If the reports are right, former retired FBI Agent John Connolly is to be released from a Florida prison because of concerns over his health. I would like to say that justice has come about in the treatment of him but it is difficult to do since he never should have been there in the first place. The old axioms come into play: “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied” and “Better Late Than Ever.” Connolly’s first attempt for parole had not been scheduled until his 99th year. So he is not really achieving justice but he is, much too late, seeing the street.
His release will not bring joy to all. There are some who have worked hard to prevent it. One guy named Howie in a column compared Connolly’s medical condition with Sal Dimasi’s who also got out on a medical release. His beef is that DiMasi is still alive and working. He obviously hopes that Connolly does not have that opportunity. That, of course, is a vile way to look at things which is his usual way. Sadly he uses hate to appeal to a surprising number of folk who seem to thrive on it.
Another person who will not be happy with the news is Ahab, also known as AUSA Fred Wyshak, who I’m told has retired. Ahab used Connolly in his chase after Moby Dick which he never quite could land. He too must be ill disposed to the news since he had no troubled seeing Connolly spend forever in prison. Then, of course, the Boston Globe writers who relentless pursuit of Moby Dick managed also to make Connolly into something that he was not.
Connolly was convicted in a Florida court of being involved in the murder of John Callahan in Florida, based on the testimony of two persons, maybe three, but two were the ones who provided the most incriminating evidence. One, John Martorano, who admitted murdering 20 people, all unarmed, including John Callahan. He never met Connolly or spoke to him. He had a deal with Ahab and his helpers to do only 12 years in prison. He, of course, to get that deal would climb on whatever boat he was told to climb into. The situation boiled down to the murderer testifying a guy he never met was involved in the murder. Ah, Justice!
The other main witness against him was likewise coddled by Ahab who managed to keep him out of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and keep his ill begotten assets. He was Steve Flemmi who probably murdered at least a dozen although he would admit to many more. Flemmi was the guy who murdered his girlfriend because she was leaving him and murdered his step-daughter who he had sexually abused as soon as she became a teenager because she had turned into a drug addict and a loose woman ready to tell all. He said that Whitey Bulger made him do it – Ahab liked that twist – but it was all nonsense since who tells another guy to kill his girlfriend and step daughter and the other guy does it. By the way, Flemmi was more feared that Bulger according to trial witnesses.
Martorano said Callahan paid him $50,000 to murder Roger Wheeler. That he did. He then said Flemmi told him to kill Callahan (notice how none of them take reponsibility) because Connolly told them he would not stand up. In other words, Callahan would fold and tell how Martorano murdered Wheeler. He could not implicate Connolly so how Connolly got dragged in was a mystery unless you knew the good deals Ahab was giving these guys and he was using Connolly as a stepping stone to get Moby Dick.
Connolly’s dilemma was that he was not going to lie in order to help Ahab. He knew Moby Dick well. He knew he was a man of high integrity. So he suffered the fate of those unwilling to lie when guys in positions like Ahab want you to do it. Which, believe me, is not uncommon.
There are other injustices. Connolly was convicted of murder by gun in Florida. The gun was not the one that Martorano used to murder Callahan but rather the one he wore as an FBI agent a month earlier in Massachusetts. The incomprehensible decision of the Florida Appeals court on that issue would have sustained the same charge if Callahan had been strangled or poisoned.
Then there is the widow of Callahan going around claiming she is a victim who is called upon by the media to complain about Connolly. I never understood how she became a victim when it was Callahan who hired Martorano to do the hit on Wheeler. Her husband was a co-conspirator.
In sum, it is good that Connolly is being released so that he can spend whatever time he has left with his family. May he enjoy better health and some of the pleasures of freedom.
Matt
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2021-02-15/bill-would-create-pathway-to-release-for-iowans-sentenced-to-life-without-parole
* No End in Sight: America’s Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment by Senior Research Analyst Ashley Nellis, finding that one in seven people in prison — amounting to 203,865 individuals — is serving a sentence of life without parole, life with parole or a virtual life sentence of at least 50 years.
The Sentencing Project calls for the abolition of life-without-parole sentences and a 20-year cap on all life sentences.
Key findings include:
• Life sentences in 2020 were five times their level in 1984 — the first nationwide count of people serving such sentences.
• The number of women serving life sentences is outpacing the rise in the number of men serving life. Between 2008 and 2020, the number of women serving LWOP increased 43 percent, compared to a 29 percent increase among men.
