Joseph Barboza - Turning Government Witness

Turning Government Witness

By 1966, he had a very turbulent 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 there 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 received from the authorities only made his standing in organized crime more tenuous.

In October 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 accomplices 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 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 Ilario Zannino. After relieving them of their bail money, they stuffed their bodies in the back seat of Bratsos's car and dumped it in South Boston, hoping to throw blame onto the Irish gangs. However, a mob associate named Joseph Lanzi tipped the cops about the murder. He was later murdered by Mafia associates Carmen Gagliardi, Frank Otero and Ben DeChristoforo.

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 Gennaro Anguilo and his 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. The government would not protect his wife and two young children if he refused to testify and even after the ordeal ended never kept any of their promises—he traded one evil for another.

Barboza went on 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. Shortly after the indictment of Raymond Patriarca, which drew front page stories about Barboza as a turncoat, Barboza wrote to the Boston Herald: "All I want to be is left alone." The La Cosa Nostra was willing to pay Barboza $25,000 to quit talking. He showed some interest in the deal raising the price to $50,000 which was agreed upon but later turned down after consulting his lawyer.

Gennaro Anguilo was later found not guilty. Despite efforts by reporters to coax jurors to explain their deliberations, none did. Twenty years later, however, jury foreman Kenneth Matthews said none of the sixteen jurors had found Barboza believable stating: "He didn't help the state at all. He wasn't reliable. He was nothing as a witness."

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. Resulting in Fitzgerald losing his right leg below the knee. After that Barboza was moved around frequently from Thacher Island to Fort Devens and even to the Junior Officers' quarters located in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Barboza owned a German Shepherd Dog and while at Fort Knox he would walk his dog with future FBI agent John Morris. John Morris was a member of the military police at the time. 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 in prison 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 Santa Rosa, California where he enrolled in a culinary arts school and is rumored 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. At prison Barboza became an amateur poet and wrote poems portraying the evils of the La Cosa Nostra and his own fearlessness, "Boston Gang War", "The Mafia Double Crosses", "A Cat's Lives" and "The Gang War Ends". Additionally, he was a talented artist.