Background to Boston Gang Wars: Getting to the Truth

Two major difficulties exist in trying to recapture the true past among gangsters: 1) gangsters act in secret and 2) they are inveterate liars. Kevin Weeks, who became the third member of Whitey Bulger’s gang, described the need for secrecy well when he said: “the idea of committing a crime is getting away with it.” Investigative reporter Selwyn Raab in his introduction to his book, Five Families, about the New York Mafia pointed out, “documented data about the Mafia’s clandestine activities is usually difficult to verify.” He wrote his book in great part based on interviews with Mafia members. These interviews are also highly untrustworthy sources.

The most monumental obstacle in accurately reporting on gangsters is what they say should not be relied upon. Fundamentally, to be a gangster, you must live by lies. Their entire lives are built on lies. They openly admit that lie are necessary to carry on their depredations. John Martorano, admitted killer of 20 people, spoke to this when he said: “as a fugitive all one can do is lie. . . . The only way I could survive was lie and use cash.” Years later writing a book about his murderous life,  he could not escape his gangster past and filled the book with lies.

Martorano was a vicious gangsters living in the Boston area during the Gang Wars. He was murderous and violent nature was only exceeded by a few other gangsters of the time, such as Steven Flemmi, Steve’s brother Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi, Joe “the Animal” Barbosa, and the Mafia killer Larry Baione.  Whitey Bulger’s place in the murderous line would be where the line stretched around the corner with others like Howie Winter and Joe McDonald. Pat Nee for pure treachery might even be in front of Whitey.

Why Whitey is regarded as the supreme Boston Gangster is another story. It has nothing to do with his evilness but with a media vendetta against another. Without the media, Whitey would have been just another street thug with a more violent streak. Pushing him to the front showed not only the pettiness of Boston media and writers but also their narcissist nature.

Along with the need to lie, experts agree that gangsters who murder have antisocial personality disorders (ASPD) and lack normal human emotions. For most people murdering another would produce a profound reaction in one’s conscience. This does not happen to those with ASPD. Tommy Sperrazza, called “the single most dangerous sociopath in the annals of crime in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” who murdered two young girls with a screwdriver said, “once you murder the first person the rest are easy.”  John Martorano operated the same way.  He admits to rwenty murders but still tells us in his book that, despite his murders, he is a good person.

People with ASPD do not react like others when questioned about their crimes. They are so adept at lying that it becomes second nature to them. Frank DiMento, a Boston lawyer who I worked with, represented Larry Baione. Baione had been caught red handed with stolen jewelry. He was facing charges for receiving stolen property.

DiMento told me that Baione took a lie detector test. He passed it easily asserting he did not know the jewelry was stolen. He beat the lie detector because lying for him was so easy. Fencing stolen goods was one of his occupations. He showed no emotional indications that would cause the lie detector machine to respond and expose his lies to the examiner.

That is the problem with attempting to discern the truth from men with ASPD. They may not even know they are lying.  They lie without conscience.

It is especially absurd to use the government to use them to testify in court. But, yet, prosecutors still do it regularly and play along with the gangsters’ lies.  In fact, prosecutors facilitate the gangsters biggest lie.  Prosecutors know the jury will greet a gangsters testimony with skepticism so they ask gangsters:  why a jury should believe their testimony when their lives are based on lies.  The gangsters respond that if they lie, the prosecutor would rescind the deal they have made with the government and then charge them with perjury.

The gangster knows this is not true.  The last thing a prosecutor would do is charge the gangster, who must be a crucial witness for a prosecutor to put him on the stand, with perjury.   It would destroy the prosecutor’s whole case and make the prosecutor look foolish.

What the gangsters really mean when they answer the prosecutor’s question is that they made up a story for the prosecutor and that the prosecutor believed the story. The story fit into or completed the prosecutor’s pre-existing belief. The gangster knows if he sticks to this story, he will suffer no repercussions. The gangster told the prosecutor what the prosecutor wanted to hear.  If he lied, then he just has to stick to the lie. Truth be damned.  The funny thing is that sometimes the gangsters first version of his story is not what the prosecutor needs and they cannot reach a deal.  But, then a gangster will come back with a new version, and a deal is made.  I guess the gangster mis-remembered the first time he spoke.

Martorano was a major government witness against two persons, Whitey Bulger and retired FBI Agent John Connolly (no relation). The jury verdict after the Connolly trial showed the jury disbelieved Martorano’s evidence. It did convict FBI Agent Connolly on other charges, mostly minor. He received a severe sentence of ten years mainly because one of his crimes involved tampering with a case before the court.

