Wrongly Attributed to the First Irish Gang War- Ronald Dermody (Part 3)

RONALD DERMODY, 32                                                    September 4, 1964

The pièce de resistance of the Ronald Dermody story is how it relates to Agent Paul Rico of the FBI. Why would Dermody think FBI Agent Paul Rico could do anything for him? Authors suggest Dermody had a relationship with him because he arrested him eight years earlier but Rico arrested Whitey, not Dermody.  Normally being arrested by a cop does not usually create a warm feeling toward the cop by the person arrested.

I suppose if he was his informant, he might have called upon him for help. But. the informant relationship is not indicated anywhere. What use would a low-level guy just out of prison after eight years be to the FBI? Rico was looking for, and had, top level informants. The FBI’s target was the Mafia. He would have no interest in a guy not connected with the Mafia. Some might answer that if the cupboard is almost empty you go with what you can so it cannot be ruled out. But that was not the case, Rico already had as informants, Steve Flemmi, possibly his brother Jimmy, and some suggest Wimpy Bennett and others say Buddy McLean. Why waste his time on Dermody who could give him nothing he was interested in learning.

What would be Agent Rico’s motive to set up Dermody to be murdered? Some suggest he did it because Buddy McLean was his informant. Others say he was not his informant but he wanted him to become one. Assuming that, the first mystery is how would Rico know that Dermody shot Robinson thinking he was shooting at Buddy. Recall Dermody denied shooting anyone.

How would he know Buddy was looking for Dermody? Where does he make the connection between Buddy and Dermody? Where is there a danger to Buddy, assuming he is Rico’s informant. The most telling matter is that there is nothing to show Buddy was an informant. Everything seems to militate against it. He was a tough, stand up, guy who had nothing to gain by becoming a rat. He had just beaten a federal rap which would never have been brought if he were an informant.

Leaving that aside why would Rico want to put himself under the control of an informant? That is what he would have done by conspiring to murder Dermody. I find it hard to assign a motive to Rico for him to become involved here. More basically how many FBI agents arrange for people to be murdered so that they can have a person become an informant? The whole idea that Rico was involved I believe to be gratuitous nonsense.

Yet it gets worse. The most preposterous part of their story is that McLean hid out at Rico’s house for a week. If Agent Rico set Dermody up for a hit, do you think he would want to have the guy who did the hit living in his house? Rico had a wife and five kids. How would that have worked out?

I have to believe if an FBI agent conspired with another to commit a murder that after it was done, he would put as much distance between himself and that person as possible. The gangster story has people going from being very smart to incredibly dumb in the matter of hours. The stories about Rico are contrived gangster lore that runs smack up against what he accomplished as an FBI agent as well as common sense.

Rico was highly effective against the Mafia. The real problem with the “Rico as a bad cop” idea is if that if he were, he would have never been the lead agent in the prosecution of the Mafia leaders: Raymond Patriarca, his lieutenant Henry Tameleo, Jerry Angiulo and his lieutenant Peter Limone. The Mafia leaders would have used it against him to prevent their prosecutions.

Once you get into bed with gangsters, you do not get out. What better way to get revenge than to make him look like a bad cop? The gangsters did not stop there. They spread salacious rumors about Rico being involved in sexual exploits with J. Edgar Hoover. They put out stories about Rico wanting to murder George McLaughlin and he had four other FBI agents who would go along but one would not so he did not do it.

Even aside from everything else, why would McLean have to hide out anywhere. No one suspected him of being involved in Dermody’s murder. Dropping out of sight for a week would be the last thing he would do. He would want to be around and be seen. You only hide out if you have been identified as the culprit and the police are after you. That did not happen here.

The police had no idea who murdered Dermody. The theory they had according to Boston Globe’s Jerome Sullivan who was supposed to have had good police connections was that Dermody’s killing was “the direct result of bad blood caused by disputes while they were doing time in Walpole.” That is way off. Dermody did time in federal prison. He may have been at Walpole ten years earlier but hardly do grudges last that long.