• People 55 and older account for 12 percent of state prison populations but a higher concentration of the life-sentenced population, 30 percent.
• Over 10,000 people are serving a life sentence for a crime committed when they were less than 18-years-old. Important legal rulings have narrowed the allowable use of life imprisonment for juveniles facing life without parole, but much work remains on behalf of young people serving life with parole and virtual prison sentences of 50 years or more.
• 3,972 people serving life sentences have been convicted for a drug-related offense and 38% of these are in the federal prison system
Hi Matt and I am glad that John Connolly is out of prison because he did not deserve to die in there just for doing his job in protecting Whitey, Stevie and Mercurio so that the LCN could be taken down.
1. What is your understanding of the murders of Romeo Martin and Patsy Fabiano? I think that they were both associates of Barboza.
2. Do you know why Salemme refused to admit to any involvement in the murder of the Channel nightclub manager when he had the deal with the federal prosecutor? This article seems to suggest that he changed his story more than once. He had originally blamed Bianco and then he said it was Flemmi who killed the guy.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.183216/gov.uscourts.mad.183216.150.0.pdf
3. What do you make of this article about a top echelon informant from New York around the same time as Greg Scarpa?
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-inside-story-of-frankie-blue-eyes-the-mob-killer-turned-rat/79914/
David
You may want to examine the 70+ year history of
FBI agents assisting the CIA in setting up drug cartels
in every major American city to bring in heroin and cocaine
drugs to destabilize our communities while creating a police state.
The other important goal was to launder the drug money proceeds
on Wall Street to artificially prop up the Stock Market in a way the
drug money could not be traced.
Google CIA dealing drugs
See
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post/feds-informants-finger-u-s-government-as-drug-trafficker-163286
Also see
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5878115
Also see
http://americanfreedomradio.com/powderburns/index2.html
David:
Romeo Martin was murdered because he was involved in the Teddy Deegan murder. He was sometimes called Homerun Martin for his exploits in escaping from prison in Washington during a baseball game. He tried to play in the big leagues with Barboza and Jimmy Flemmi two bad dudes who were involved in killing Deegan. When the heat started to come down they believed it best to eliminate Romeo fearing he could be a witness against them. He was not that close with Barboza but was a friend of Deegan’s.
Patsy Fabiano was part of the Barboza gang. He was arrested with him in the summer of 1966 in a car that had some weapons in it. He would end up doing two years for that. Barboza was held on bail and two guys (Bratsos and DePrisco) were out raising money for him. They were both murdered when they went into a North End joint and the money raised for Barboza taken from them. That turned Barboza into a cooperating witness. When Chico Amico another Barboza gang member got murdered Fabiano was brought back before the court and held on substantial bail ostensibly to prevent him from being murdered also. He was sentenced to two years on the arrest and while in custody was interrogated by the Suffolk DA and Feds, including bringing him before the grand jury to get testimony from him. He apparently refused to talk and corroborate Barboza’s testimony. That is why he was still around in 1976. That year in February Barboza got murdered. On March 30 in the North End at a parking lot he owned someone put one bullet in Fabiano’s head as he sat in his car. The cops though it was because he owed a ton of dough; I seem to think it was just tying up loose ends eliminating all the Barbosa gang. What goes against my theory is that Nick Femia another gang member was around until the early 1980s when he got killed holding up a store. It’s really a guess why he was murdered.
2. Frank Salemme figured he would not get his sentence reduced if he admitted murdering DiSarro so he did what all gangsters like him do, he lied about it saying he didn’t do it an pinning in a guy he didn’t like. He would testify during Connolly’s trial that no one was murdered when he was the boss of the New England Mafia. Connolly in his motion for a new trial pointed out Salemme’s lies – which were critical to his conviction on some counts – but the Appeals court suggested they weren’t such as would make a difference in the jury outcome, a decision I always disagreed with having sat through the trial. I often wondered if the prosecution did not know it at the time he testified. Anyway, he testified against Connolly and got his sentence reduced which was his short term goal. He might have gotten away with it but Steve Flemmi decided he tell his tales to the Feds and he pinned DiSaro’s murder on Salemme.
