I don’t know what caused me to think of this again but there it was in the forefront of my brain as I was moving over the Tamiami Trail. Am I the one-eyed man and the other people involved in this matter blind? How else describe the manner in which the Whitey Bulger story has been told. Did the prosecutors abandon all common sense in accepting the stories of their criminal witnesses? Are federal prosecutors all from the suburbs and lack city smarts?
Thinking of it made me smile. Here’s the story in a nut shell. Roger Wheeler a business man out of Oklahoma saw a good opportunity to make a lot of money by getting involved in gambling. That’s like Bob Kraft and other NFL owners who saw the same opportunity and invested in sports gambling on fantasy football forgetting their objection to such activity until they were able to get a cut of it. Many folk in Oklahoma thought gambling was something to avoid but the chance to get a great cash flow was too much for Wheeler to resist.
He bought World Jai Alai in Miami. It also had a casino in Connecticut. For some reason those who attended matches at those places were exempt from a state’s gambling laws. One guy who had been the president of World Jai Alai named John Callahan was forced out of his position by Connecticut investigators who saw him in the company of Boston gangsters. One of his close friends was John Martorano. Callahan too saw the business as a huge money-maker and although he may have been involved in a little skimming he was not happy especially after he was kicked out of the job.
He wanted back in. His plan was to buy World Jai Alai for himself so he approached Wheeler seeing if a deal could be made. Unable to get satisfaction from Wheeler he decided he would take a different approach. He would hire his friend John Martorano to murder Wheeler and buy the property from his widow. Martorano and another old acquaintance of his from Boston, Joe McDonald, who was part of the Winter HIll gang and who like Martorano was hiding out from charges pending against him agreed to do it. They flew to Tulsa, murdered Wheeler, and returned.
Callahan then approached the widow. She wanted nothing to do with a sale. In the meantime the FBI in Tulsa started to look at Callahan wondering whether he might be involved in the murder. Once word of that got out Martorano recognized there was only one guy (aside from McDonald) who could tie him into the murder of Wheeler. He did not know if Callahan would stand up to questioning so he made arrangements to murder Callahan which he did along with Joe McDonald.
World Jai Alai had an FBI agent who was in charge of its security. He was Paul Rico who had worked in Boston for many years until he went to the Miami office. He retired from that office into the chief of security job. Martorano has said that he had a role in wanting to murder Wheeler although it is unclear how he would have benefited from that happening. He already had a nice gig; would it have gotten better if Callahan had taken over? The gangsters tell us we’re supposed to believe that is the case.
Now here comes the part that makes me smile every time I think of how gullible the prosecutors and his investigators and anyone else who believed it must be. Understand the deal was that Callahan would buy the property from Wheeler or his widow. Callahan is now dead. Understand! Dead people cannot make deals, agree!
Martorano spins a story that he along with Steve Flemmi, two gangsters and one who is on the lam, went to visit Paul Rico at his World Jai Alai office to see what was going on. He said they did it because Joe McDonald was wondering if the deal was still on.
How does that make any sense? How could anyone believe Martorano when he gave that as a reason for his visit? Didn’t McDonald, Martorano, the federal prosecutors understand you can’t have a deal if the parties to the deal are dead?
Wa-llahi! When you quoted Wells, I thought we were in for a wild ride. Too bad current events aren’t of interest these days. I’d like to hear your impression of recent events in Trumpland. Will it be civil war? How would such a conflict take shape? There’ll be no lines of gray, and, blue, banging away ay each other. I’m thinking it will be like it was at the height of the Vietnam War protests, only, much, much, more severe. The opposing sides will be mixing big ones, and, parking them next to high profile dense population events. Any crowd that expressed a right, or, left, wing political view would be a target of the bloody-minded ideological zealots on both sides. How much bloodshed do you think American society can endure before dissolving into its’ constituents?
Who gives a shit about a bunch of old asshole gangsters? Come on. Get real. The big story is going on all around us.
All power to the dialectic!
You hit the nail on the head. Evil forces were at work here. Wyshak. Carr, the Globe and the FBI that concocted the rogue agent theory. Connolly and Rico had nothing to do with the Callahan murder. Both were completely innocent. Mafia hitmen invented a story that had zero credibility. The Federal prosecutors were corrupt to the bone. They let the Mafia off the hook and framed the blameless. The Feds craved favorable publicity from the pernicious press. This has some of the features of the Duke Lacrosse case. A patently false claim is made. A person, comparable to Martorano, with no credibility is asserting the claim The dishonest prosecutor cheered on by the local and national media presses ahead. A gross injustice is done. All the TV and radio stations that advanced this rogue agent smear should have their licenses forfeited. The licenses should be turned over to the Rico and Connolly families, 2. General Flynn was a victim of a highly classified signals intel leak to the Post. He committed no crime talking to the Russian envoy yet he gets charged by the dishonest Mueller. The leaker to the Post isn’t even investigated. What a sham the DOJ is.
The malevolently malicious malefactors, in all of this, politically-motivated for the most-part, on an unholy jihad to get Billy Bulger are THE FEDERAL PROSECUTORS IN BOSTON, THEIR ABETTTING JUDGES AND CLERKS, and HOWIE CARR who was and is a SCHILL for Martorano and Flemmi, as is and was Kevin Cullen of the Globe.
The book RICO exposes CARR and my books have put the lie to Carr, Cullen, Federal Prosecutors Wyshak, Sterns, etc, some judges, one clerk at least, and others in the media, academia and FEDs who have abetted them in their ABUSE OF POWER.
READ: THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE BOSTON, and for enheartening fare read, SPIRITUAL GLUE: THE TAO TIES TAUT; A CHRISTMAS CAROL/A SONG OF JOY both by William M. Connolly, MPH JD
Howie Carr is a mudslinger who mocks the dead, mocks Latinos and delights in persons’ sufferings, that’s why I call him Mr. Smear and Mr. Schadenfreude.
The book RICO blames him in great part for the false persecution of H. Paul Rico.