Animal (40 page)

21

A Murder in the Woods

I’m gonna give all my secrets away

ONE REPUBLIC

Joe Barboza left town shortly after the murder of Ricky Clay Wilson and traveled back East to continue his negotiations with the Mafia. He was broke now and was looking to make a quick score with the stolen securities, which were now in his sole position, and by recanting his testimony. He had given the government fair warning. Months before leaving California for Massachusetts, Barboza shared his financial frustration with Edward Harrington, a government prosecutor and member of the Justice Department’s Boston Strike Force. Harrington, who had become a confidant and friend of Barboza’s, drafted a memo to the U.S. Attorney General’s office in which he wrote:

I think it is fair to state that it was agreed by all in the Department of Justice that at the time [Joe Barboza] was released from government protection, every effort would be made to provide him with a job and an unspecified sum of money… . [A] year has passed and we’ve been unable to provide Barboza with a job. At the time he was released from protective custody he was given only $1,000 in government funds. However he is now nearly penniless and has been given a fair chance to begin a new life. Barboza is now desperate. He states he is without any money and feels that the government has reneged on its promise to provide him with sufficient money. He has indicated that he will publicly retract his testimony given in the aforementioned cases and will make known to the press that the government did not give him a fair chance to go “straight.” In the opinion of the writers if either of the above should occur, the federal government will receive a severe setback as the [Raymond] Patriarca and [Henry] Tameleo cases might be overturned and plunge the Government into protracted and acrimonious litigation.
¹⁸²

The attorney general’s office did not heed Harrington’s warning. The Animal was considered old news in the eyes of the government. Meanwhile, the
FBI
continued to reward Special Agent H. Paul Rico, who had recently procured the testimony of killer and Plymouth mail truck robber John J. “Red” Kelley in a second Raymond Patriarca trial for the murder of Willie Marfeo’s brother Rudolph, in which the New England mob boss was sentenced to an additional ten years in prison.

For his development of Kelley as a Top Echelon informant and prosecution witness, Rico received a $300 bonus and congratulatory letter from J. Edgar Hoover.

Barboza had seen and heard enough. If it had not been for him, gangsters like Red Kelley would not be so willing to turn against the Mafia. Feeling angry and manipulated, Barboza reached out to attorney F. Lee Bailey, and the two scheduled a meeting in Joe’s hometown of New Bedford. According to Barboza, Bailey slipped him an envelope stuffed with $800 and said, “Somebody left it in my office. I don’t know who left it for you.” Barboza then told Bailey that his testimony against Raymond Patriarca had been highly fabricated with the help of the
FBI
, and that most of the men convicted in the Deegan case were innocent. Bailey asked the Animal to take a polygraph test, and he agreed. The Animal’s volatile nature stopped negotiations from going any further, however. Just days after his meeting with Bailey, Barboza got into an argument with a group of black men near the Fairhaven Bridge. Racial tensions had been high in New Bedford after three white youths had been charged with murdering a black teenager. The incident had triggered rioting in the city and a call for peace by some prominent clergymen. Barboza pulled a .45 automatic on the group of black men and later tried to force their car off the road. A member of the group provided police with a description of Barboza’s car, and he was quickly arrested. Police were shocked to learn that the Animal, who had been ordered by the court never to return to Massachusetts, had violated the decree and had been cruising around his hometown. Barboza tried to talk his way out of the arrest, telling cops that he had returned to New Bedford as a federal emissary to help restore law and order following the riots. Police did not buy the explanation, and Barboza was booked on weapons charges and for possession of marijuana. The charges were later dropped because Barboza had not been represented by a defense attorney
during his arraignment. The judge ordered his parole revoked, however, for not sticking to the agreement to stay out of Massachusetts. During his arraignment, Barboza pleaded for low bail. “I can’t say I’m going to wind up dead on the streets, but I promise I’ll come back,” he told the judge.
¹⁸³

“If you’re going to be running around loose, you won’t be running around long,” Judge Frank E. Smith replied, before setting Barboza’s bail at a steep $100,000.

In late July 1970, he was transferred from the Barnstable House of Corrections to the state prison in Walpole, where the men he had helped convict in the Deegan case were either on death row or serving life behind bars. Barboza was housed in 10 Block, a segregated unit in the prison, for fear that the men he had wronged would exact some level of revenge. The Animal quickly tried to mitigate the situation by signing an affidavit for attorney Joe Balliro stating that he would recant his testimony against Henry Tameleo, Louis Grieco, Peter Limone, and Joe Salvati. Balliro immediately filed a motion for a new trial. Lawyers representing Raymond Patriarca and others also filed motions for a new trial based on the new information Barboza now appeared willing and able to offer about how he was coerced by the
FBI
to testify falsely against the New England power structure of
LCN
. Upon hearing the news, Edward Harrington and his colleague Walter Barnes rushed to Walpole to confer with Barboza, who told them that he was still on the side of the government and just wanted the Office to think he was working for them.