3. I’ll read the article and get back to you.
Matt
David:
(3) The article is not surprising. Just another top echelon informant getting a sweetheart deal from the FBI. The Top Echelon Informant program was developed to give top murderers passes if they gave the FBI some good arrests. It was all about publicity for the FBI. It was and is the most corrupt law enforcement program ever created where some are given passes for murders and protected.
Matt : Good to find you still at it. Pleased that John Connolly is being released. After the persistence of the Court in Florida to deprive him of his Constitutional rights I am surprised that he did make parole. I suspect that there is something in the wind with this John Gotti Jr investigative series presently starting to percolate.
Who are you? There’s a new guy in Town.
Good to see your name in print again on this most joyous occasion. Stay healthy and wear your mask.
Abe: Always good to see you. You know that. Everything is good here and I trust it is there as well. I am in the middle of reading a great book by Nancy Milford by the way — Zelda — about Zelda Sayre, Judge Sayre’s one off very spirited daughter, of Montgomery, Alabama, who was named by her mother after a Gypsy Queen in a play and who became Zelda Fitzgerald. It is a highly acclaimed bio I have been aware of for years but finally took the time to read. F. Scott took a number of lines from her letters to him verbatim during their courtship and used them in his first published novel This Side Of Paradise. She was a highly adept writer and a fascinating woman and fascinating is an understatement. I recommend it to you my friend.
Thanks for the tip, John. I am always looking for a good book, especially on a subject that I know absolutely nothing about. Looking forward to reading it. And any others you may have run across. I’ve been in a reading drought.
Hello Matt, I’ve challenged John to a handball game at the “L”, he’s out, he’s free , he’s back with all his friends and supporters! Thank you all , Bill and Neal Connolly, Sleepy Joyce, Mike Joyce, Dave Ryan,Sally Connolly, all of South Boston, all of his World Wide Supporters . John, welcome home , Slainte , up Galway ☘️
JRC. – remember when the probation commissioner O’Brien was prosecuted for what amounted to nothing more than nepotism?
Fred Wyshak was the prosecutor. He pointed out that he did not hire the most qualified people and wanted to send him to prison.
Guess whose son has joined the US Atty office in Boston? Wyshack’s. O’Brien got nothing and is indicted; Wyshak gets son a job and a pass.
Jrc
Let me know if you want to make it
a doubles handball match.
Kevin Cullen has a piece in today’s Boston Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/18/metro/john-connolly-was-fbis-fall-guy/
FBI agent John Connolly was the FBI’s fall guy
Whitey Bulger’s handler was far from the only one who should have been held accountable for enabling Bulger to murder and menace with impunity.
In other news
Book details evidence for Waterville Maine FBI agent Robert Maheu organizing assassination of Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy
CIA may have used contractor who inspired ‘Mission: Impossible’ to kill RFK, new book alleges
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/02/09/cia-may-have-used-contractor-who-inspired-mission-impossible-kill-rfk-new-book-alleges/
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-joe-ligon-nation-oldest-juvenile-lifer-released-from-prison-20210218-azofnevc6vh4lo4rphvijlt3ne-story.html
Nation’s oldest juvenile lifer released from prison after nearly 7 decades
By NELSON OLIVEIRA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
FEB 18, 2021 AT 10:44 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY8QV7lnFFo
Dr. Paul Marik Discusses Ivermectin and Vitamin D
February 17,2021
Handball? Not Jai Alai?
Bob
Hand Ball I can handle but Jai Alai is tough running
in my L L Bean Heels, eh?
I wonder if Matt is going to shut down his blog now that his
vision quest for truth has ended.
In other vision quests
https://www.amazon.com/garrison-Journal-History-Politics-Issue/dp/0359857221
garrison: The Journal of History & Deep Politics, Issue 001, Paperback – August 15, 2019
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/19/deconstructed-texas-republicans-experiment/
TEXAS REPUBLICANS RAN A 20-YEAR EXPERIMENT. THE RESULTS ARE IN.
The state’s energy crisis didn’t come out of nowhere: It took decades of deregulation to make it happen.
Deconstructed
February 19 2021, 6:03 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/17/stimulus-checks-cares-prisons-skimming-irs/
PRISONS ARE SKIMMING BIG CHUNKS OF CARES ACT STIMULUS CHECKS
A September court ruling promised incarcerated people their slice of the federal stimulus. Some prisons still took a cut.
