August 14, 2002 BOSTON (AP) A man who spent 30 years in prison for a murder he did not commit plans to sue the federal government for $300 million, according to a published report. Joseph Salvati was exonerated last year in the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan. A Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled FBI agents withheld evidence that might have proved his innocence and the state dropped the charges. Salvati's attorney, Victor J. Garo, told the Boston Herald he drew the $300 million figure from the amount the Iranian government was ordered to pay in punitive damages to journalist Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press correspondent who was held hostage by terrorists for more than six years before his release in 1991. "The Salvati case is worse than the Anderson case because this was done by our own government to our own citizen," Gar said. Garo claims the FBI in 1968 helped mob hit man Joseph "The Animal" Barboza frame Salvati, now 69, and three others in the bureau's war on organized crime. FBI files show the bureau knew that Barboza, one of its criminal informants, gave false testimony that convicted Salvati and three other men who had no connection to the crime. Garo said he planned to notify the FBI on Wednesday that he is moving to file a lawsuit after discussions with the Department of Justice failed to produce a "fair and reasonable compensation package." Under federal law, Salvati must notify the government six months before filing suit in federal court. The Boston FBI declined comment on Salvati's claim. The Deegan murder has already spurred $375 million in lawsuits filed on behalf of three other men who were wrongly convicted. (Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Reporter Dan Rea devoted four years of his life to the Joe Salvati story. The story that opened a prison gate May/June 1997, Columbia Journalism Review by Ron LaBrecque LaBrecque is a former reporter for The Miami Herald and Newsweek. Finally, after four years and nearly thirty broadcast reports, Boston television reporter Dan Rea was not the only journalist dogging the story. On a chilly morning this March, twelve cameras stood side by side in the parking lot of a Massachusetts prison, awaiting Joe Salvati. At sixty-three, Salvati was about to walk out after serving thirty years of a life sentence for his conviction in an organized-crime murder. Back in 1967 Salvati, from Boston's North End, had said that he couldn't remember where he had been the night Edward "Teddy" Deegan was murdered two years earlier. But he said he was innocent, and Rea, forty-eight, a lawyer and an award-winning reporter, believed him. "I put my career on the line," Rea says. Rea's pit-bull grip and extensive reporting on the story since May 1993 led to Governor William Weld's recommendation last December that Salvati's sentence be commuted. Before that, Rea had little competition from his colleagues in the media. In 1994, a long Boston Globe feature questioned Rea's relentless pursuit of his "mission impossible." The article came after the district attorney sent a scathing letter to WBZ-TV, Rea's employer, accusing him of irresponsible advocacy journalism. Rea's first report on Salvati aired on May 17, 1993. In a dingy alley in Chelsea, a town just north of Boston, Rea recounted the bare facts: in 1965 there was a mafia hit "right here in this Chelsea alley." In 1967, Rea reported, a notorious killer and loan shark named Joe "The Animal" Barboza entered the Federal Witness Protection Program and confessed to having engineered the Deegan murder with several criminal accomplices. His testimony convicted Salvati, who owed money to Barboza, and five other men. Rea came to the story when he met Victor Garo, a gruff-talking lawyer who had represented Salvati pro bono for seventeen years. In 1989, Garo had obtained -- he won't say how -- a long-suppressed 1965 police report written right after the Deegan murder. It revealed that an informant had named Barboza and others, including a mobster named Vincent Flemmi, as the probable conspirators. Before the murder a Chelsea policeman had noticed Barboza and others -- including a bald man in the back seat -- in a car parked near the alley. Barboza, Rea reported, had apparently lied to investigators, telling them that Salvati, his loan shark customer, had been the "bald" man. But Rea showed viewers a picture of thick-haired Salvati and a photograph of the now-deceased Flemmi, Barboza's friend, who, as Rea put it, "was as bald as a cue ball." Rea's broadcasts brought new witnesses forward. One of them, a Yale Law School professor named Stephen Duke, produced an affidavit by a former client who had shared a prison cell with Barboza. The client said he had heard Barboza "claim with pride that he had given Salvati the 'long dry death.'" Governor Weld decided to recommend -- based on a review of the case -- that his statutory advisory council vote to commute Salvati's sentence. Weld, a patrician intellectual who neither watches a television nor owns one, saw none of Rea's broadcasts, says Virginia Buckingham, his chief of staff. But Rea "obviously kept the issue on the front burner both for the public and the government," she adds. "Dan's a pro, he doesn't have an ax to grind." On February 5, the Governor's Council voted unanimously for commutation (which does not erase the conviction, but allows release on parole). Salvati was released on the morning of March 20. Dominating Dan Rea's evening reports
