Late convict posthumously cleared of charges
By David Liscio
Friday, November 5, 2004
BOSTON - For three decades, former Peabody resident Louie Greco swore he didn't commit the gangland murder for which he'd been convicted and sentenced to life. But nobody was listening. After all, the FBI had given the stamp of approval to the prosecution's star witness, mob hitman and former Swampscott resident Joseph Barboza.
Although Greco died in prison, he was quietly exonerated last month by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, which dropped the murder charge, posthumously clearing his record.
In a motion filed at the county courthouse, the prosecutor's office finally acknowledged that Greco was framed. The document spelled out what Greco had been trying to tell investigators all along, that he had been set up by Barboza, a notorious hitman-turned-government witness.
The wrongdoing against Greco surfaced recently along with other examples of misconduct by the Boston office of the FBI, which has been the subject of a congressional probe into the agency's corrupt relationship with its mob informants.
"It appears that justice may not have been done," Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee said in the motion exonerating Greco.
The motion also cites "legal and ethical considerations raised by the newly discovered FBI documents, as well as principles of consistency and fundamental fairness."
Greco always maintained he was in Florida on March 12, 1965, when Edward "Teddy" Deegan was gunned down in a Chelsea alley. Greco passed three polygraphs and won two commutations that were never acted on by former governors.
Greco was 78 when he died in a prison hospital in 1995 from colon cancer and heart disease.
In 2001, a judge exonerated his co-defendants: Peter J. Limone, who spent 33 years in prison; and Joseph Salvati, behind bars for 30 years. Another co-defendant, Edward Tameleo, died in prison in 1985. Limone and Tameleo were top lieutenants to New England crime family godfather Raymond L.S. Patriarca.
The judge found that FBI agents hid testimony that would have cleared the men because they wanted to protect their informant, Barboza, who later became a key witness in three Mafia trials.
Barboza once admitted to killing at least 26 people in his role as a mob enforcer.During the Mafia trials, federal agents hid him on Thatcher Island off Gloucester.
FBI memos from the era show that agents knew Barboza and others were responsible for Deegan's murder. Barboza was later allowed to relocate and change his name, but fate caught up with him in 1976 in the form of Jimmy Chalmas, a Lynn street punk who informed La Cosa Nostra brass that Barboza was living in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, Barboza was gunned down, the details of that slaying later unveiled in FBI audio tapes made at the North End headquarters of former Boston crime boss Gennaro Angiulo.
Perhaps more heinous and incriminating than the Angiulo tapes was a statement by former Boston mobster "Cadillac" Frank Salemme, who told congressional investigators he met with former FBI Agent Dennis Condon after Greco's conviction, and the agent laughed about helping to frame Greco.
Limone, Salvati and Greco's family sued the federal government for malicious prosecution, wrongful imprisonment and other claims. In September, a federal judge ruled that the lawsuits can go forward.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner rejected the government's argument that there were no laws allowing the men to sue at the time they went to prison for Deegan's murder. Congress didn't vote to waive immunity to such claims until 1974.
Attorney Howard Friedman, who represents Greco's son, Edward, told a Boston newspaper that the district attorney's decision to drop the charges will aid his lawsuit.
"He knew his father didn't do it," Friedman said. "This was an innocent man who was framed, and the most amazing part is the government knew it."
(Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.) |
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