The next thing that happens to Salemme who had been out of jail a little over a year was that in November 2004 he is charged with obstruction of justice and making false statement to an FBI agent about his involvement in the murder of Steve DiSarro. After DiSarro disappeared on November 2, 1999, Salemme had been interrogated more than six hours by federal prosecutors and state police about that. Obviously the prosecutors knew he was believed to have been involved at the time of Connolly’s trial but they apparently did nothing to pursue it and let him claim to be ignorant of it.
On July 16, 2008 Salemme consummated a plea deal with Wyshak. He could have received much more time without the deal and be kept off the street but Wyshak agreed to a deal that sentenced him to five years. Salemme got credit for four years already served in prison. He was to be released in six months’ time in January 2009. He would be back out on the street until charge with DiSarro’s murder.
It was reported on September 13, 2018, “Longtime federal prosecutor Fred Wyshak at one point choked back tears as he spoke about the crimes of the mobster, after whom Wyshak has been going since the 1990s.This man is ruthless, barbaric and he is an individual who richly deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Wyshak said of the 84-year-old gangster. He went on: “It grieves me that it’s taken this long to put him away for the rest of his life, because he richly deserves that.”
Wyshak had used Salemme and vouched for his veracity of a person who everyone knew was “ruthless and barbaric” when he used him as a witness. If I suggest Durham’s partner Wyshak was shedding crocodile tears perhaps I would not be wrong. I say that because he and Durham more than anyone else facilitated Salemme being on the street. They did that because back in 2000 when they decided to have him go to bat for them so that they could get retired FBI Agent John Connolly.
These prosecutors would also arrange the deal for John Martorano that I wrote about; dealt with Steve Flemmi who murdered his girlfriend, step daughter, and countless others who was sentenced to life in federal prison but avoided being confined under the oversight of the Bureau of Prisons; and gave Kevin Weeks who was facing double figures for the crimes he was indicted for, agreed that he could do five years for five murders. They also gave other people accused of murder such as Howie Winter and Pat Nee breaks by keeping their names out of the trial.
Those three men with multiple murders to their credit must smile when they see Trump’s pro-life Attorney General Barr pushing for federal executions. He carried out three executions in four days of men who committed far less murders than those who cooperated with Durham. When thinking of him look at the extent of the deals he is willing to make to gain testimony.
There were other thing Salemme lied about but it was sort of incredible in the first place that Prosecutor Durham was using the head of a Mafia family to testify against an FBI agent who had arrested him in New York City in 1972 which caused him to spend the next 16 years in prison.
Connolly was convicted by a jury of a minority of the counts he faced. He was sentenced 121 months in prison which was at the top of the scale of possible sentencing. This was a heavy hit especially considering the jury verdict. Judge Joseph Tauro explained that his main reason for doing this was Connolly’s attempt to undermine the case being handled by another judge in his courthouse, Judge Mark Wolf.
Yesterdays Boston Herald had not one but two separate screenshots of Billy Bulger.One was in the article by Howie Carr pertaining to Massachusetts state pensions, the other the same type of article written by somebody else. The topic of Billy Bulger seems to be one that people never tire of. Your point of a mafia family head in court speaking against an FBI agent who helped put him away for 18 years is something that has never happened before I would think.If the whole saga of the court proceedings was fiction who would believe it?
Matt, I’m trying to get your drift here. Are you saying Connolly is innocent? Are you trying to smear Durham with Wyshak’s deals to somehow taint what Durham is about to produce? Mueller and an impeachment Inquiry came up empty on Trump Campaign-Russian “collusion.” Durham will show the only colluders in 2016-17 were the Clinton Campaign, FusionGPS, Comey, and top people at FBI-DOJ, Counterintelligence, Brennan, Clapper and Rice.
Some facts, to keep the ball rolling: Fred Wyshak came to Boston from NJ in 1989 as Assistant U.S. Attorney. Donald Sterns was U.S. Attorney for the Boston Office from 1993-2001. Indictments came down against Bulger, Flemmi, and Salemme in 1995 . . .Wyshak lead counsel . . . .
You will never see this fact reported: The Boston jury specifically acquitted John Connolly . . .not guilty . . .of leaking information that led to Bulger fleeing. It convicted John Connolly of telling Weeks in a closed refrigerator unit that indictments were coming down. But no nexus was established between Weeks and Whitey , , , ,Whitey was away in New Orleans then New York and was coming back from New York when he first heard on the radio that indictments were coming down . . . .Theresa Stanley testified to this fact . . . .