That wasn’t good enough for the federal prosecutors.  The same federal prosecuting team again tried FBI Agent Connolly in a Florida state court charging him with murder based on Martorano’s testimony and that of a worse criminal, Steven Flemmi.  They succeeded in Florida of convicting him of murder by gun.

On appeal to make the conviction of Connolly stand, the Florida appeals court issued a nonsensical decision. In effect it ruled that if two people were planning to strangle another and at some time during that planning one of them was wearing a gun, then even if neither person had a gun on him at the time they strangled the person, they could be charged with murder by gun because one wore the gun when planning the murder.

FBI Agent Connolly has been in prison since 2002. His first parole date is 2039 when he will be 99 years old. He murdered no one. He is serving time because two gangsters each with twenty or more murders attributed to them testified against him in exchange for magnificent gifts.

Matorano also testified against Whitey. Whitey then 83 years old and was never going to get out of prison because of the multitude of charges he was facing.  Martarano’s testimony was hardly necessary. Whitey was murdered in prison in October 2018.

Martorano’s deal for testifying against an FBI agent and a fellow criminal astounds the imagination.  HI sentence was reduced to 12 years for 20 admitted-to murders, with credit for time served.  In all, Martorano served less than 6 months a murder.  Plus, he did not have to testify against anyone else who was involved with him in the murders he committed.  The icing on the Matarano deal: he was rewarded with twenty thousand dollars from the government upon his release from prison.  I always wondered how the government came up with that sum: a thousand dollars for each person he admitted to murdering?

Pat Nee from South Boston, who labeled himself as “a criminal and an Irishman” was a man who spoke from experience. He slithered along the edges of the mobster wars but close enough that he to often find himself in danger.  He wrote in his fanciful book: “Most reporters and authors who write Southie gangster books use CIs – confidential informers – as sources. However, seldom is the majority of information compiled by these sources correct information. Confidential informers are self-serving criminals who lie.”

An example of this is Steve Flemmi, a criminal even worse than Martorano who who was also put on the stand to testify against Whitey Bulger. His girlfriend of many years, Debbie Davis, met another guy on a Mexican vacation. She told Flemmi she was breaking up with him. Debbie was flying out of town to be with her new friend the next day. Flemmi asked to see her one last time before she went away. Debbie met him and Flemmi murdered her. When John Martorano realized Debbie was no longer around, Martorano asked Flemmi what happened to her. Flemmi said that he “accidentally strangled her.”  Was it a neck massage that had gone wrong?  No.  Flemmi and his jealously could not stand her leaving him.  He murdered her, nothing accidental about it.

Years later when the federal prosecutors were looking to build cases against Whitey Bulger.  The prosecutors made a deal with Flemmi.  Flemmi included testimony that he murdered Debbie because Whitey told him to murder her. The prosecutors liked the answer because it helped bolster their case.  The prosecutors chose to believe him even though they should have realized that Flemmi was enraged at Debbie because she was leaving him, that Flemmi never took orders from Whitey, that Flemmi was more feared and dangerous than Whitey, and Whitey had no motive to murder Debbie.

To satisfy the prosecutors goal of getting Whitey, Flemmi put Whitey at the scene of the murder and made Whitey the boss.  None of the prosecutors had a problem presenting this story to the jury.  The jury, on the other hand, did have a problem with it.  The jury found the prosecutors had not proven their case against Whitey on that murder.

The lies by criminals make it difficult to learn the truth. They have no allegiance to the truth, only to themselves. They have no allegiance to friends as the old saw is regularly repeated: “there is no honor among thieves.”

Along with the lies, gangsters hold severe grudges and hatreds. The Italian Mafia who hung around in Boston’s North End had an abiding hatred for Irish gangsters, especially those from South Boston (Southie). The sentiment was returned as the Irish gangsters had no love for the Mafia members.  The hatred rears its head throughout the Boston Gang Wars.

This Irish/Italian feud had nothing to do with the relations between the Italians and Irish in Boston who were not criminals. They got along fine frequently marrying each other. Although, it was not unusual back then to hear an Irish-Italian marriage referred to as a mixed marriage, a term usually used to refer to marriages between different races or religions.

Deciphering through the lies in the testimony and lies in the accounts of the murders of the Boston Gang Wars was no easy task.  But, with the fundamental core recognition that all gangsters lie and lie constantly, I believe that I have discovered much of the truth about the Boston Gang Wars of the Sixties and Seventies.