John Callahan hoping to buy World Jai Alai (WJA) approaches the owner Roger Wheeler who refuses to sell. The rebuffed Callahan decides if he murders Wheeler then his widow will sell the business. He hires ($50,000) Flemmi and his friends to do this.
Callahan tells Flemmi that former highly experienced FBI Agent Paul Rico who works for WJA is all for it. Now get this. Flemmi picks up the phone and calls Rico at his office in WJA. Rico has no problem telling this life-long gangster who he knows has been an informant in the past and may very well be one at the time he is talking to him over the telephone he is that he is in on the plan to murder Wheeler. He has no concern with the phone being bugged, others listening in or putting his future in the hands of a gangster.
Wheeler gets murdered by Flemmi’s friends John Martorano and Joe McDonald. It turns out that Wheeler’s widow won’t sell WJA to Callahan. Flemmi and his friends decide Callahan is a liability. Martorano and McDonald murder him.
Accept Flemmi’s story as true. Put yourself in Rico’s position. He’s sitting in the WJA office having been involved with Flemmi in the planning of the murder of its owner. The plan for the sale fell through. Now his partner in the deal to buy the company, Callahan, has also been murdered. What do you think this hardened FBI agent is thinking?
I’d have to guess that if he were in on the plan he’d be worried for his own life. He is the only non-gangster out there who can finger the murderers. But that’s not the case.
Flemmi tells us McDonald who helped Martorano murder both Wheeler and Callahan is curious. He asked Martorano what happened to the deal to sell WJA. I have a hard time making sense out of this. Even the dumbest criminal would know the sale was dead after the owner’s wife wouldn’t sell; if that didn’t kill it, it certainly died after the person who was going to buy it got murdered. How could anyone, no matter how stupid he might be, not figure out that when the the buyer and seller in a deal were murdered the deal itself was dead? But let’s let that pass.
It gets better. Flemmi says he called Rico and told him he wanted a meeting with him at WJA in Florida. Who do you think would be the last guy in the world Rico would want to meet at his business? Not only does Flemmi want to meet with him, he’s going to bring along with him one of the murderers, John Martorano.
At a minimum if Rico would meet with them he’d want to do it at an out-of-the-way location but not too out of the way since he would not know if these guys wanted to knock him off. Under no circustance would it have been at a place that has several other FBI agents and private investigators walking around making sure gangsters stay out of the WJA location. Not only that, the place would be loaded with video cameras. Flemmi is a notorious criminal and Martorano is a fugitive from justice hiding out in Florida.
Flemmi says he flew down to Miami and met Martorano outside the WJA facility. They go into the lounge. Flemmi met in the lounge with Rico. They talk. They call Martorano over. Martorano tells Rico, according to Flemmi, that McDonald wanted him to hear it from Rico that the sale is dead. He heard it and left. Flemmi stayed a bit longer. As he left he said Rico told him “there was a lot of law enforcement interest in the case.”
The story doesn’t fly. The reason for the meeting makes no sense. No veteran and skilled FBI agent who was involved in a murder plot would meet with his fellow murderers who are known gangsters at his place of business. Especially would it not happen knowing the cops are investigating the murders and where he works is the bullseye of the investigators.
Matt, when will you decide that Msfreeh’s sole purpose on your blog is to detract from the issues, distract readers, muddy the waters, and let readers think you are running a conspiracy theory blog. Msfreeh is a fed in counter intel trying to protect the shop (the family) from the facts and truth. Msfreeh adds decades old side shows about JFK’s assassination and corrupt cops in Chicago. For the sake of all your readers, please delete Msfreeh.
2. Flemmi’s story about Connolly getting Edison to sell electricity cheap to the Boston Globe is in my book. Apparently Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen (I didn’t read their book but was told this) believed Flemmi when he said the Feds got C-4 explosives for the IRA through a guy from Southie named John Connolly, and someone told me it was reported that a small time shop owner in Southie was confused with the press with FBI agents. But what did they care? Stolen electricity, c-4 explosive, IRA gun runners on East Broadway, six FBI agents with machine guns ready and willing to do Flemmi’s and Whitey’s bidding? Gullible Wyshak and Colonel Foley fell prey to malicious smears from serial killers. In fact, it seems Wyshak and Foley and Howard Carr and Globe reporters became enamored of the killers and friends with them. I may be wrong, but at least I’m not off track and down in Dallas with the JFK conspiracy kooks.
Matt
I plead nolo contendre.
stay tuned
my friend Ed Tatro sent me this email today
google his name with the words
JFK assassination
a good criminal justice consumer would already know this
couple of years ago FBI agents tried to assassinate Dr Cyril Wecht
2 reads
1st
Dear Friends,
JFK assassination scholars among you, as well as history buffs in general, may be interested to know that Dr. Wecht will be appearing on H2 (History Channel 2) at 10 p.m. tomorrow night in an episode of “Brad
Meltzer’s Lost History” entitled “JFK’s Brain.” For more information, including subsequent airing dates, visit http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-lost-history/episodes
2nd
Wecht investigator’s discipline file opened
U.S. judge orders FBI records unsealed
July 11, 2007 11:00 PM
A federal judge yesterday unsealed records revealing that the lead FBI agent in the criminal case against Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was disciplined elsewhere for forging other agents’ names and initials on chain-of-custody forms, evidence labels and interview forms.
