Opinion ID: 203977
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Murder and Its Aftermath.

Text: On the night of March 12, 1965, Teddy Deegan's bulletridden body was discovered in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Deegan had -5- been shot six times, and the shots had been fired from three different guns. Suspicion focused upon a group of men that included Barboza, Jimmy Flemmi, Roy French, Joseph Martin, and Ronald Cassesso, all of whom were linked to organized crime. The group had been observed leaving a local gang hangout, the Ebb Tide Lounge, earlier that evening and returning shortly after the murder was committed. Eyewitnesses attested that they had seen blood stains on French's clothing that night. Despite local officers' suspicions, the trail went cold within a matter of weeks. The police were unable to gather sufficient evidence to prefer charges against anyone. Some two years later, FBI agents H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon started cultivating Barboza, a known killer, in hopes of flipping him; that is, developing him as a cooperating witness against the Italian Mafia (La Cosa Nostra or LCN). At the time, Barboza was facing up to 89 years of imprisonment on state habitual offender charges. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 279, § 25. Barboza indicated a willingness to deal but placed one immutable condition on any information that he might provide: he would not inculpate his close associate, Flemmi. The FBI tacitly accepted that condition. Throughout the spring of 1967, the agents used both carrots and sticks in their efforts to mine information from Barboza. Barboza was in state custody, and the agents plied him -6- with promises of favorable recommendations and a slap-on-the-wrist sentence. They also fabricated a story that La Cosa Nostra was attempting, by influencing state prosecutors, to bring about Barboza's lifetime confinement. Barboza's cooperation was not a one-shot affair. Over the course of several months of interrogation, he claimed to be knowledgeable about many crimes. Pertinently, he mentioned the Deegan murder (although in his conversations with the FBI agents he was not forthcoming as to any details). That crime was primarily a matter of state, not federal, interest. Accordingly, Massachusetts law enforcement officers sought to interview Barboza. On September 8, 1967, two Suffolk County detectives (John Doyle and Frank Walsh) conversed with Barboza. Agents Rico and Condon were present, but the detectives pulled the laboring oar. Under questioning, Barboza finally provided his account of the Deegan killing. According to that account, Limone hired Barboza to murder Deegan because Deegan had robbed an LCN-affiliated bookmaker. Barboza then requested permission to carry out the hit from Tameleo, an LCN hierarch. After Tameleo's blessing had been secured, Barboza and Greco formulated a plan. According to Barboza, the mechanics of the plan were as follows. French would accompany Deegan to the site of a hypothetical burglary. Once there, French would turn on Deegan and, assisted by Barboza, Salvati, Greco, Martin, and Cassesso, -7- would kill both Deegan and another putative participant in the burglary, Anthony Stathopoulos, Jr. Upon learning the details of the plan, Limone approved it and agreed to pay an additional sum because it involved a double murder. During subsequent meetings with the detectives and the agents, Barboza modified his account. This modified version, which differed only at the margins and not at the core, formed the predicate for the indictments and convictions that followed. At the time that Barboza unveiled his account of Deegan's murder, the FBI possessed powerful intelligence casting grave doubt on the account's veracity. Because the strength of this intelligence is of decretory significance here, we discuss it in some detail. In the early 1960s, the FBI ramped up its efforts to extirpate organized crime in New England. Among other things, it surreptitiously installed an illegal electronic bug at the Providence, Rhode Island office of Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the reputed head of La Cosa Nostra in the area. The bug was in place from early 1962 through July 12, 1965. See United States v. Taglianetti, 274 F. Supp. 220, 223 (D.R.I. 1967). FBI agents transcribed the conversations that it recorded, reviewed those transcripts, and sent summaries of important information to FBI headquarters in Washington. -8- As a parallel measure, the FBI initiated the Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program in 1961. The aim of that program was to induce high-ranking organized crime figures to provide intelligence on a continuing, long-term basis. See United States v. Flemmi, 225 F.3d 78, 81 (1st Cir. 2000). In the weeks preceding and following Deegan's murder, these two investigative tools yielded a golconda of information about the killers. The Patriarca bug revealed that Barboza and Flemmi had approached Patriarca and obtained his sanction for the hit. Other information from both the bug and the FBI's thencurrent crop of Top Echelon informants implicated five malefactors (Barboza, Flemmi, French, Martin, and Cassesso) in the murder, but not a single source other than Barboza so much as hinted that any of the scapegoats were involved. Despite possessing credible intelligence undermining Barboza's tale, the FBI did not turn over this intelligence to state authorities either at the time of the murder or during Barboza's later debriefing. To make a bad situation worse, agents Rico and Condon informed the state prosecutor, Norman Zalkind, that Barboza's tale checked out. Condon appeared as a witness at the state-court trial and lent credence to Barboza's narrative by emphasizing that he (Condon) always was concerned about the purity of the testimony given by his informants. -9- On the strength of Barboza's false testimony, the jury convicted the scapegoats on first-degree murder and murderconspiracy charges.1 The trial judge sentenced Limone, Tameleo, and Greco to death, and sentenced Salvati to life imprisonment. The scapegoats' appeals were unsuccessful, but the capital sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after the United States Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Under Massachusetts law as it stood at the time, a state prisoner convicted of first-degree murder could not be paroled absent commutation by the governor. See Limone IV, 497 F. Supp. 2d at 199 (describing parole process). The scapegoats filed numerous petitions for commutation and parole over many years. Although state authorities requested all relevant information, the FBI never turned over the exculpatory information that reposed within its files. On some occasions, the FBI went so far as to forward information that harmed the scapegoats' chances for commutation or parole. On other occasions, it took affirmative steps to deflect possible challenges to the convictions. Tameleo and Greco died in prison in 1985 and in 1995, respectively. Salvati secured a commutation from the governor and was released in 1997. Limone remained incarcerated. 1 French, Martin, and Cassesso also were convicted on charges related to the murder. The legitimacy of those convictions is not an issue here. -10- In December of 2000, Special Assistant United States Attorney John Durham, responding to a request lodged by Limone, turned over five memoranda (which have come to be known as the Durham documents). The Durham documents revealed much of the exculpatory information that the FBI had kept in its organizational bosom all along. Upon seeing this information, the Suffolk County district attorney's office moved to vacate Limone's conviction. The state trial court granted that motion on the ground that the result of the trial in all likelihood would have been different had the Durham documents been disclosed in a timeous manner. Salvati's conviction was vacated on the same ground. Shortly thereafter, state prosecutors filed notices of abandonment of prosecution (nolle prosequi) for both Limone and Salvati based on a perceived lack of evidence. The prosecutors later arranged for posthumous vacatur of Tameleo's and Greco's convictions and issued similar nolle prosequi notices in those cases.