Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal by Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill Page B
Authors: Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, True Crime, Political Science, Anthropology, Cultural, Urban, Law Enforcement, organized crime
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the one who’d nominated Gianturco. The two agents had worked on the same squad together when Connolly was stationed in the Big Apple, and they had remained friends ever since.
Gianturco was set up in a ten-thousand-square-foot warehouse in the Hyde Park section of Boston that was wired for sound and closed-circuit television. Just a few doors down the FBI and state police had rented another site, a “monitoring plant,” to work the videocameras and microphones. Just a few more blocks away investigators had rented an apartment to use as a command post.
Midway through 1977 Gianturco opened for business, posing as a fence to an expanding lineup of hijackers, many of whom operated out of Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. The stolen merchandise Gianturco recovered ran the gamut—flour, liquor, shaving products, furniture, tool boxes, beer, ski jackets, sports coats and other clothing, heavy construction equipment, cigarettes, coffee, and microwave ovens. Fifteen months later, in the fall of 1978, Gianturco’s field supervisors were writing FBI headquarters that “Boston now has a date of 10/31/78 as a possible date of cessation of the operation phase.” By then more than $2.6 million in stolen goods had been recovered.
While Morris was busy with Operation Lobster, Connolly was meeting with Flemmi, and at one of the meetings the separate investigations suddenly came together. “It was an accidental statement made to me by a friend of mine,” Flemmi recalled. “He had said to me that there was a fence, that this guy was wide open, and he was buying trailer loads of stolen goods. They were eyeing him as a potential [robbery] target because of the money he was handling, but the reason they were reluctant to do anything was that they didn’t know if he was connected to anyone. So my friend asked me about it. He says: ‘Can you find out if he’s connected with anyone?’ Because people wanted to do something, and they didn’t want to take the chance of doing something and have repercussions.”
Flemmi later insisted he had no idea at the time that Connolly’s FBI pal was working undercover as the fence in question. But Connolly was immediately concerned for Gianturco’s safety. He picked up the telephone to give his friend a heads-up.
“I got a call from Mr. Connolly at home,” Gianturco said later, “and he asked me if I was going, if I had a meeting set up with the Charlestown people.”
Nick Gianturco told Connolly that, yeah, he actually did have a meeting scheduled for later that night at the warehouse.
“He told me not to go,” recalled Gianturco. “Because, he said, they were going to kill me.” Gianturco, weary from the long months of living an undercover life, was shaken to the core. He was tired of looking over his shoulder all the time, commuting between Hyde Park and his role as Nick Giarro to his home and real life as a husband and father. Right after talking to Connolly, he bailed out of the meeting, and in the years to come he would say how grateful he was to Connolly for watching his back.
In the days following the incident Connolly did not document the episode in any FBI report. He did not notify the two FBI and state police field managers of Operation Lobster who were responsible for the safety of “Nick Giarro.” Connolly told Morris about it, and the Flemmi tip was transformed as it was passed along, just as in the child’s game of telephone, deepening in seriousness from a possible shakedown to a threat of murder. The more they talked about it, the more they dramatized the idea of a heart-pounding, midnight scramble that resulted in saving an agent’s life, the more they now had in hand a profound illustration of the importance of the deal they had with Bulger and Flemmi. The “accidental tip” that began with Flemmi seemed suddenly to capture the essence of why Connolly and Morris had to do what they could to keep Bulger and Flemmi for the FBI.
AS 1978 came to a close, the
Gianturco was set up in a ten-thousand-square-foot warehouse in the Hyde Park section of Boston that was wired for sound and closed-circuit television. Just a few doors down the FBI and state police had rented another site, a “monitoring plant,” to work the videocameras and microphones. Just a few more blocks away investigators had rented an apartment to use as a command post.
Midway through 1977 Gianturco opened for business, posing as a fence to an expanding lineup of hijackers, many of whom operated out of Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. The stolen merchandise Gianturco recovered ran the gamut—flour, liquor, shaving products, furniture, tool boxes, beer, ski jackets, sports coats and other clothing, heavy construction equipment, cigarettes, coffee, and microwave ovens. Fifteen months later, in the fall of 1978, Gianturco’s field supervisors were writing FBI headquarters that “Boston now has a date of 10/31/78 as a possible date of cessation of the operation phase.” By then more than $2.6 million in stolen goods had been recovered.
While Morris was busy with Operation Lobster, Connolly was meeting with Flemmi, and at one of the meetings the separate investigations suddenly came together. “It was an accidental statement made to me by a friend of mine,” Flemmi recalled. “He had said to me that there was a fence, that this guy was wide open, and he was buying trailer loads of stolen goods. They were eyeing him as a potential [robbery] target because of the money he was handling, but the reason they were reluctant to do anything was that they didn’t know if he was connected to anyone. So my friend asked me about it. He says: ‘Can you find out if he’s connected with anyone?’ Because people wanted to do something, and they didn’t want to take the chance of doing something and have repercussions.”
Flemmi later insisted he had no idea at the time that Connolly’s FBI pal was working undercover as the fence in question. But Connolly was immediately concerned for Gianturco’s safety. He picked up the telephone to give his friend a heads-up.
“I got a call from Mr. Connolly at home,” Gianturco said later, “and he asked me if I was going, if I had a meeting set up with the Charlestown people.”
Nick Gianturco told Connolly that, yeah, he actually did have a meeting scheduled for later that night at the warehouse.
“He told me not to go,” recalled Gianturco. “Because, he said, they were going to kill me.” Gianturco, weary from the long months of living an undercover life, was shaken to the core. He was tired of looking over his shoulder all the time, commuting between Hyde Park and his role as Nick Giarro to his home and real life as a husband and father. Right after talking to Connolly, he bailed out of the meeting, and in the years to come he would say how grateful he was to Connolly for watching his back.
In the days following the incident Connolly did not document the episode in any FBI report. He did not notify the two FBI and state police field managers of Operation Lobster who were responsible for the safety of “Nick Giarro.” Connolly told Morris about it, and the Flemmi tip was transformed as it was passed along, just as in the child’s game of telephone, deepening in seriousness from a possible shakedown to a threat of murder. The more they talked about it, the more they dramatized the idea of a heart-pounding, midnight scramble that resulted in saving an agent’s life, the more they now had in hand a profound illustration of the importance of the deal they had with Bulger and Flemmi. The “accidental tip” that began with Flemmi seemed suddenly to capture the essence of why Connolly and Morris had to do what they could to keep Bulger and Flemmi for the FBI.
AS 1978 came to a close, the
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