The FBI’s corrupt informant program in Boston didn’t just fail to stop a mob war. It manufactured one. Between 1961 and the late 1970s, more than 60 people were killed in a conflict that federal agents actively managed, armed, and protected. The fallout would eventually cost taxpayers over $101 million and expose the most corrupt operation in FBI history.
The war began with a beach party insult on Labor Day weekend in 1961. A 22-year-old hood named George McLaughlin grabbed a woman at a cottage party in Salisbury Beach. Two men beat him so badly they left him for dead. McLaughlin survived, but his brothers demanded revenge. They went to Buddy McLean, the leader of the Winter Hill gang in Somerville, and demanded he hand over the men responsible. McLean refused. Days later, a bomb was found under his car. The war was on.
The geography made it worse. Charlestown and Somerville sat side by side. The McLaughlin gang controlled Charlestown. McLean’s Winter Hill crew ran Somerville. These were men who grew up together, now hunting each other with shotguns. On Halloween 1961, McLean walked up to Bernie McLaughlin in broad daylight outside a bar and shot him in the back of the head. The war had officially begun.
Raymond Patriarca, the boss of the New England mafia, watched from Providence. He saw an opportunity. If the Irish gangs destroyed each other, the Italian mob could absorb their territories without firing a shot. So Patriarca fed the flames, passing information between both sides. The FBI did the exact same thing, for the exact same reason.
FBI agent H. Paul Rico was the man in the middle. Born in 1925, Rico joined the Bureau in 1951 and became one of the most senior agents in the Boston Organized Crime Unit. He recruited members of the Winter Hill gang as informants, including McLean himself. But Rico didn’t just investigate criminals. He protected them. If he fed one side information about the other, his informants survived, his case stats looked great, and J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau showered him with praise. The violence didn’t matter. The numbers did.
In 1963, a small-time hood named Ronald Dermody wanted out of the war. He decided to surrender to FBI agent Rico. He picked the wrong man. Rico called McLean and told him exactly where Dermody would be and what time he’d be there. McLean drove over and put three bullets in Dermody’s head. An FBI agent set up the meeting. An FBI agent made the call. An American citizen was executed because of it.
The body count climbed. By 1965, over 40 people were dead. Punchy McLaughlin, the middle brother, had survived an earlier shotgun attack that cost him his hand. On October 20th, 1965, Stephen Flemmi and Cadillac Frank Salemme walked up and shot him dead. Ten days later, Stevie Hughes ambushed Buddy McLean outside an abandoned movie theater and shot him with an automatic rifle. McLean died 30 hours later. Both gang leaders were dead. But the killing didn’t stop.
The FBI wasn’t just watching this war. They were managing it. Flemmi, the man who helped kill Punchy McLaughlin, was a decorated Korean War veteran. By the fall of 1965, FBI agent Rico had designated him a top-echelon informant. That meant the FBI would protect him from prosecution, from rival gangs, from everything. Flemmi was murdering people while feeding information to Rico. The FBI knew he was killing. They didn’t care.
Then came the darkest turn. On March 12th, 1965, a low-level hood named Edward “Teddy” Deegan was shot six times in an alley in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Three different weapons were used. The FBI knew about the murder before it happened. They had advanced intelligence. They knew who was going to pull the triggers. The actual killers were Joseph “the Animal” Barboza, Vincent Flemmi, Ronald Cassesso, and Wilfred French. Agents Rico and Dennis Condon had this information in their files. They did nothing to stop the murder.
Then they did something far worse. In 1966, Rico and Condon approached Barboza, a violent enforcer who had already committed at least 20 murders, and recruited him as a cooperating witness. Barboza was facing serious time on weapons charges. Rico and Condon offered him a deal. Testify about organized crime, and we’ll protect you. Barboza agreed. But instead of telling the truth about who killed Teddy Deegan, he committed perjury. He pointed the finger at four innocent men.
Peter Limone, a bookie. Henry Tameleo, an associate of the Patriarca family. Louis Greco. And Joseph Salvati, a working man with a wife and four kids. The FBI knew Barboza was lying. Rico and Condon knew every word of his testimony was fabricated. They had documentation proving these men were innocent, and they buried it. They watched four innocent men get convicted and sentenced to death.
Henry Tameleo died in prison in 1985. He spent 20 years behind bars for a crime the FBI knew he didn’t commit. Louis Greco died in prison in 1995, 30 years inside. Joseph Salvati didn’t get out until 1997. He served 30 years. His children grew up without him. His grandchildren were born while he sat in a cell. Peter Limone wasn’t released until 2001, 33 years. More than three decades of his life stolen by men who swore an oath to uphold the law.
When H. Paul Rico was dragged before the US House Judiciary Committee in 2003 and asked about those wrongful convictions, about the men who died in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, Rico looked at the committee members and said five words: “What do you want? Tears?”
While Rico and Condon were framing innocent men, a new generation of corruption was taking root. In the Old Harbor housing project in South Boston, a kid named John Connolly grew up a few doors down from the Bulger family. James “Whitey” Bulger was 11 years older than Connolly. The neighborhood legend. The tough guy who bought the younger kids ice cream and chased away the bullies. Connolly idolized him.
Connolly went to Boston College, then earned a graduate degree from Harvard. He became an FBI agent. When he was assigned to the Boston office, he had an idea that would become the worst decision in FBI history. He would recruit his childhood hero as an informant.
