The Witness Security Program owes its creation to one of the most-feared assassins the Mafia has ever produced: Joseph Barboza, who took pride in his underworld alias, “The Animal.”
It was a nickname he had lived up to. “I was an enforcer,” he boasted to the House Select Committee on Crime in 1972, “who kept the other enforcers in line.”
Barboza had done so as a top hitman earning $900 a week from the most powerful Mafia family in New England. Ruling that family was Raymond Patriarca, based in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Joseph “The Animal” Barboza
But even before entering the Mafia, Joseph Barboza had spent most of his life as a career criminal. He was born in 1932, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Portuguese immigrant parents.
By the time he was thirty, he had served two prison sentences—one for burglary, the other for assault with a deadly weapon.
Even his jailers couldn’t restrain him. At Norfolk Prison Colony, he got drunk on illicit “hooch” and led an inmates’ riot, culminating in a short-lived escape-attempt.
When Barboza wasn’t serving time in prison, he made his living as a boxer (winning three professional matches and earning a rating in Ring magazine). He supplemented his income through a career as a freelance loanshark and extortionist.
By 1963, his growing notoriety had brought him to the attention of Enrico Henry Tameleo, the underboss, or second-in-command, to Raymond Patriarca.
Since 1948, Patriarca had been “the policymaker, judge and overlord of organized crime” throughout New England, according to a 1966 FBI report.
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Raymond Patriarca
Tameleo offered a Barboza a job and fulltime income as an enforcer for the Patriarca Family. Barboza instantly agreed. He had always dreamed of becoming a “made man” of the Mafia.
(Tameleo didn’t warn him that this was impossible. Barboza was of Portuguese descent, and only full-blooded Sicilians and Italians could hold Mafia membership.)
Tameleo sent Barboza to shake down 20 nightclubs whose owners had refused to pay “protection insurance” to the mob.
The owners changed their minds after one or two visits from Barboza and his wrecking crew. Furniture would be smashed and customers terrorized until the owners began paying $1,000 a month to Patriarca’s collectors.
Meanwhile, the always fragile peace of the New England underworld was being shattered by an escalating wave of gangland violence.
In 1961, the two most powerful factions of the region’s “Irish Mafia” had gone to war. On one side was the Charleston mob of Bernard McLaughlin. On the other was the Winter Hill gang of James “Buddy” McLean.
The “Irish Gang War” triggered a police crackdown on all the New England organized crime groups—including Patriarca’s. That was when Patriarca demanded that the fighting stop.
To ensure that it did, he sent his underboss, Tameleo, to arrange a peace conference between the McLeans and McLaughlins. Both sides agreed to a truce because Tameleo was widely respected for his skills as a negotiator.
But when the conference opened in January, 1965, Tameleo was outraged to find the McLaughlins had come armed–a direct violation of the “rules of order.” Patriarca also grew furious at this spurning of his efforts as underworld peacemaker.
As a result, the Patriarca Family threw its full weight behind the McLeans.
During 1965, Joseph Barboza moved from being a “mere” legbreaker for the Patriarca Family to becoming its top assassin. His first important victim was Edward Deegan, a McLaughlin member who had raided several Patriarca gambling dens.
Barboza invited Deegan to join him in a burglary of the Lincoln National Bank in Boston. Unaware that he had been marked for death, Deegan agreed.
On the night of March 12, 1965, the burglars struck. As the four men emerged from the bank, Barboza and two cronies emptied their pistols into Deegan.
This killing proved a turning point for Barboza. He became the top hitman for the Patriarca Family and the McLean mob. He carried out more hits than any other assassin during the war. Later, in a hastily-written autobiography, he would boast of his string of killings.
(But he was always careful to describe his actions in the third-person, as though someone else had actually been responsible. In this way he protected himself against prosecution for murder, where no immunity existed.)
In June, Jimmy “The Bear” Flemmi, a close friend of Barboza’s, was gravely wounded by a shotgun blast. Barboza soon learned that the attackers had been Steve Hughes and Edward “Punchy” McLaughlin.
Swearing vengeance, Barboza quickly set out to claim his next victim. He was especially intent on disposing of Hughes, who had become the top triggerman of the McLaughlins.
On October 20, 1963, Edward McLaughlin was waiting at a bus stop when Barboza casually walked up behind him. Disguised in a wig and glasses, Barboza drew his pistol and pumped five bullets into McLaughlin.
Less than a month later, on November 11, the hitman visited the Mickey Mouse Club, a tavern in Revere Reach. This time his intended target was a bartender and McLaughlin member named Ray DiStassio.
Talking with DiStassio at that moment was an innocent bystander, John R. O’Neill. Barboza simply drew and shot both men dead.
Copyright@1984 Taking Cover: Inside the Witness Security Program, by Steffen White and Richard St. Germain
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
