I never understood why the Mafia didn’t whack Whitey Bulger before he went on the lam.
Didn’t they notice that while Whitey and so much of the Irish mob skated, the feds led procession after procession of guys with vowels on the end of their names off to jail?
Then it dawned on me: Those Mafia guys weren’t rocket scientists.
Besides, the Italians were probably ratting as much as the Irish. They just didn’t get as good a deal.
Not everybody was a rat. Jerry Angiulo didn’t rat on anybody, and he spent 24 years as a guest of the nation to prove it.
Jerry died Saturday at Mass. General. Cause of death was old age and just plain meanness.
Jerry considered the fact that he got to spend the last two years of his life at home in Nahant, surrounded by his ever-patient wife, Barbara,and long-suffering son, Jason, a major coup, a flip of his fingers under his chin to a government that used more than one corrupt FBI agent to lock him up.
If Ted Kennedy was the last lion of the Senate, Jerry Angiulo was the last rooster of the Mafia. Everybody who followed him was a pretender to the throne. Raymond Patriarca - the father, not the goofy kid who ran the family business into the ground - made Jerry underboss without Jerry having the requisite hit under his belt because Jerry did something Patriarca considered far more important than producing corpses: Jerry sent lots of cash down I-95 to Providence.
That doesn’t mean Jerry didn’t have people murdered. Jerry would whack you in a heartbeat if he thought you wouldn’t stand up before a grand jury, or, like the late if not especially lamented Angelo Patrizzi, you went around town saying you were going to kill Jerry’s friends.
Murder aside, Jerry was king of the bookmakers in a day and age when everybody played The Number, when the Record-American printed the daily handle from Hialeah racetrack in Florida because that’s what the mob based The Number on.
I was a cub reporter at the Herald in 1983, when I first met Jerry Angiulo. The feds had lugged him out of Francesco’s before he could take a bite of his pork chops the night before. He had slept in a cell at the police station on New Sudbury Street, his clothes were rumpled, his white hair a disheveled mop of bedhead, he needed a shower, and he wasn’t too happy. He apparently had been allowed to read the papers because as he waited for his arraignment in federal court to begin he asked aloud, “Is there a Mr. Cullen from the Herald here?’’
Sitting right behind him, I put up my hand and said, “That would be me, sir.’’
He turned around, looked me up and down, thrust out his chin with that Mussolini pout of his, and said, with dismissive contempt, “Useless.’’
A few weeks later, he was standing at the elevators in the old Post Office Square courthouse, on his way to the Marshals lockup during a recess, and as I walked by he asked, “Your mother still living on Linden Avenue in Malden?’’
It wasn’t a threat. He just wanted me to know he knew.
Jerry didn’t like the government. The feds took away his freedom, and the Lottery took away his business.
I sent him a letter in the can once, asking if he’d like to talk about the way the FBI spent millions taking down the Angiulo brothers while Whitey and the Winter Hill Gang murdered with impunity. Jerry was no dummy. He saw through my obsequiousness, offering a two-word reply, the second word of which was “you,’’ the first word being unprintable.
Of all those Angiulo brothers, only Frankie is left. Frankie had the unenviable task of collecting from the bookies, and being berated long and loudly by Jerry if he didn’t get all the money. He lives alone in the building at 98 Prince St. where, 28 years ago, Jerry Angiulo boasted of murder and mayhem and money within earshot of FBI bugs.
Prince Street is a mausoleum now. A mausoleum for the mob.
Then it dawned on me: Those Mafia guys weren’t rocket scientists.
Besides, the Italians were probably ratting as much as the Irish. They just didn’t get as good a deal.
Not everybody was a rat. Jerry Angiulo didn’t rat on anybody, and he spent 24 years as a guest of the nation to prove it.
Jerry died Saturday at Mass. General. Cause of death was old age and just plain meanness.
Jerry considered the fact that he got to spend the last two years of his life at home in Nahant, surrounded by his ever-patient wife, Barbara,and long-suffering son, Jason, a major coup, a flip of his fingers under his chin to a government that used more than one corrupt FBI agent to lock him up.
If Ted Kennedy was the last lion of the Senate, Jerry Angiulo was the last rooster of the Mafia. Everybody who followed him was a pretender to the throne. Raymond Patriarca - the father, not the goofy kid who ran the family business into the ground - made Jerry underboss without Jerry having the requisite hit under his belt because Jerry did something Patriarca considered far more important than producing corpses: Jerry sent lots of cash down I-95 to Providence.
That doesn’t mean Jerry didn’t have people murdered. Jerry would whack you in a heartbeat if he thought you wouldn’t stand up before a grand jury, or, like the late if not especially lamented Angelo Patrizzi, you went around town saying you were going to kill Jerry’s friends.
Murder aside, Jerry was king of the bookmakers in a day and age when everybody played The Number, when the Record-American printed the daily handle from Hialeah racetrack in Florida because that’s what the mob based The Number on.
I was a cub reporter at the Herald in 1983, when I first met Jerry Angiulo. The feds had lugged him out of Francesco’s before he could take a bite of his pork chops the night before. He had slept in a cell at the police station on New Sudbury Street, his clothes were rumpled, his white hair a disheveled mop of bedhead, he needed a shower, and he wasn’t too happy. He apparently had been allowed to read the papers because as he waited for his arraignment in federal court to begin he asked aloud, “Is there a Mr. Cullen from the Herald here?’’
Sitting right behind him, I put up my hand and said, “That would be me, sir.’’
He turned around, looked me up and down, thrust out his chin with that Mussolini pout of his, and said, with dismissive contempt, “Useless.’’
A few weeks later, he was standing at the elevators in the old Post Office Square courthouse, on his way to the Marshals lockup during a recess, and as I walked by he asked, “Your mother still living on Linden Avenue in Malden?’’
It wasn’t a threat. He just wanted me to know he knew.
Jerry didn’t like the government. The feds took away his freedom, and the Lottery took away his business.
I sent him a letter in the can once, asking if he’d like to talk about the way the FBI spent millions taking down the Angiulo brothers while Whitey and the Winter Hill Gang murdered with impunity. Jerry was no dummy. He saw through my obsequiousness, offering a two-word reply, the second word of which was “you,’’ the first word being unprintable.
Of all those Angiulo brothers, only Frankie is left. Frankie had the unenviable task of collecting from the bookies, and being berated long and loudly by Jerry if he didn’t get all the money. He lives alone in the building at 98 Prince St. where, 28 years ago, Jerry Angiulo boasted of murder and mayhem and money within earshot of FBI bugs.
Prince Street is a mausoleum now. A mausoleum for the mob.