Whitey Bulger was born September 3rd, 1929 in Dorchester. He grew up in poverty. His father lost an arm in an industrial accident. While his brother Billy went on to become president of the Massachusetts State Senate, Whitey chose the streets. Bank robberies in the 1950s landed him in federal prison. He did time at Alcatraz starting in 1959. When he got out, he partnered with Stephen Flemmi in 1974, and together they took control of the Winter Hill Gang.
By 1975, Bulger was officially an FBI informant. His handler was John Connolly. Here’s how the arrangement worked. Bulger and Flemmi provided Connolly with intelligence on the Patriarca crime family. In exchange, Connolly protected them from prosecution. He tipped them off about investigations. He warned them about wiretaps. He told them which associates were cooperating with authorities. And Bulger used that information to kill.
Acting on tips from Connolly, Bulger lured suspected informants to a house at 799 East 3rd Street in South Boston. He chained them to chairs. He interrogated them. Then he shot them in the head and buried them in the basement. That house became known as the death house.
Deborah Davis was 26 years old when she was strangled to death on September 17th, 1981. In the basement of Flemmi’s mother’s home in South Boston, Flemmi claimed Bulger did it. Deborah Hussey, Flemmi’s own stepdaughter, was garroted at the death house in 1985. Her body was buried under the basement floor. These weren’t mob rivals. These were women connected to the men the FBI was protecting.
The corruption ran deeper than just Connolly. His supervisor, John Morris, admitted to accepting $7,000 in bribes from Bulger and Flemmi. Morris later testified that Connolly delivered a case of wine and an envelope stuffed with $1,000 in cash from the pair. Connolly falsified FBI reports to cover Bulger’s crimes. He alerted Bulger and Flemmi to pending investigations. He told them which associates were talking. Every person Bulger killed based on those tips is a death the FBI helped cause.
Connolly even told Bulger about the FBI’s investigation into the murder of Oklahoma City millionaire Roger Wheeler, who was shot on May 27th, 1981 outside a country club. That murder was linked to Bulger, Flemmi, and the retired H. Paul Rico, who had left the FBI in 1975 and gone to work for World Jai Alai. When the investigation started getting close, Connolly warned Bulger. Bulger had John Callahan, a key witness, murdered in Miami. Another death the FBI’s corruption made possible.
In 1994, John Connolly did something that would make him a fugitive’s accomplice. He told Whitey Bulger that state and federal officers were about to arrest him. On January 10th, 1995, the racketeering indictment came down, but Bulger was gone. He vanished from Boston and became one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives. For 16 years, the most wanted man in America was a criminal the FBI had created, protected, and then allowed to escape.
The reckoning came slowly. In 2002, John Connolly was convicted on federal racketeering charges and sentenced to 10 years. In 2008, a Florida jury convicted Connolly of second-degree murder in the death of John Callahan. The sentence was 40 years to run consecutively with his federal time.
“We got 42 stone criminals by giving up two stone criminals,” Connolly told the Boston Globe in defense of his relationship with Bulger. “What’s your return on investment there? Show me a businessman who wouldn’t do that.”
That’s what he said. About a deal that cost over 60 lives.
H. Paul Rico was indicted for murder on October 9th, 2003 for his role in the Roger Wheeler assassination. He was 78 years old. He died on January 16th, 2004 in a Tulsa hospital, still under indictment. He never stood trial. He never faced a jury. He never answered for any of it.
Whitey Bulger ran for 16 years. On June 22nd, 2011, federal agents found him living in a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica, California, two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. He was 81 years old. Inside the apartment, agents found over $800,000 in cash hidden in the walls. At trial, Bulger was charged with 19 murders. A jury found him guilty of participating in 11 of them. He received two life sentences.
On October 30th, 2018, just hours after being transferred to the United States Penitentiary at Hazelton in West Virginia, Whitey Bulger was beaten to death by fellow inmates. He was 89 years old. He was in a wheelchair. According to news reports, the attackers gouged out his eyes and attempted to cut out his tongue. The traditional mob punishment for a rat.
Stephen Flemmi is still alive, serving a life sentence. He cut a deal in 2003, pleading guilty to 10 murders in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. He testified against both Bulger and Connolly. The FBI’s most protected informant became the prosecution’s most important tool.
On July 26th, 2007, US District Judge Nancy Gertner issued a ruling that shook the federal government. She found that the FBI had knowingly assisted Joseph Barboza in framing four innocent men for the 1965 murder of Teddy Deegan. She found that the Bureau had withheld exculpatory information for decades. She ordered the United States government to pay $101.7 million to the surviving victims and the families of those who died behind bars. At the time, it was the single largest sum ever awarded under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Henry Tameleo’s children grew up visiting their father through prison glass for a murder he didn’t commit. Louis Greco never saw the outside of a prison again. Joseph Salvati missed 30 years of his family’s life. Peter Limone lost 33 years. And the FBI agents who did this to them retired with pensions, received commendations, and built careers on the bodies of the people they were sworn to protect.
The Boston Mafia War killed over 60 people between 1961 and the late 1970s. But the war itself was never purely between criminals. It was manufactured, managed, and weaponized by federal agents who decided that certain lives were expendable if it meant better statistics, bigger cases, and promotions. H. Paul Rico chose sides. Dennis Condon chose sides. John Connolly chose sides. John Morris chose sides. And every time they chose, somebody died.
This isn’t a story about the mafia. Not really. It’s a story about what happens when the people who enforce the law decide they are above it. When the badge becomes a weapon instead of a shield. When fighting organized crime becomes a justification for committing it. Sixty people dead. Four innocent men framed. Two died in prison. A hundred and one million dollars in damages. Multiple FBI agents convicted or indicted. And the mob boss who ran free for 16 years because the FBI valued his information more than his victims’ lives.