was a tape of Salvati happily walking through the old neighborhood
and getting a haircut, a free man. Hoover's F.B.I. and the Mafia: Case of Bad Bedfellows Grows By FOX BUTTERFIELD, NYT, August 25, 2002 BOSTON, Aug. 24 - It was March 1965, in the early days of J. Edgar Hoover's war against the Mafia. F.B.I. agents, say Congressional investigators, eavesdropped on a conversation in the headquarters of New England's organized-crime boss, Raymond Patriarca. Two gangsters, Joseph Barboza and Vincent Flemmi, wanted Mr. Patriarca's permission to kill a small-time hoodlum, Edward Deegan, "as they were having a problem with him," according to an F.B.I. log of the conversation. "Patriarca ultimately furnished this O.K.," the F.B.I. reported, and three days later Mr. Deegan turned up dead in an alley, shot six times. It was an extraordinary situation: The Federal Bureau of Investigation had evidence ahead of time that two well-known gangsters were planning a murder and that the head of the New England Mafia was involved. But when indictments in the case were handed down in 1967, the real killers - who also happened to be informers for the F.B.I. - were left alone. Four other men were tried, convicted and sentenced to death or life in prison for the murder, though they had had nothing to do with it. One, Joseph Salvati, who spent 30 years in prison, filed notice with the Justice Department last week that he planned to sue the F.B.I. for $300 million for false imprisonment. His is the latest in a series of lawsuits against the F.B.I., the Justice Department and some F.B.I. agents growing out of the tangled, corrupt collaboration between gangsters and the F.B.I.'s Boston office in its effort to bring down the mob. The lawsuits are based on evidence uncovered in the last five years in a judicial hearing and a Justice Department inquiry. But some of the most explosive evidence has only recently come to light, including documents detailing conversation in which Mr. Patriarca approved the murder. They were released as part of an investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform, which has pressured the department into turning over records about the F.B.I in Boston. The documents show that officials at F.B.I. headquarters, apparently including Mr. Hoover, knew as long ago as 1965 that Boston agents were employing killers and gang leaders as informers and were protecting them from prosecution. "J. Edgar Hoover crossed over the line and became a criminal himself," said Vincent Garo, Mr. Salvati's lawyer. "He allowed a witness to lie to put an innocent man in prison so he could protect one of his informants." Mr. Barboza was a crucial witness at trial against Mr. Salvati and may have implicated him because Mr. Salvati owed $400 to a loan shark who worked for Mr. Barboza. Asked about the documents showing that Mr. Hoover knew of Mr. Salvati's innocence when he was put on trial, Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Boston, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. A Justice Department task force is continuing to investigate misconduct in the Boston office. In one of the first results of the investigation, one retired agent, John J. Connolly, is awaiting sentencing next month after being convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice for helping two other mob leaders who were F.B.I. informers, James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. Vincent and Stephen Flemmi are brothers. The Government Reform Committee, led by Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, has uncovered memorandums from the Boston office to headquarters in Washington revealing the bureau's knowledge that Vincent Flemmi and Mr. Barboza were involved in killing Mr. Deegan. A memorandum a week after the killing described the crime, including who fired the first shot. Then, on June 4, 1965, Mr. Hoover's office demanded to know what progress was being made in developing Vincent Flemmi as an informer. In a reply five days later, the special agent in charge of the Boston office said that Mr. Flemmi was in a hospital recovering from gunshot wounds but because of his connections to Mr. Patriarca "potentially could be an excellent informant." The agent also informed Mr. Hoover that Mr. Flemmi was known to have killed seven men, "and, from all indications, he is going to continue to commit murder." Nevertheless, the agent said, "the informant's potential outweighs the risk involved." A Congressional investigator called the exchange chilling. "The most frightening part is that after being warned about Flemmi's murders, the director does not even respond," the investigator said. "There is no message not to use a murderer as a government informant." The origin of the corruption scandal was public and political pressure on Mr. Hoover to move more forcefully against the growing power of the Mafia, which he had largely ignored. In Boston, F.B.I. agents recruited Mr. Barboza and Mr. Flemmi and developed close ties to a rival criminal organization, the Winter Hill Gang, led by Mr. Bulger. Both sides got what they