Related documents
See more information about the disciplinary reports of FBI agent Bradley W. Orsini.
Further, in September 2001 Special Agent Bradley W. Orsini was demoted and received a 30-day suspension without pay for a series of policy violations that occurred from 1993 through 2000, which included having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate; making improper vulgar and sexual comments; threatening a subordinate with violence; and improperly documenting the seizure of a weapon and ammunition from a search.
“We’re pleased this information is now available to the public for its own analysis and understanding of its impact on the case,” said Dr. Wecht’s defense attorney, Jerry McDevitt. “The report speaks for itself.”
The U.S. attorney’s office filed Agent Orsini’s records under seal on April 7, 2006, asking U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab to determine if it was required to turn them over to Dr. Wecht’s defense attorneys.
What followed was a 15-month legal battle that ended this week when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a final order in the case, making the disciplinary reports public.
Judge Schwab unsealed the records late yesterday afternoon. He also vacated a previous decision in which he’d ordered a contempt hearing for the defense attorneys for their failure to follow his orders.
He wrote “this Court considers the ‘time-out’ caused by the interlocutory appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit as providing an opportunity for a ‘fresh start.'”
He also ordered a hearing in Dr. Wecht’s case on Sept. 18 that will allow the defense to use the Orsini reports in their examination of him.
Agent Orsini has been an agent for more than 18 years, and he has spent much of that time, including in Pittsburgh, working public corruption cases. All of the allegations included in the two disciplinary reports occurred while he was working in the FBI’s Newark, N.J., office.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan would not comment on the reports’ release. It was unclear if she was aware of Mr. Orsini’s background before he became the lead agent in the case against Dr. Wecht, who is charged with 84 counts of misusing his public office for private gain.
The first time Agent Orsini was disciplined was Nov. 2, 1998. He received a five-day suspension without pay for signing other agents’ names to evidence labels and custody forms from May 1995 to January 1997.
He explained that he and another agent, on limited occasions, signed each other’s names on evidence “to save time.”
Though the investigator from the Office of Professional Responsibility found that Agent Orsini did not intend to jeopardize the evidence or cases involved, his actions could have called the integrity of the bureau into question, he wrote in his report.
A 28-page report issued Sept. 24, 2001, by the assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility described additional transgressions.
The first violation listed dated to Nov. 2, 1993. Agent Orsini failed to obtain the proper consent form while searching a man’s home for illegal firearms and failed to properly document the ammunition seized.
Agent Orsini was found to have falsified at least six FBI interview forms in 1993 and 1994 by writing other agents’ initials on them.
He said in a statement that he didn’t believe there would be a problem with that provided the information in the body of the interview form was accurate.
“I have no idea how many times I may have done so,” he said. He said he did so for “convenience and a shortcut.”
Throughout the Wecht case, defense attorneys have argued that the government based part of the charges against their client — that he exchanged unclaimed bodies from the county morgue for lab space from Carlow University — on a single interview form filled out by Agent Orsini.
The disciplinary report next goes into great detail about a relationship Agent Orsini had with a subordinate agent, from April 1998 through early 2000.
The document indicates that other agents in his squad believed Agent Orsini was favoring the woman and gave her premium assignments. It also details gag gifts exchanged at the squad’s Christmas parties in 1998 and 1999. One, given to the woman, was a pet collar, with a note that said, “If found, return to Brad Orsini.”
“By their very nature, the public notoriety attached to the gag gifts would have put even the most insensitive person on notice of this perception of favoritism,” the assistant director wrote.
By January 2000, when supervisors in the Newark office learned of the relationship, Agent Orsini was reassigned.
But before that, he approached one of the agents in his squad and accused him of revealing the relationship. During the meeting, Agent Orsini threatened to hit his subordinate but quickly added that he was kidding.
Newark’s assistant agent in charge reported that Agent Orsini “has an aggressive personality, and I would characterize him as a bully.”
Other substantiated allegations in the report included that Agent Orsini punched at least one hole in the wall in the Newark office, and threw and broke chairs. He also jokingly called fellow supervisors “homosexuals,” and even used a bullhorn to make his comments.
For those actions, the Office of Professional Responsibility said he failed to prevent the development of a “locker room atmosphere” in his squad that repressed professional conduct.
In addition to the suspension and demotion, Agent Orsini was ordered to serve 12 months’ probation an
Matt,
This is another amazing dissection of the BS that is published in all of these books and purported as the truth in courtrooms. Anyone who is interested in this saga should read this blog.
Dave:
Thanks – I find it amazing how the courts want to believe these life-long criminals over guy who worked chasing them down.