Moreover, it was no crime for a private citizen to tell someone that they heard through the grapevine an indictment was coming down . . . in 1995 John Connolly was a private citizen, five years retired from the FBI . . .moreover, it was general knowledge in Southie that indictments were coming down as up to 40 different people had been summoned to Worcester to the Grand Jury convened by Wyshak/Sterns . . .
So keep this timeline and these facts in mind: Sterns, Wyshak had long been in the process of cooking up the rogue agent theory, in collusion with Muellar and Comey and other higher ups in the FBI and DOJ in D.C. . . . .they singled out John Connolly while their real target was Alan Dershowitz’s nemesis Bill Bulger . . .
innocent men they persecuted and prosecuted
Remember Alan Dershowitz’s written words: “Connolly is just a cop . . .squeeze Connolly to get Bill Bulger” . . .it was all a two fold political persecution (absolve the FBI from wrongdoing with the phony rogue agent theory and get Bill Bulger, the brilliant Conservative Irish Catholic politician too.
It was a political persecution just like the political persecution of General Flynn by Comey, Muellar and other anti-Trump Dems inside the FBI and DOJ.
Same modus operandi. And all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do and say nothing, to turn a blind eye to the enormities.
The whole idea of making a crime out of writing a letter to a judge (Wolf) stating a different set of facts is an enormity. Citizens have a free speech right to write letters to whomever they want, to stand outside a courthouse with a bullhorn and disagree with a judge, to write a letter to the editor or write a book presenting a different version of events.
Connolly wrote a letter to Wolf on Boston Police Stationary (to get the judge’s attention) presenting a different version of events. Some say the letter was defamatory. Defamation is a civil offense, not a crime.
What Wyshak and his cohorts did in criminalizing this free speech writing was to put a chill on Free Speech throughout America.
In Matt’s and Wyshak’s America writing a letter to judge is a crime, obstruction of justice.
If Connolly wrote an anonymous letter to a judge saying the Chelsea cops were responsible for strong arming citizens would that be obstruction of justice.
Connolly was acting as honorably as the peaceful protesters in Portland petitioning their government for a redress of grievances, presenting opposing, dissenting views.
2, The obscene deals with the serial killers were all made before Durham was on board. Connolly was indicted in 1999. When Durham left, wanting no part of the Miami double jeopardy defying trial, Wyshak continued to make obscene deals with Flemmi, inducing him to reverse his eight years of asserting, twice under oath, that John Connolly was an honest agent who never said or did anything intending anyone be harmed.
These are the facts as I know them. Sterns, Dershowitz’s pal, since in the indictments of 1995 was aiming to get Bill Bulger, Dershowitz’s nemesis, by squeezing John Connolly. Wyshak was brought on board to effectuate that . . .and Wyshak, the Jihadi Javert, cut obscene deals with serial killers and other murderers, and Wyshak deputized five State Cops and sicced them both on Whitey and Bill Bulger at the State House, and Colonel Foley in his 2013 Somerville Speech confirmed that.
Dershowitz publicly wrote, in an editorial, “Connolly is just a cop . . .Squeeze Connolly to get Bill Bulgerl”
That is what this entire corrupt prosecution of an entirely innocent man, John Connolly, was all about. And it was cooked up before Durham came up to Boston from Connecticut.
Matt
Just sitting back thinking how you might
expand your band of legal brothers to offer fresh
approaches to looking at the case.
Fred Whitehurst practices law in NC. He is
the FBI Lab whistleblower. He is connected to
a team of whistleblowers.
Address: 126 W Washington St, Bethel, NC 27812
Phone: (252) 825-1123
See
https://www.whistleblowers.org/members/dr-frederic-whitehurst/
Does John Connolly qualify as a FBI whistleblower?
In other news…….
https://solitarywatch.org/photo-requests-solitary/
Photo Requests From Solitary
What Would Someone in Solitary Confinement Want to See?
Also see Robert Shetterly’s new essay.
I was with him the day he visited Murphy Davis in
Atlanta.
Murphy Davis: Surely Goodness and Mercy
Submitted by robert.shetterly on 02 August 2020 – 02:52pm
Surely Goodness and Mercy: A Journey into Illness and Solidarity, by Murphy Davis
Open Door Community Press, Baltimore , MD, 2020
Murphy has been dancing with the angels for a long time now, but she still has the grace to think about the rest of us, to teach us some of the steps. What a rare and precious gift from a rare and precious person.” – Bryan Stevenson
I visited the Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2008 to meet Murphy Davis in order to paint her portrait for Americans Who Tell the Truth. I found her, as anyone might have in the past 25 years, in the midst of recovery from life-threatening illnesses. Her chemotherapy for cancer had been briefly paused while she had had her gallbladder removed. In spite of discomfort and pain she came downstairs wearing a headscarf (the chemo had taken her hair) and pajamas. Her mind and spirit, though, were strong, focused, buoyant, and fully dressed. She says that for years death has stalked her, but did not frighten her because “death was a powerful presence I had met again and again in prisons and execution chambers, on the streets and in the cat holes of the homeless … . To live in solidarity with the poor is to share proximity to death.”
