Buried By The FBI: The Bitter Tale of Joe Salvati
In 1968, Joe Salvati was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he had nothing to do with. Years later, it would come to light that the FBI knowingly allowed it to happen
Background
The 1960s were a turbulent decade for Boston’s criminal underworld. This era is commonly referred to as the “Boston Gang Wars” and led to dozens of gangland murders in Boston and the surrounding suburbs.
One of these warring factions was the Winter Hill gang based in Somerville. Though mainly comprised of Irish American gangsters, the gang also had members and associates of other ethnicities, including brothers Stevie “The Rifleman” and Vincent “The Bear” Flemmi, and Joe “The Animal” Barboza.
As their nicknames imply, these were some dangerous individuals who were known by law enforcement to be killers. In addition to their ties to Irish American gangsters, Barboza and the Flemmi brothers also had connections to New England’s Italian mafia headed by Providence, Rhode Island-based boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca, and his Boston-based underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Anguilo.
It was because of these connections that Barboza and the Flemmi brothers were approached by FBI agents to become informants. It would be this unholy union of corrupt FBI agents and Joe Barboza, a known mob enforcer and hitman, that would cost Joe Salvati three decades of his life.
“The Animal”
Joseph Barboza was born in 1932 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a young man, he pursued a career as a boxer, fighting under the name ‘Baron’, which he would legally change his name to in 1964.
After his boxing aspirations fizzled out, Barboza worked various odd jobs, including as a longshoreman. He also began associating with the local criminal element, which led him to serve around eight years in prison during the 1950s.
By the early 1960s, Barboza had earned a reputation as a tough and fearsome individual. Because of this, he was used by both the Winter Hill gang and the New England mafia as a debt collector, legbreaker, and hitman.
Edward Deegan Murder
Born in 1930, Edward “Teddy” Deegan was a small-time career criminal from Boston who specialized in burglaries. Though there has been speculation about why Deegan was murdered and who gave the okay, by the winter of 1965, Deegan had made some powerful enemies within the New England underworld.
Shortly after 9:30 p.m. on March 12, 1965, Deegan was lured to an alleyway in Chelsea, Massachusetts, under the guise of committing a burglary. About an hour and a half later, Deegan’s bullet-riddled body was discovered.
Recruiting “The Animal”
Though the police had their suspicions, the murder of Teddy Deegan became just another unsolved homicide until a year later, when FBI agents, including H. Paul Rico, came to Barboza with a proposition.
They informed Barboza that they were aware of his involvement in the murder of Teddy Deegan and offered him a way out. By this time, Barboza had fallen out with the mafia, and there were rumors that he was next to be killed.
If Barboza agreed to testify against his accomplices in the murder and agreed to testify at later trials against high-ranking mafia members, he would receive a significantly reduced sentence.
Fall Guy
With a chance to save himself and exact some revenge on the organization that had turned on him, Barboza agreed to the offer.
However, he insisted that he would not implicate his friend Vincent Flemmi, who was one of the killers. Instead, Barboza substituted a local neighborhood guy named Joe Salvati, who had nothing to do with Deegan’s murder.
It is unclear why Barboza chose to include Salvati. It has been speculated that Salvati owed him a gambling debt and had not paid him, or perhaps because Barboza had seen him out earlier that night, and knew he did not have an alibi at the time the murder took place.
In May 1968, Joe Salvati was found guilty of accessory to murder based solely on the testimony of Joe Barboza. Salvati and another man, Roy French, were sentenced to life in prison, while the other four defendants were sentenced to death. However, after Massachusetts abolished the death penalty, their sentences were commuted to life in prison.
In 1970, Barboza testified at the trials of Patriarca and Angiulo. Ironically, even with all of the deception required to have Barboza testify, Angiulo was found not guilty. Years later, one of the jurors on the case remarked that he did not find Barboza to be a credible witness. “He didn’t help the state at all. He wasn’t reliable.”
After serving his reduced sentence, Barboza went into hiding. His past finally caught up with him on February 11, 1976, when he was gunned down on a San Francisco street.
Doing Time
Meanwhile, Joe Salvati was serving his sentence at the notoriously harsh Walpole prison, about 25 miles outside of Boston. The prison had a reputation for violence among inmates and mistreatment by prison staff.
Salvati kept to himself and spent a lot of time alone in his cell. One of the things that kept him going was the support of his wife Marie and their young children. Marie did what she could to keep the family going and support her husband. She and the kids would visit often.
Breakthrough
About a decade into his sentence, a defense attorney named Victor Garo examined the facts of Salvati’s case and was stunned to learn that he had been convicted based entirely on the testimony of Joe Barboza.
Garo eventually took the case pro bono and began researching. A breakthrough occurred when Garo discovered a long-suppressed police report where a reliable informant named Barboza and Vincent Flemmi as two of the individuals who murdered Deegan.
The more he dug, the more apparent it became that FBI agents had deliberately suppressed information and knowingly allowed Salvati to be framed and convicted so that they could continue to use Barboza and Flemmi as informants to go after the mob.
Exoneration and Lawsuit
Finally, in 1997, Garo secured Salvati a parole commutation. Then, in 2000, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who was the chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, began a probe into the Boston FBI office and its practices.
Unsurprisingly, the investigation was met with resistance. The Bush administration initially tried to suppress documents, claiming executive privilege. Eventually, however, the documents were released and laid bare the disturbing truth.
FBI agents had knowingly allowed an innocent man to be convicted and sentenced to life in prison so that they could keep their murderous informants on the streets.
In 2007, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner agreed with these findings and awarded the Salvatis and the families of the other men convicted over $100 million in damages from malicious prosecution.
It was a stinging rebuke of the FBI and the U.S. Government and a reminder that those who are sworn to uphold the law must be held to a higher standard.
Sources:
Goodwin, Jan. “The Exonerated.” Readers Digest, March 2008, https://www.jangoodwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/exonerated.pdf
Nayer, Melanie. “FBI Documents Acknowledge Barboza’s Guilt and Association with Deegan Murder.” The New Bedford Standard Times, 2 March 2002, https://www.bu.edu/washington/2002/03/02/fbi-documents-acknowledge-barbozas-guilt-and-association-with-deegan-murder/
“FBI rebuked for wrongful convictions in mob case.” Deseret News, 27 July 2007, https://www.deseret.com/2007/7/27/20031935/fbi-rebuked-for-wrongful-convictions-in-mob-case/