“My testimony in the Deegan trial was the truth and a lie detector test will prove this,” Barboza told Harrington.
¹⁸⁴

The secret meeting with Harrington did not sit well with F. Lee Bailey, who immediately withdrew as Barboza’s counsel. Bailey had also been troubled by the fact that Barboza had now refused to take a polygraph after initially agreeing to the test. The Animal was once again playing both sides against the middle, but this time his allies were few and far between. He wrote a letter to Harrington, stating:

Ted, when you and [Walter Barnes] came down to see me, you [and] Walter asked me not to do something [and] I didn’t. How long can the little money I bled out of those creeps last, what’ll happen to my wife [and] babies then? Bailey said I’ll come running to him in the end, I
never will!! … That’s all I want is that job, to be moved to a new location [and] new I.D. [and] I’ll be out of your hair [and] Walter’s completely! I’ll never complain again.
¹⁸⁵

Barboza also shared his feelings with Billy Geraway, a convicted killer, counterfeiter, and thief who occupied the next cell and whom Barboza had known since his days at the Concord Reformatory. The two men would spend as much as fifteen hours a day talking to each other between their cells. Geraway taught Barboza how to play chess, a game he had learned from self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo, who admitted to Geraway that he used chess as a means to gain sexual contact with other inmates. DeSalvo also hinted to Geraway on several occasions that he was not responsible for the eleven Boston Strangler murders. DeSalvo trusted that Geraway would keep his secret, and so did Barboza. Joe regaled Geraway with grisly details about the murders he had committed, including the recent slaying of Ricky Clay Wilson in California. Their relationship began to sour after a heated argument over chess. Geraway had insisted that he had checkmated Barboza, who claimed that Geraway’s queen was not where he said it was. Since both men were playing virtual matches against each other in separate cells, neither could see the other man’s board. The Animal began to threaten Geraway with information he had gathered about his family. One night, Barboza slipped Geraway a piece of paper in his cell.

“What’s this?” Geraway asked.

“That’s your sister Louise’s telephone number,” the Animal replied coldly.
¹⁸⁶

Barboza had put Geraway on notice that he was keeping tabs on his family and would harm them once he got out of jail. Geraway could not let that happen. The following day, he conferred with Ronnie Cassesso who was also in Walpole on the Deegan rap.

“This guy’s gone,” Geraway told Cassesso. “He’s never getting out of prison. He’s not hitting the street.”

“He might get off and go his own way,” suggested Cassesso, who would feel much safer with Barboza outside prison walls.

“No, he’s not going his own way because he’s not getting out. I’m nailing him today. I’m sending for the fucking D.A. today!”
¹⁸⁷

Geraway got word to the Norfolk County district attorney that Barboza had killed a man in California. He also followed up with a letter to the chief of police in Santa Rosa, California that read in part:

A former Boston loanshark and “hit” man from the Mafia was living in your city recently. He is now in custody here but will return to your city upon release from here. While in Santa Rosa, he murdered a man and buried the body with the help of a female. Two witnesses were within 50 feet when the man, Joseph Barboza Baron, killed the victim. I know from Baron what the victim was wearing, how many times he was shot and why, and who the witnesses were. I know this because he wanted me to move the body if my appeal should come through soon since he is afraid the female will eventually divulge the whereabouts of the body.
¹⁸⁸

Barboza had also discussed the murder with Lawrence Wood, another inmate in 10 Block, who was now willing to testify against him. Dennis Condon was notified about the Geraway letter almost immediately, thanks to a counterpart in the San Francisco
FBI
office, who said they were closely following the Wilson matter with local authorities. J. Edgar Hoover was also notified. Hoover responded by advising both offices to keep him informed about any prosecutions pending against Barboza. The news about Barboza’s recent criminal activity had caught the bureau by surprise, and its first order of business was to find out exactly what evidence the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department had on its former star witness. Two local investigators, Santa Rosa police chief Melvin Flohr and Sonoma County assistant district attorney Ed Cameron, flew to Massachusetts to interview Geraway and Lawrence Wood at Walpole. Before speaking with the inmates the pair met with Dennis Condon, who would only provide them with information about Barboza that was publicly available. Cameron placed several phone calls to Condon over the next several weeks requesting records and information about Barboza, but his calls were never returned.

Cameron, a veteran investigator with fifteen years’ experience in the D.A’s office and on the police force, could hardly believe the level of resistance applied by Condon and the
FBI
. He could not tell the good guys from the bad guys. Cameron became convinced that someone had broken
into his hotel room and searched his briefcase while he was in Boston. When he finally met with Billy Geraway and Lawrence Wood, they provided him with the names of the two women Barboza had allowed to live on the night they buried Ricky Clay Wilson, their addresses, a description of the vehicle they had been driving that night, and even the names of their children and pets. When Sonoma County detectives paid a visit to Ricky Clay Wilson’s wife, Dee, and her hippie friend Paulette Ramos, they were accompanied by Doug Ahlstrom, an
FBI
agent from the Santa Rosa office who falsely told them that he was not interested in the Wilson murder but in an unrelated matter regarding the women. The women told authorities they had witnessed Barboza—or Joe Bentley, as they knew him—shoot and kill Wilson. Upon hearing their story, Agent Ahlstrom knew immediately that these women posed a dangerous threat to Barboza and the bureau.

With a detailed description of the grave site provided by Dee Wilson and Paulette Ramos—which included how much earth Ricky Clay Wilson had been buried under, and the fact that Barboza had moved a tree trunk over the shallow grave—police discovered Wilson’s rotting corpse in the woods near Glen Ellen, California. It took three men from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department to lift the tree trunk off the grave. The body was badly decomposed, and positive identification took several days. Once the victim was confirmed to be Ricky Clay Wilson, authorities searched Barboza’s Santa Rosa home and interviewed Claire, who had been left alone to care for their two young children. The following day, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department filed a murder charge against Barboza, who was still behind bars in Massachusetts. The
FBI
quickly mobilized its surrogates. The chief public defender for Massachusetts penned a letter to his counterpart in Sacramento County calling Billy Geraway a chronic liar and urging him to investigate the allegations further before extraditing Barboza back to California. The federal government reversed its course a few months later, when a Justice Department official informed the Sonoma County D.A. that he had no plans to interfere with Barboza’s prosecution but wanted assurances that he was not being framed and that he was represented by competent counsel.