My mentor's in the Mafia always told me,” when it came to payback, no matter how long it takes,
Just like the “turtle”, we always get there”. Nothing illustrates this boast better than the
execution of Joe "The Animal" Barboza, courtesy of my good friend, and Mafia Cohort,. JR Russo--Anthony Fiato
In 1954 with the backing of New York crime lord Vito Genovese, Raymond Patriarca took control of
the New England mafia.. It became known as the Patriarca crime family. Possessing the same traits as his pal Vito; cunning and violence, Patriarca dominated the rackets in his territory with a vengeance from his headquarters in Providence R I . In a world where tough guys only listen to tougher guys, Patriarca was the undisputed boss. The most lucrative rackets were in Boston where Patriarca skipper, Gennaro “Jerry“. Angiulo, and his” North End” gang, locked down all the rackets in the Boston underworld. Anybody operating in numbers,. bookmaking,, loan sharking ,,and any other criminal racket that turned a buck had to go through Angiulo and pay for “permission” to operate. . Without “permission” you needed protection from Angiulo’s enforcers…All the men that kicked into Angiulo were referred to as "connected" guys, meaning they had the protection of the Patriarca family.. If you bothered a “connected” guy you were defying Raymond Patriarca and that was lethal.
For Joe Barboza killing came as easy as breathing. In the early sixties Dodge City atmosphere of the Boston underworld, when it came to murder, the thirty year old Portuguese hit man was the top slugger in the city.. Barboza and his pals Chico Amico and Nicky Femmia operated a leg breaking and gun- for-hire business out of East Boston. Always the thinker, Jerry Angiulo used Barboza to go into certain nightclubs throughout the Boston area and bust them up. The owners of these places were terrified, and immediately reached out to Angiulo to get rid of their Barboza problem. And, Angiulo did, for part ownership in the clubs.. .In the mob we call this create and alleviate.. Barboza so impressed Angiulo’s bosses Patriarca, and Henry Tomeleo, that they started using Barboza and his crew for all the hardcore enforcing that was bringing “heat” to Angiulo’s men.. In exchange Patriarca let Barboza operate in the rackets without paying tribute
The head of the “Winter hill” mob, Buddy McLean, was well liked by Patriarca..The baby faced Irish mobster's gang dominated all the Irish mobs. McLean brought big money deals from race fixing; to high jacking , to his pal Patriarca.. Patriarca made so much money from brokering these deals that he let McLean operate without the standard tribute .
McLean’s Winter Hill gang was the most powerful of all the Irish mobs . In the “South End,” the Harlem section of Boston, you had the Bennet brothers, a faction of the winter hill mob whose enforcers included Frank Salemme and the Flemmi brothers Stevie, and Vinny "The Bear" , who were all friendly with Joe Barboza-- and they were jockeying for a position with Patriarca ‘s most murderous Capo, Larry Bione. George McLaughlin broke away from Mclean and started a renegade faction of his own, and started a war in the Boston Underworld that included holding up the Italian mob’s card games, and shaking down their bookies..
This threw a monkey wrench into the Patriarca money machine so he gave Barboza and his crew marching orders to wipe out the McLaughlin gang under the tutelage of Bione. True to his rep, Barboza and company whacked out over twenty men to restore order for the Patriarca family.. Raymond avoided the heat but Barboza was hotter than a firecracker and he was being tailed by tons of law wherever he went. The cops busted an armed Barboza, and he was held on fifty grand bail.. Joe sent his crew of killers to shake down the Patriarca mob for bail money figuring he had it coming for all the” work” he had done for them. Raymond didn't take kindly to a hothead threatening him, so he had all of Barboza’s crew whacked out...
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Joe then turned rat, and with his treacherous testimony. he put Raymond and some of his capo’s in jail, some of them for life.. In spite of the hundred thousand dollar bounty Patriarca had put on his head, Barboza managed to elude Raymond’s vengeance for almost eight years, until his luck ran out on the streets of San Francisco. Acting on a tip, and some help from the L.A.Mob, my friend, and Patriarca soldier, JR Russo,.blasted Barboza to bits with a shotgun from the back of a white van, hitting him with five bullets while he was leaving an apartment.. Some say Barboza barked, “YOU FUCKERS”, then he died like a dog... JR was upped to the rank of Capo for the hit..... By Anthony Fiato .. .
