Mafia Hitman Joseph Barboza had become known throughout the New England underworld as “The Animal.”
He relished his new alias and his reputation as a temperamental killer.
Everyone who dealt with Barboza—including Mafia Boss Raymond Patriarca—feared his explosive temper.
Granted an audience with Patriarca, Barboza was transfixed by the capo’s diamond ring. Later, he bragged that he had thought of biting off Patriarca’s finger to get the ring.
“He’s crazy,” Patriarca often told his closest associates. “Someday we’ll have to whack him out.”
Only one other mob gunman could match Barboza’s reputation for deadliness: Steve Hughes, the top triggerman for the McLaughlins.
Barboza spent more than a year trying to eliminate Hughes, until his chance finally came on September 23, 1966.
On that day, Hughes and a loanshark friend, Sammy Lindenbaum, went for a drive along Route 114 in Middleton, Massachusetts.
They paid no attention as another car—carrying Barboza and a crony, Joseph Amico—rapidly closed on them.
With Amico behind the wheel, Barboza aimed a high-powered rifle out the window and dropped Hughes and Lindenbaum in their seats.
Barboza’s moment of supreme triumph was short-lived. His rising notoriety disturbed Patriarca, who believed in taking a low profile and avoiding the antagonism of the press and police.
Patriarca began searching for an excuse to part with his top muscleman. He found it on October 6, 1966, when Boston police arrested Barboza and three companions.
Inside Barboza’s car, police found a loaded .45 automatic and an M-1 carbine. Barboza, then out on bail on a stabbing charge, was shipped off to Walpole State Prison for parole violation.
There he waited vainly for the Patriarca Family to post the $50,000 bond demanded for his release.
Tired of waiting, two of his fellow enforcers decided to lend a hand: Thomas DePrisco and Arthur Bratsos began raiding Patriarca gambling dens to collect the money.
Their fund-raising efforts ended violently one night when their intended victims drew pistols and shot Bratsos and DePrisco to death.
When he learned of the deaths of his friends, Barboza exploded. He damned Patriarca as a “fag” and swore to kill several of the capo’s top associates, whom he blamed for the slayings.
Word of this outburst reached Patriarca, who sent back a threat of his own: Barboza was a dead man, in or out of prison.
Fearing for his own life, Barboza yielded to the proddings of two FBI agents seeking evidence against Patriarca. He agreed to act as a federal witness against his former mob cronies.
In exchange, he demanded protection for himself, his wife and young daughter, and the dropping of his parole and all charges now facing him.
Although Barboza’s terms were stiff, Boston District Attorney Gary Byrne and the prosecutors of the Justice Department felt they were getting the best of the bargain.
They saw in Barboza a dramatic, unprecedented opportunity to strike down a powerful crime cartel.
This, in turn, would enable federal lawmen to recruit new informants and witnesses for additional—and successful—prosecutions..
To achieve these goals, however, the Justice Department had to prove it could protect Barboza against mob reprisals.
As a first step in this process, Byrne released the ex-hitman to the protective custody of the FBI. But the FBI found its budget and manpower strained by the assignment.
Realizing that a combined effort was necessary, the Bureau called in a handpicked security detail of sixteen deputy U.S. marshals.
Heading the detail was Deputy Marshal John Partington, a former agent with the IRS Intelligence Division and a specialist in organized crime.
John Partington (on right)
Equally important, Partington understood the criminal mentality: Not only did Barboza need to be protected, he needed to be kept in a proper state of mind to testify in court.
The marshals transferred Barboza to Thatcher’s Island, an isolated lighthouse station off the coast of Gloucester. Occupied by two houses and approachable only by sea, the island seemed a perfect security spot.
Every two weeks, a new detail of marshals arrived to relieve the sixteen men on duty. Food and supplies were regularly shipped in aboard Coast Guard vessels.
Eventually, the press learned of the security detail on ”Baron’s Island”—so nicknamed because “Baron” had once been a Barboza alias.
The disclosure led to a series of attempts by mob hitmen to eliminate Barboza.
Thatcher’s Island
The first attempt came in September, 1967. Patriarca ordered a 325-pound stock swindler named Vincent Teresa to take a crew of hitman, infiltrate the island and dispose of Barboza.
But the FBI learned of the plot and tipped off the security detail.
When Teresa’s $112,000, forty-three foot yacht, The Living End, cruised around the island, the hitman couldn’t find an unprotected spot to land.
Everywhere they looked they saw deputy U.S. marshals, armed with pistols and carbines, patrolling the beach. Barboza never appeared in sight.
Then a Patriarca assassin, Maurice “Pro” Lerner, thought of making a one-man, commando-style assault on the island. An experienced skindiver, he brought along his own scuba gear for just such an attack.
But he quickly dropped the idea: he estimated the odds of getting a successful shot at Barboza were a million to one.
Copyright@1984 Taking Cover: Inside the Witness Security Program, by Steffen White and Richard St. Germain
