Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward from the crowd and raised a snub-nosed pistol to the back of
Kennedy’s head. The assassin fired several shots; the most damaging entered Kennedy’s brain through the back of his right ear. The candidate fell backward onto the floor.

Kennedy remained conscious for a few moments while emergency responders placed him on a stretcher. Ethel ran her fingers gently over her husband’s face and chest as he closed his eyes for the last time. He was rushed to Central Receiving Hospital just a short distance from the Ambassador Hotel. Once doctors there obtained a good heartbeat, he was transferred to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan for surgery. The Kennedy family held vigil at the hospital through the night and the next day.
RFK
had been shot three times: once in the head and twice behind his right armpit. He never regained consciousness and his condition deteriorated as the hours ticked away. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968.

Some 3,018 miles away from Los Angeles, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Joe Barboza and John Partington were stunned by the news. Unlike most mobsters, who saw Bobby Kennedy as their Public Enemy Number One, Barboza had great admiration for the young Democrat. Partington, however, felt as if he had lost a friend, which he had. A few weeks earlier, Kennedy had asked the U.S. Marshal Service to allow Partington to provide security for him at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago should he win the nomination. The marshal wished that Kennedy had made the request sooner, as he might have been in position to protect the candidate at the Ambassador Hotel. Instead, he vowed to continue
RFK’S
legacy by protecting those dangerous men who were willing to turn their backs on
La Cosa Nostra
.

What Partington did not know was that this part of Kennedy’s legacy was also his dirty little secret. As attorney general,
RFK
had been a champion of the
CIA’S
Operation Mongoose, which was designed to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Through this support, Kennedy had shown that he was willing to eliminate foreign enemies of the state by any means necessary. One is left to question whether he would have approved of the tactics now being employed by the
FBI
to destroy a domestic enemy such as the Mafia. Special agents Rico and Condon had spent years circumventing the laws of the United States in an effort to gain an edge against a foe they believed was more of a threat to the American way of life than
Fidel Castro could ever be. If this was indeed a war against organized crime, the agents were prepared to fight in the trenches using the same methods as their adversaries. Rico had already proved that he was willing to commit murder by helping to set up rivals of the Winter Hill Gang for Buddy McLean. Now he was ready to send men to their deaths for a crime they did not commit, and Joe Barboza would be his weapon.

Jury selection for the Deegan murder trial had begun in late May 1968. The names of the jurors were printed in the newspaper, a practice outlawed today for fear of reprisal from either side of the case. Robert L. Vacha from Dorchester was the first member chosen. Some 750 prospective jurors were interviewed over twenty-four days before both sides settled on a panel of fourteen men and two women. During his opening statement, Assistant Suffolk County district attorney Jack Zalkind told the jury that $7,500 was the price tag for the murder of Teddy Deegan, with another $2,500 thrown in to kill Deegan’s friend Anthony “Tony Stats” Stathopoulos, who would provide them with bone-chilling testimony about the night of the murder. More testimony would be provided by Joe Barboza, the star witness in the case, who had recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the murder of Deegan and conspiracy to commit murder with regard to Stathopoulos. Like Barboza, Tony Stats had been isolated in protective custody in the weeks leading up to the trial. He had been transported to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, where he was kept under the watchful eye of two detectives from the district attorney’s office. Unlike Barboza, who had told him to “fuck those Guinea bastards,” Tony Stats was not sure he was capable of sending innocent men to the electric chair. One of the detectives tried to ease his conscience. “Sometimes defendants can be convicted of a crime they didn’t do,” the detective said. “These are bad people anyway and are probably guilty of a lot worse crimes.”
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Tony Stats knew full well what the Mafia was capable of. Mobsters had tried to poison his food in prison and had set him up for a hit on a lonely road in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It was for this reason that he had himself placed in protective custody. Like Barboza, he knew the feds would cast him aside and let him fend for himself if he didn’t testify.