Asher Stockler, Daniel Moritz-Rabson
February 19,2021
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/17/capitol-riot-right-wing-brent-bozell/
ACCUSED CAPITOL RIOTER BRENT BOZELL IV COMES FROM RIGHT-WING ROYALTY
The fourth Brent Bozell is carrying on the centurylong tradition of far-right provocation by the first three Brent Bozells.
Jon Schwarz
February 17 2021, 12:27 p.m.
Buddhist Monk Levitation – Full Movie
Good news. I cannot help but think that the dogged persistence of the Connolly (Savvy, Southie) Clan had something to do with the release. Good work.
After reading your post saying Wyshak retired, I called the MA DOJ to check – with dial by name, 2 Fred Wyshak options are listed – maybe his son works there now too, either way he still has a voice mail but I didn’t leave a message….I returned to the previous phone menu & opted for the operator who said she can’t give out that information when I explained I read he retired & was wondering if that was accurate info.
I heard he retired so his son could be hired in Boston. Nepotism anyone?
Remember Wyshack’s prosecution of Probation Commissioner O’Brien? He was accused of nepotism.
Imagine if O’Brien got his son a job? He’d be doing big time in Walla Walla.
omg lolol
Long overdue, but good news. Here’s hoping he can enjoy a year or two in freedom with his family.
DanC
Do you think John Connolly is in any danger of being
wacked by any of the families who lost loved ones
to the Boston FBI Crime family?
Did you know that John Connolly’s attorney was counsel to
the Congressional Committee on Assassinations?
FBI lab whistleblower Dr Frederick Whitehurst PhD, JD just
sent me this email.
Can you make sure Matt gets it.
https://www.oltobooks.com/fulldetails.php?bookId=2769
Your FBI: How the FBI Suppresses Whistleblowers to Hide FBI Scandals & Crimes –
Description
If you think that no one is above the law, you don’t know your FBI.
In Your FBI, 15 FBI whistleblowers recount their efforts to reveal FBI wrongful and unlawful actions. Each whistleblower suffered brutal retaliation for upholding the oath of office, and the FBI and Department of Justice wasted millions in taxpayer dollars to suppress the whistleblowers instead of simply addressing the issues they raised.
FBI malfeasance profoundly affects the rights of US citizens. For example, a supervisory special agent in the FBI lab blew the whistle on the systemic false testimony and bogus science used in many thousands of trials. The FBI fired him and tried to force a gag order. Despite court orders that are now decades old, the FBI has not yet reviewed all of the tainted cases, nor have they informed all defendants or defense attorneys of problems in the trials. 16 prisoners were executed without knowing they might be due retrials, and others sit in jail today who also don’t know they may be due retrials.
· An agent was harassed until he retired because he stood up for a disabled vet who was removed from the FBI Academy solely for his disability, despite passing all agent requirements, including firearms and tactical training. The FBI then offered this wounded warrior a job as a janitor.
· One highly ranked FBI employee was made to sit alone on the 24th floor of the New York office for years without equipment or work because he wouldn’t rescind his report of timecard fraud.
· An agent was fired for “tarnishing” the FBI’s name when she told federal prosecutors that FBI employees were stealing from 9/11 Ground Zero.
· An agent who was investigating whether white supremacists were planning a joint operation with an overseas terror group was removed from his casework when he reported an illegal electronic monitoring and records falsification. The terror case was closed without further investigation.
· A whistleblower was fired because he kept reporting fake security clearance background checks.
· Yet another, who was hired specifically to help revamp FBI procurement policies and procedures, was fired because he continued to report contract waste, fraud, and abuse.
Your FBI gives voice to these and other courageous FBI whistleblowers whose testimony the FBI sought to suppress.
About the Author
Author Name : Rosemary Dew
Rosemary Dew was one of the first hundred female FBI agents. She retired from the Department of Defense, having served two tours in Afghanistan. She is a registered nurse and the author of No Backup: A Female Agent’s Life in the FBI and In Mother Teresa’s House: A Hospice Nurse in the Slums of Calcutta. She is the recipient of the Army Superior Civilian and the Defense Intelligence Agency Joint Civilian Service Commendation medals, as well as numerous commendations from the Director of the FBI. Today, she is a volunteer missioner with the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and an avid supporter of the Catholic Worker Viva House soup kitchen in Baltimore, Maryland, where she serves food and washes dishes.
– See more at: https://www.oltobooks.com/fulldetails.php?bookId=2769#sthash.GlSSgisT.dpuf