wanted, according to the investigations and the trial of Mr. Connolly. The F.B.I. got information that eventually helped destroy the Patriarca and Angiulo families, which controlled organized crime in New England. Mr. Bulger's gang was able to take over the rackets in Boston, sell drugs and even commit murder while the F.B.I. looked the other way. One reason the F.B.I. may not have used its information about Mr. Patriarca's involvement in the Deegan murder, Congressional investigators say, is that it came from an illegal listening device in his Providence, R.I., headquarters. The F.B.I. agent who transcribed the conversation made it appear that the information was coming from unnamed informants, to disguise the use of the device, the investigators say. Mr. Salvati, a former truck driver, now 69, had his sentence commuted in 1997 by Gov. William F. Weld. Last year, while he was still on parole, his murder conviction was dismissed by a Massachusetts state judge after the Justice Department task force made public documents suggesting his innocence. Two of the other wrongly convicted men died in prison. Their survivors have joined the fourth man, Peter Limone, in a $375 million lawsuit against the Justice Department. Mr. Limone was sentenced to die in the electric chair. His life was spared only when Massachusetts outlawed the death penalty in 1974. Mr. Salvati lives in a modest apartment
in Boston's North End with his wife, Marie, who visited him in
prison every week during those 30 years. Each week Mr. Salvati
sent her a romantic card, which she put on the television set.
It was, Mr. Garo said, all they had of each other.
The FBI And The Mafia by Jack White, STC Broadcasting How much is 30 years of a man's life worth. Joe Salvati will find out. There is no question he will receive compensation for spending three decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Members of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform and others who gathered in a hearing room in the nation's capital May 3 were moved by the emotional testimony of the 68-year-old Salvati and his wife, Marie. She described packing lunches for their four children almost every weekend and bringing them to the prison where their father was held for the murder of a smalltime hood named Edward "Teddy" Deegan in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1965. Three other innocent men were convicted of the same murder. Two of them, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, died in prison. The remaining defendant, Peter Limone, was released from jail with Salvati in January. "I was a victim of the war against organized crime," Salvati told the Washington hearing. More specifically, he was a victim of the almost unbelievable disregard a few FBI agents in Boston had for the justice system that is the very backbone of our democracy. In their zeal to wipe out the Mafia, they condoned crimes and apparently committed serious crimes themselves. One former FBI agent, John Morris, has admitted to taking thousands of dollars from two of Boston's most notorious mobsters, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. Another former agent, John Connolly, has been indicted on racketeering charges. And at least two other agents, H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon, are being investigated and could be charged criminally. Agent Rico, against the advice of his lawyer, testified at the committee hearing after Joe Salvati and his wife appeared. "I was not convinced he was innocent until today," Rico said. But he was anything but remorseful about his substantial role in sending four innocent men to jail for a murder he and his partner Dennis Condon had every reason to believe they did not commit. "What do you want, tears?" Rico replied to a congressman who expressed disbelief that the former agent showed no apparent regret. "It'll be probably a nice movie or something," said Rico in an uncommon display of callousness. Salvati and his co-defendants were convicted on the testimony of the FBI's prized mobster-turned-witness Joseph "The Animal" Barboza. Rico had actually filed a report wit the FBI just prior to Barboza's testimony based on information from an informant who named the six men who killed Teddy Deegan. None of the four men Barboza claimed committed the murder was named in the Rico report. And Rico and Condon knew that Barboza would never testify against his friend Vincent "Jimmy The Bear" Flemmi who was named in the informant&Mac226;s report and who was spotted at the murder scene by a Chelsea police captain. Barboza, who admitted killing about 30 people, many of them on the orders of the late crime boss, Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence, had vowed to get even with the mob when two of his friends who were raising his bail money were shot and killed in a Boston nightclub. He got even at the expense of Joe Salvati and his co-defendants. The FBI has been revered as the country's, perhaps the world's, elite law enforcement agency. But that image has been tarnished by
happened in the Salvati case and the more recent controversy
concerning the agency's failure to turn over more than 3,000
pages of evidence to Timothy McVeigh's lawyers in the Oklahoma
bombing case. In the McVeigh case, people argue, what's the harm.