Shortly before the trial, Tony Stats was taken to a Boston hotel for a clandestine meeting with prosecutor Jack Zalkind. The assistant district attorney, dressed in a baseball cap, shorts, and sunglasses, told Stathopoulos he wanted him to testify that Louis Grieco was the man who came out of the alley with the gun, not Barboza. Also at issue was whether the gun was in his right or left hand when he came out of the alley. Tony Stats had made previous statements that the gunman who emerged from the alley had carried the pistol in his right hand. That could be potentially dangerous at trial, as Grieco was left-handed. Zalkind ordered Stats to change his testimony and tell the jury that the gunman carried his weapon in his left hand. Zalkind also told him to testify that the gunman walked with a pronounced limp, as Grieco did from an injury he had sustained in World War II. Stathopoulos was unsure. “These motherfuckers are trying to kill you,” the D.A. reminded him. “And if you do anything to fuck up this case, the name Zalkind will stick in your throat like cancer.”
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Stathopoulos testified for the prosecution, but his words were overshadowed by those of Joe Barboza, who took the stand in early July 1968 as a stifling heat wave swept through Boston. The Red Sox had just begun an eight-game winning streak, but the city’s attention was focused on the Suffolk Superior Courthouse. As with the Patriarca trial, John Partington made sure that the proper security measures were in place. He had all the shades on the courthouse windows drawn so a sniper could not line up Barboza in his crosshairs from a nearby building. Partington also foiled the attempt of a contract killer who posed as a drunk to get himself arrested and brought inside the courthouse, hoping that he might have the chance to cross paths with the Animal. Barboza testified that he met with Jerry Angiulo’s bodyguard, Peter Limone, during the winter of 1965 in the North End, and that Limone told him that Deegan was being targeted for murder because he had robbed the wrong man and had killed another; Anthony Sacramone, who had close ties to the Office.

“Limone told me there’s $7,500 in it if I could kill Deegan or have him killed,” Barboza told the jury. “I said I’d look into it, but I wanted to speak to Henry [Tameleo] first.”
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On the okay of Tameleo, Barboza told the jury he then assembled a hit squad that included Roy French, Louis Grieco, and Joe Salvati as the getaway driver. He also said that the gang was loaded for bear when they
lured Deegan to the Chelsea finance company on the night of the murder. Barboza rattled off a laundry list of high-powered weapons that included two .357 Magnum handguns, three .38 revolvers, and a .45 pistol. The men also carried an M1 carbine in case they were forced to shoot it out with police.
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Barboza told the jury that he did not witness the murder because he, Chico Amico, and Ronnie Cassesso had been forced to flee when Chelsea police captain Joe Kozlowski spotted their vehicle near the scene. Barboza said that the trio returned to the Ebb Tide Lounge, where Roy French turned up later with blood stains on his clothes and shoes.

The trial got heated during cross-examination when a member of the defense counsel, attorney Ronald Chisolm, questioned Barboza as to whether he had a personal vendetta against Teddy Deegan.

“Didn’t Mr. Deegan pull a gun on you at the Ebb Tide three weeks before and make you back down?”
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“Definitely not,” Barboza answered. “Mr. Chisolm, no one pulled a gun on me.”

The Animal continued his testimony over nine grueling days as defense attorneys poked and prodded the combative witness. When asked by one of the lawyers to provide a location for a pin to be placed on a chart that described logistics of the murder scene, Barboza answered, “You want me to show you what you can do with that pin?”
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The Animal had told the jury that Peter Limone had given him a slap on the back for a job well done on the day after the murder. This claim was called into question during cross-examination.

According to Barboza, Deegan was supposed to be shot inside the hallway of the finance company instead of out in the alley where the killing had actually taken place.

“So it wasn’t a good job, was it?” a defense attorney asked.

Barboza simply shrugged his shoulders. “He’s dead though.”
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When testimony centered on Joe Salvati, the innocent man who had replaced real killer Jimmy Flemmi on the hit squad, Barboza stayed true to his script.

“I told him [Salvati] to go outside and put Romeo’s [Martin’s] car down the far end of the parking lot. Then I told Salvati that when he saw me and the others come out the back door of the Ebb Tide to blink your lights once to let us know where you are and in what direction in the
back of the parking lot you are.” When asked about the fake glasses, mustache, and wig he claimed Salvati wore as a disguise, Barboza testified that he could “see Joe [Salvati] putting on this wig and the snapping of the elastic.”
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FBI
agent Dennis Condon also testified in the trial that he did not show Barboza any reports or other documents pertaining to Deegan’s murder, and that both he and Rico were “very careful not to impart any information about the case to Barboza.”
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