Joseph Barboza
Joseph Barboza | |
|---|---|
| File:Barboza.jpg Police mugshot of Joseph Barboza | |
| Born | September 20, 1932 |
| Died | 11 February 1976 |
Joseph "The Animal" Barboza (September 20, 1932 - February 11, 1976) was an Portuguese-American mafioso and one of the most feared mob hitmen during the 1960s. He is reputed to have have murdered 26 men in his lifetime.
Although of Portuguese descent, Barbosa's East Boston crew deferred to the judgment of the Patriarca crime family and included future Winter Hill Gang heavyweight Stephen Flemmi. Throughout the course of his career in the Mafia, Barboza aspired to become the first Portugese-American made member of the New England family. However, he was jokingly derided as "The nigger" during his absence by his mob superiors.
Personal Background
Joseph Barboza a.k.a. "The Animal" a.k.a "The Wild Thing" a.k.a. "The Nigger" was born to Portuguese-American emigrants in the old whaling city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was the son of a alcoholic two-bit boxer and small-time ex-convict who was a constant womanizer. His father finally abandoned his wife and three children when Joe was only twelve. He walked like a silverback gorilla with a growling voice and dominating appearance. He looked as though he had been created by a Warner Bros. animator with a massive brow over a huge chin, ridiculously large shoulders, abnormally long and heavily muscular arms but with legs that were considered by some almost comically short. Joe had dark brown naturally wavy hair, deep-set eyes and thick lips which were a prominent feature on his oversized head.
Joe himself would become a heavyweight boxer for a short period of time, work as a longshoreman and as a cashier clerk in a fruit store but always return to crime. Joe slugged anyone who got in his way. At the age of thirteen, he and his older brother were arrested after a spree of vandalism where they were caught knocking out signals on the street car system in New Bedford. By 1949 the then seventeen year old led a gang which eventually earned the title, "The Cream Puff Bandits." They broke into private households and small businesses, stealing money, wristwatches, liquor and firearms. At some of the restaurants the gang burglarized, police found pastry cream drippings from the ceilings. This is how the gang earned their comical title. At this point in time he was earning a reputation with the local organized crime crowd as a natural born leader straddling between being a child and a homicidal psychopath.
He was first sent to prison in 1950 to the Concord Reformatory for five years. Barboza would later lead a wild prison break in the summer of 1953, which would become the largest in the prison's seventy-five year history. Joe and six other fellow inmates had guzzled contraband whiskey and pilfered amphetamine tablets, overpowered four prison guards and raced away in two separate cars. During their furlough of freedom they beat random people in the street, cruised the bars in Boston's Scollay Square, wandered to the neighborhoods of Lynn and Revere, and were finally apprehended at a subway station in East Boston. The escape party had barely lasted twenty-four hours. That November, while awaiting trial for his prison break, Barboza slugged a prison guard in the cafeteria for no reason. Three months later, he tossed a table at a guard's chest when he entered his cell.
It is thought that he first met figures of Boston organized crime while incarcerated at Walpole, and it is thought that they arranged to have him paroled in 1958. He became a recognized figure in East Boston's organized crime circles and was a regular habituate of a bar on the corner of Bennington Street and Brook Street which became known among local criminals as "Barboza's Corner". He was never officially inducted into the Patriarca crime family because of his Portuguese heritage but within eight years during the escalation of gangland warfare he earned a reputation as one of Boston's most prolific contract killers and sidewalk soldiers. He had a reputation of being absolutely fearless.
It was widely believed in law official circles that Barboza had performed contract killings for Raymond L.S. Patriarca. By January 1966, Barboza was considered a powerful crime figure in the Boston underworld and was often represented by F. Lee Bailey. But he was also facing major problems. The authorities were constantly on his heels. For disturbing the peace one night at the same Revere nightclub where he chewed the ear off, he slugged a Boston Police Department Detective and received a six-month sentence.
In his 1975 autobiography he admitted to murdering at least seven men, although he bragged to his friends that the total was closer to twenty nine. A few notorious victims on his murder roster while involved with organized crime included Edward McLaughlin and both Cornelius Hughes and Stevie Hughes, who Barboza hunted down in a fit of rage after receiving news that his best friend Vincent Flemmi was badly wounded in a 1967 shootout with them. Barboza aligned himself with the Winter Hill Gang in part because James "Buddy" McLean was an ally of James Flemmi. Barboza trusted Steven and James Flemmi, and as early as 1965 H. Paul Rico, was using that trust to drive Barboza in becoming an informant. Joe drove a 1965 Oldsmobile Cutlass which was referred to by law enforcement as "the James Bond car" because it had a sophisticated alarm system and a device for making thick black smoke come out of the tailpipe.