He's guilty. The harm is that if the FBI doesn't play by the
rules, a lot of people get burned, more than we will ever know
about. Just ask Joe Salvati what 30 years of his life is worth. . . . Which brings me to another bad story filled with a bunch of dark secrets: the story of Joe Salvati. . . . Carl Stevens, CBS
Joe Salvati spent thirty years in prison for a crime he did not commit, because a number of law enforcement authorities,starting with the F.B.I.,withheld evidence that would have exonerated him. It's a twisted story of misuse of power; and it's the sad story of a man, a father, a grandfather, whose life was not a life at all, just a name, a convenient scapegoat, somebody to take the rap for a murder so that the feds could protect the identity of a prized informant: the real bad guy. The story's too confusing to tell in these few lines that I hammering out right now. Plus, I've gotta go to work in twenty minutes. Suffice it to say that Salvati is now a free man; the case against him has been dropped; and his attorney is threatening to sue the F.B.I., the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, and the Chelsea Police Department, claiming that members of those agencies and departments confiscated thirty years of a man's life, that they abused their authority, and should pay.
Good morning. We're meeting again today to talk about FBI misconduct in Boston. This is an investigation that we're very serious about -- I think that's clear to everyone at this point. We've held four days of hearings. We've heard testimony about some things that I think everyone finds pretty shocking. A lot of people in this country, myself included, grew up revering the FBI. I still believe that there are many, many good, honest people at the FBI and the Justice Department. I think they are dedicated to protecting the public, and their reputations shouldn't be stained by the actions of a few people. But it's been very sobering to hear about some of these terrible abuses going on in an agency that I've always put on a pedestal. It was a sad day two weeks ago when we had a former FBI agent come in and take the Fifth. When I was growing up criminals took the Fifth. I didn't think I'd ever see an FBI agent take the Fifth. Last year, we heard about Joe Salvati for the first time. The FBI had a prized mob witness -- Joe "the Animal" Barboza. Joe Barboza testified against Joe Salvati and others. He implicated Joe Salvati in a murder that happened in 1965. Joe Salvati went to prison for life. Others went to prison for crimes they may not have been involved in. But Joe Barboza lied. And the FBI knew he was lying. They had document after document in their possession showing who the real killers were, and they never turned them over to the defense. Joe Salvati had never been involved in organized crime. He had four little kids when he went to prison. When he finally was cleared -- after thirty years -- his kids were all grown up. How could the FBI stand by and let that happen? Two weeks ago, we held a hearing about Joe "the Animal" Barboza's murder trial. The Justice Department put Joe Barboza in the Witness Protection Program. He was the first one in the program. They put him in California and he committed another murder. He went on trial, and the FBI and the Justice Department went out to California and helped him get a lighter sentence A Justice Department lawyer and an FBI agent testified on Barboza's behalf during the trial. Their testimony was devastating to the prosecutors. I can't forget one of the statements at our hearing: "The FBI at the time was considered pretty sacrosanct. They had damaged our case to the point that we didn't think the jury would give us a first degree murder verdict." This was a man who had already committed more than 20 murders. This was a man who the FBI said was "the most dangerous criminal known." This was a man who murdered again after they put him in the witness protection program -- and they helped him get a light sentence. Joe "the Animal" Barboza, who had probably killed two dozen people, was up for parole in three years. And at the very first parole hearing, that Justice Department lawyer flew out and testified on Barboza's behalf. That Justice Department lawyer is now a Federal judge in Massachusetts. His name is Edward Harrington. He testified here two weeks ago. We asked him why he did all this. His response was that they had just created the witness protection program, and they wanted to send a message to