Stevie Flemmi is about to enjoy his final 15 minutes of fame – testifying as the feds’ chief witness in the trial of Mafia chieftain Cadillac Frank Salemme for the murder of nightclub owner Steve DiSarro.
For the historical record if nothing else, the 84-year-old serial killer needs to clear up a few lingering mysteries before he reaches the checkout counter.
All of Flemmi’s files as an FBI informant – BS 955-TE — have been public record since at least the Whitey Bulger trial in 2013. And then there are his DEA 6 reports, basically his confessions, which I put together with scores of photos in a book, “Rifleman.”
I don’t know how much leeway the judge will allow Salemme’s lawyer Steve Boozang on cross-examination. But he might ask Flemmi to expound on some of the more fantastic claims he made to various G-men (some of whom were wiseguys themselves) over the decades after he was flipped in 1965.
Let’s start with a 302 from Jan. 17, 1983. The Rifleman is recounting how a local politician in 1966 commissioned a Boston police detective who moonlighted as a hitman – Bill Stuart – to murder Eliot Richardson, the future US attorney general who was then running for state attorney general.
From the report:
“Richardson at the time had a serious drinking problem and frequented the L Street Bath in South Boston. Stuart had a hot car and his intention was to run Richardson down as he exited the Bath House.”
The problem was, “It was difficult to sit outside the Bath House in a hot car for long periods of time without being noticed by the numerous cops who utilized the Bath House to work out.”
And you thought it was easy to be a hitman!
Flemmi said the pol who gave Stuart the contract “insisted that if anything happened to Richardson, it had to look like an accident.” You know, like El-Yacht wandered out onto Columbia Road while he was loaded and was taken out by a hit-and-run driver.
In 1983, the now-retired cop was jammed up on another hit, and Flemmi noted, “If Stuart ever gets in a ‘jack pot,’ he could pass a polygraph as to the conspiracy to murder Eliot Richardson.”
So, Mr. Flemmi, is this a true story about how El-Yacht almost bought the farm seven years before Nixon made him the hero of Watergate?
In 1989, Flemmi dismisses another crew, saying he “considers all of them to be homicidal maniacs.” This from a guy who murdered, what, 10-plus people, including two of his 26-year-old girlfriends.
Here’s another question for Flemmi about a judge who’s still at the courthouse. This esteemed jurist has a very big mouth, Flemmi says, and back before he got his robes, Stevie was worried that this hack was going to get Stevie killed, by telling a guy they called “the Town Crier” about Flemmi’s status as King Rat.
Mr. Flemmi, who is this judge with the big mouth that you complained about to the G-men on Aug. 8, 1983?
Going through these hundreds and hundreds of pages of Flemmi’s self-serving observations, we meet the Roberto brothers – nicknamed “the Blob” and “the Roach.” There’s a Roxbury drug dealer with a 12-year-old wife. Not to mention a nightclub owner about whom “the public would not believe the politicians and law-enforcement big wigs who used ‘coke’” with him.
One of the nightclub owner’s dear friends was a ranking member of the Boston PD, who is seen socializing with the cocaine man one morning at 2:30, after which he is ordered by the commissioner to cut it out. This is the same commissioner, by the way, whom Flemmi said in 1983 “owed” Mafia boss Jerry Angiulo “a big favor.”
What favor did the commissioner “owe” the underboss, Mr. Flemmi, and do you think the other cop liked to… well, you know?
How much do you think Salemme, the defendant, hates his imprisoned old pal Flemmi? For more than half a century, Flemmi has been backstabbing Frank to anybody who’d listen. They say that friends help you move, and good friends help you move bodies. Salemme was a good friend of Flemmi’s – just ask the late Walter Bennett. Here’s one of Flemmi’s last reports on Salemme, from May 23, 1990:
“Source advised that SALEMME is supposedly hurting for money and is not getting along with his wife who is extremely upset with his involvement with the Mafia following his release from prison. Source advised that SALEMME has a girlfriend with whom he spends any available time.”
Hey, what are friends for, good friends that is?
By the way, in testimony Monday, a state cop testified that DiSarro, the victim, got his liquor license from City Hall after bribing a couple of “political figures.”
If you’d like to know the names of those statesmen, they’re listed on page 228 of my book, “Rifleman.” Please, try not to let all of this destroy your faith in the unshakeable integrity of the local government and law enforcement.