Earning the nickname "The Animal"
He earned the nickname the animal after an altercation at a Revere, Boston club that was patronized by figures of organized crime and Patriarca crime family underboss Henry Tameleo. Barboza was at the nightclub drinking and carrying on when an older Italian patron who did not enjoy Barboza's crude behavior told him so. Barboza approached the man and slapped him hard across the face. Tameleo, who was seated not far away, shouted angrily, "I don't want you to ever slap that man. I don't want you to touch anybody with your hands again." Barboza, now brooding at the bar, suddenly leaned over and bit the man's ear. "I didn't touch him with my hands", he snarled at Henry Tameleo.
Turning Government witness
By 1966, he had a very turbulant position in the Boston underworld. Before he had chewed off the mobster's ear, he had been shot at while standing outside his home in Chelsea. The local authorities believed their had been other unreported attempts. Brimming with reckless power, he was not abiding to the traditional rules of the La Cosa Nostra. One night he went into a nightclub that was paying Gennaro Anguilo for protection and demanded that the owner make payments to him as well. By mid-1966, the unrelenting attention from the law Barboza recieved from the authorities only made his standing in organized crime more tenuous.
In October of 1966, he came to terms with his falling out with the organized crime element after he and three local hoodlums were arrested on weapons charges while cruising the Combat Zone in Boston. His accomplaces were released on bail, but Barboza had his bail set at $100,000 which he could not afford. Nobody from the Patriarca crime family came down to post his bail and he heard that it was the mafia family who tipped off the cops.
Two of his fellow compatriots and members of his crew Arthur C. Bratsos and Thomas J. DePrisco went to raise Barboza's bail. Five weeks later, after raising $59,000 the pair were murdered in the Nite Lite Cafe by soldiers serving under Ralph "Ralphie Chong" Lamattina, who served in the crew of Illario Zannino.
The FBI began diligent efforts to turn Barboza into an informant. In December. Joe Amico, another friend of Barboza’s, was murdered. The following month, after a ten-day trial, Barboza was sentenced to a five-year term at Walpole on the weapons charges. In the summer of 1967, Steven Flemmi met with Joseph and informed him that the Anguilo brothers had plans to murder him. In June 1967, Barboza turned FBI informant while imprisoned for murder, and eventually testified against Raymond Patriarca, Sr. before becoming one of the first informants to enter the Witness Protection Program.
Barboza went on to to testify against Raymond Patriarca and many high ranking members and associates of the New England family. On June 20, Patriarca and Tameleo were indicted for conspiracy to murder in the 1966 killing of Providence bookmaker, Willie Marfeo. On August 9, Gennaro Angiulo was accused of participating in the murder of Rocco DiSeglio. Finally in October, six men were charged with the March 1965 murder of Edward “Teddy” Deegan.
The FBI kept Barboza on the move to prevent the mafia from finding him. One of the hiding places was an officer’s quarters located in Fort Knox, Kentucky. While the trials were going on, the mob tried to get at Barboza by planting a bomb in the car of his attorney, John Fitzgerald. The blast resulted in Fitzgerald losing his right leg below the knee.
In May 1968, the Deegan trial began. After 50 days of testimony and deliberations, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Found guilty and sentenced to death were Peter J. Limone, Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo and Ronald Cassesso. Sentenced to life were Joseph Salvati and Wilfred Roy French.
Barboza was given a one-year prison term, including time served. He was paroled in March 1969 and relocated to California where he is said to have killed ten more men. In 1971, he pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge in California and was sentenced to five years at Folsom Prison. Less than three months after his release, Barboza was shot to death by made man J.R. Russo in San Francisco, California on February 11, 1976.
False testimony against rivals
While working with the corrupt FBI agent H. Paul Rico, he helped to frame Mafia associates Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone, Louis Greco as well as his former mob superior, Henry Tameleo for the murder of a minor criminal named Edward "Teddy" Deegan in Chelsea, Massachusetts, protecting the real culprit. Deegan was the maternal uncle of Gerry Indelicato, future aide to Gov. Michael Dukakis. Deegan had been marked for death by the New England family in 1965 for several burglaries that he committed with Whitey’s future partner, Steven Flemmi.
Winter Hill hitman John Martorano became a government witness in 1999 after learning that both Steven Flemmi and James "Whitey' Bulger were FBI informants and have been delivering information about the Mafia and the Winter hill gang to them. In his plea agreement, he told a DEA agent that Barboza had admitted to framing the men convicted of killing Teddy Deegan because the Mafia "screwed me and now I’m going to screw as many of them as possible." Martorano also confessed that Vincent "Jimmie the Bear" Flemmi, the brother of Steven, had admitted murdering Deegan. Vincent Flemmi and his brother were both acting as informants to the FBI. Instead of giving up Vincent Flemmi, the FBI let the wrongly accused men go to prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
Tameleo and Greco died in prison after serving almost 30 years, and Salvati and Limone were finally released in 1997 and 2001, respectively . Lawyers representing the families of Greco, Tameleo, Salvati and Limone currently have lawsuits totaling in excess of one billion dollars filed against the government.
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