people that if you went into the program, the Justice Department would stand by you. What kind of a message is that? If you go into the witness protection program, and you murder somebody, we'll stand by you. I think that's outrageous. We need to have a witness protection program. The people who go into the program are obviously criminals. But I think we have to lay down the law. If the government pays you money and protects you, and you murder somebody -- you're finished. Period. What we've looked at so far is just the tip of the iceberg. What the FBI did in Boston was tragic: They had a group of mob informants committing murders with impunity. · They tipped of killers so they could flee before being arrested. · They interfered with local investigations of drug dealing and arms smuggling. · Some FBI agents were getting pay-offs. · When people went to the Justice Department with evidence about murders, some of them wound up dead. We're conducting this investigation because there are some basic questions we want to get answered: · How extensive were the abuses? We need to find out the extent of what government officials did and explain it to the American people. · How high up the food chain did this go? We know that memo after memo was written to J. Edgar Hoover. Did he sign off on all the things that were done? Breaking the back of the mob was his number one priority, and all indications are that he paid very close attention to what was happening. · Are there other cases where people were knowingly sent to prison for crimes they didn't commit? We have an obligation to find out. · And finally, are there legislative responses to this that we ought to consider? That's the point of today's hearing. What kind of legislative action is called for? Do we need tougher penalties. Should the statute of limitations be extended for prosecutorial misconduct? As we've seen in Boston, corruption on the part of a government official can go undetected for decades. Are there other types of legislation that we ought to consider? We have a distinguished panel of witnesses today. First, we have Victor Garo. Victor was the attorney for Joe Salvati. Victor spent 25 years fighting to get Joe Salvati out of prison. He didn't get paid a penny. But Victor wasn't going to abandon Marie Salvati and her four kids. His perseverance paid off, and I'm looking forward to what he has to say. We also have a former Connecticut State's Attorney, Austin McGuigan. Mr. McGuigan was the Chief Prosecutor on Connecticut's Statewide Organized Crime Task Force. He's going to testify about a whole new part of this scandal that we haven't focused on yet -- the corruption of World Jai Alai. The State of Connecticut was investigating Mob infiltration of the sport of Jai Alai in Bridgeport. The state prosecutors were trying to get some cooperation from the FBI in Boston, and they couldn't get any help. As it turned out, World Jai Alai was being infiltrated by Whitey Bulger and Stevie "the Rifleman" Flemmi, the same thugs who were informants for the FBI. In fact, one of those FBI agents, Paul Rico, retired and went to work for World Jai Alai. He's the same man who took the Fifth here earlier this month. There was a series of murders. The head of World Jai Alai was murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A member of the Winter Hill Gang went to the FBI to offer them information. He was murdered. The Connecticut prosecutors went down to Florida to interview another person tied into World Jai Alai. The day they arrived, his dead body was found. Who was tipping off the Mob and causing all of these murders? That's one of the things we want to find out. Mr. McGuigan, thank you for being here. We look forward to your testimony. We also have two very distinguished law professors -- Frederick Lawrence of Boston University and Stephen Duke of Yale. Mr. Lawrence used to work as a prosecutor for Rudy Giuliani in New York. He has extensive experience in the area of prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Duke is a distinguished professor at Yale Law School and he teaches a course titled "Freeing the Innocent." We appreciate you both being here today and giving us your input. I now yield to Mr. Waxman for his opening statement. . . .
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The Monique Turenne extradition fight | Whitey Bulger | See also: Terence Garner | individual injustice stories | Index to Saskatoon Police stories |
Wrongly Convicted Man to Sue for $300
Million