In order to understand Murphy Davis, why I wanted to paint her, and the long journey of her life in service to the homeless, the poor, prisoners, and for peace, it’s best to first consider that word “solidarity” which is in the title of her newly published memoir. When many of us think of being in or standing in solidarity with some group or cause, we are making a statement of concern and allegiance, but we are not necessarily pledging to take on all the conditions and burdens that define that group, to make walking in their shoes the sine qua non of solidarity, to insist on confronting the causes of the injustice, not merely treating the symptoms. Solidarity is often something we say rather than feel obligated to do.
Murphy, in partnership with her husband, Dr. Eduard Loring – both Pastors in the Presbyterian Church – have made abolition of the death penalty, creation of housing for the homeless, struggles for racial and economic justice, and cessation of war their life work. In 1981, Davis and Loring founded the Open Door Community, a diverse, activist residential Christian community dedicated to changing the economic conditions that create homelessness. Since the center opened in downtown Atlanta, the Loring-Davis family has lived in the community with the homeless, former prisoners, and others who have come to join the struggle to feed the hungry and agitate for justice. They survive economically by donations. They take no salary. They gave up their life savings. They gave up health insurance (an incredible choice for someone who has suffered 8 cancers in 25 years).
About her radical solidarity, Murphy says, “Solidarity means stretching our hearts. It means giving things up – not once, or twice, but continually. It means forgoing privileges and conveniences that make things easier for us while leaving others to fend for themselves … . Solidarity means that we recognize the liberation of the poor as our life’s agenda.”
Murphy’s radical solidarity frames all of her medical tribulations as the condition of her authentic pact with the poor, the most marginalized and punished in our society. It means she operates from the unassailable strength of unconditional love. The freedom of her solidarity affords her immense political leverage because she has, as Janis Joplin sang, “nothing left to lose.” And her life has been about using that political leverage. The Open Door Community performs militant advocacy for universal healthcare and insists on a society that considers the dignity of every person necessary in defining the common good.
Considering Murphy’s 25 years of medical struggles, struggles as relentless as the afflictions of Job, one might think her title Surely Goodness and Mercy is meant ironically. Not at all. She feels herself blessed to live a life of profound service, to be in the company of many people as dedicated as herself and surrounded by love. Her personal suffering is a parable of the suffering of the poor and homeless, the abused, and the suffering of the earth itself, which is under attack by the same market forces which create poverty. She says, “… in our era of technological frenzy the earth cries out to us, and its pleas most often fall on ears rendered unable to hear by the frantic life of market capitalism and its voracious appetites. The illnesses that afflict our bodies are not apart from the devastation and weeping of the earth itself.”
Murphy writes easily and straightforwardly of the work of Open Door and her medical travails. She never asks, “Why me?” Again and again she sees critical illness “… as an opportunity to grow in wisdom and love.” And one of the book’s surprises is its humor. Amongst all the descriptions of doctors and treatments is a wealth of anecdote and amusing detail.
But this book is really a hero’s journey. Murphy would never describe it like that. As she struggles with the vicissitudes of her health and the punishments visited on the poor, the abused, the discriminated against and the imprisoned, she never gives up. At times Murphy is like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons who continually resurrects himself from bone-crushing, body-splattering mishaps to continue the chase. In Murphy’s case the chase is for peace, justice, dignity, and love.
Murphy Davis’s life engenders awe for her courageous dedication to justice in the same manner that Dorothy Day did, or Dr. King, or Fannie Lou Hamer. We hear the word “authentic” bandied about all the time these days. In our culture of identity politics and political correctness, many people are challenged about their right to speak authentically for demographics other than their own. With Murphy, all those challenges become irrelevant. Her radical solidarity creates an authenticity beyond question. It models for us all a life lived for goodness and mercy, a life lived for love. A life rooted in the heart of justice. Read her book and discover what a life of militant, loving service can be and do.
Order Surely Goodness and Mercy: A Journey into Illness and Solidarity for a donation of $15 from the Open Door Community Press, PO Box 10980, Baltimore, MD 21234-0980, (404-290-2047), [email protected]