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Charlestown State Prison

A Fake Priest Gets a New England Mob Boss Out of Prison

Ray Patriarca ruled as the New England mob boss for 25 years from his Coin-O-Matic “vending business” on Atwell’s Avenue in Providence. He was a friendly guy but fatal, known for his ruthlessness and his political clout.

He rose to the top of organized crime in New England in the 1950s with the help of Dan Coakley, a Boston politician on the take. Coakley freed Patriarca from prison by inventing an Irish priest who pleaded to let the nice young man go home and take care of his mother.

The New England mob boss on his way up

It’s a classic tale featuring vivid characters: a New England mob boss called El Padrone, a Boston Irish pol named Dapper Dan, a governor nicknamed Chowderhead and a fictional Father Fagin, as in the Dickens character who led children into crime.

The pardon that Dapper Dan Coakley got for Ray Patriarca turned out to be a turning point for both men. It ruined Coakley, and it helped Patriarca’s rise in the mob.

Ray Patriarca, New England Mob Boss

He was born Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca on St. Patrick’s Day, 1908, in Worcester, Mass. His father, Eleuterio, had immigrated from southern Italy; his mother, Mary Jane DeNubile, had Italian ancestry.

Five years later the family moved to Providence, where his father ran a liquor store. Raymond left school at age eight to help support the family, shining shoes and working as a bellhop. Then Eleuterio died when Ray was 17, setting him adrift. He discovered that Prohibition offered upward mobility for a young man on the make—through smuggling, hijacking and armed robbery.

He had a pleasant manner, but he could order a hit on a wayward underling with an abrupt, “Do it.” Stealing, however, was his first love. “The happiest days of my life were when I was on the street clipping,” he once said.

In 1929 the Mafia (called “The Office” by Rhode Island mobsters) inducted him into its ranks. From Rhode Island, he forged ties with the New York Profaci and Genovese families, who began to view him as their “can-do” guy in New England.

Vito Genovese

Caught

As he approached 30 he had a reputation and a rap sheet as a .gunman, gambler, pimp, thief, extortionist, bootlegger, hijacker and murder suspect.

On Feb. 12, 1938, Patriarca and his accomplices held up the Wallbank Jewelry Company in Brookline, stealing $12,000 worth of gold and gems along with an employee’s car. Five nights later, they pulled off another heist at the United Optical Plant in Webster. A barking dog alerted police, who found Patriarca hiding under a bench. They arrested him.

In August he pleaded guilty to the Brookline robbery and, in a separate trial, a jury found him guilty of the United Optical break-in. A judge sentenced him to three to five years in Charlestown State Prison.

Dapper Dan

Dapper Dan Coakley preferred a more genteel form of crime–the graft, blackmail and bribery kind.

Dan Coakley

He was born to Irish immigrant parents in Charlestown, Mass., in 1865. He won acceptance to the bar after studying law at his brother’s law firm. In 1910 he defended Big Bill Kelliher, who’d robbed the National City Bank of Cambridge. Kelliher got 18 years in jail, and from prison he claimed he’d given Coakley $23,000 to bribe the U.S. attorney and the jury.

Coakley’s later attempts to bribe district attorneys succeeded. He became the fixer for anyone who wanted an unpleasant charge of larceny, theft, prostitution or fraud to go away.

Coakley wasn’t above committing the odd crime himself. He once got hold of railroad magnate H.H. Hunnewell’s love letters to his mistress, and charged him $150,000 to get them back.

Fatty Arbuckle

In 1917, the film star Fatty Arbuckle came to Boston for a Copley Plaza dinner held by a group of movie producers. Afterward, they decanted to the Mishawum Manor, a house of ill repute run by one Brownie Kennedy. Brownie’s ladies accommodated the men in what the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court called an orgy of drink and lust… a debauch in a bawdy house … a stench in the nostrils of common decency. A photographer happened to be there, and a few days later Dan Coakley’s then-ally Mayor James Michael Curley called them to say they faced morals charges. It cost them $100,000 to make law enforcement forget the party.

Pardon Me

Coakley’s antics eventually got him disbarred. But in 1936 he won election to the Executive Council, which soon began recommending pardons to juvenile delinquents and notorious criminals. Gov. Charles “Chowderhead” Hurley signed them.

Gov. Charles Hurley

As historian Francis Russell put it, “the quality of Massachusetts mercy grew so strained that more convicts seemed to be leaving prison than entering.”

Most of the pardon petitions came from the hand of Councilor Dapper Dan Coakley.

The Fix Is In

Coakley filled his pardon petition for Ray Patriarca with lies. For starters, he called the future New England mob boss “a virtuous young man eager to be released from prison so that he might go home to his mother.”

A “Father Garneri” of Quincy signed a statement that he was anxious to express his opinion to the governor. Patriarca’s Providence pastor, “Father Fagen,” did the same. So did the Rev. Sixtus Brambilla of East Boston.

The Executive council granted the pardon and Patriarca was out the next day after serving 84 days of a three-to-five year sentence. Though he served for three different crimes, the pardon petition mentioned only one.

Leverett Saltonstall

On Election Day 1938, Massachusetts voters, tired of Chowderhead Hurley’s shenanigans, voted to replace him with a straight-arrow Republican, Leverett Saltonstall. Saltonstall appointed a commission to look into the paroles and pardons granted over the last 10 years.

Ironically, Patriarca’s wife Helen’s sister worked for Saltonstall.

Findings

On Dec. 20, 1938, Joseph Patriarca, Ray’s brother, checked into Boston’s Parker House, saying he wanted a room as near as possible to Dan Coakley’s suite, room 978, the commission found. Joe Patriarca got room 944.

A number of meetings followed between Coakley, Joe Patriarca, witnesses and priests. Money exchanged hands.

The Parker House in 1910

The commission found that Father Garneri of Quincy was actually the Rev. Philip Guarino of Waverly. He didn’t know Ray Patriarca, never discussed his pardon and had never authorized his signature. Father Fagen didn’t exist, except in Dan Coakley’s imagination. Coakley said he couldn’t think of the priest’s name but was thinking of Fagin, the character in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Father Sixtus Brambilla said he signed the petition as a favor to a donor, who’d told him Patriarca had just committed minor juvenile delinquencies.

The petition also asked to pardon Patriarca for one crime, though he served time concurrently for three.

Coakley also told Governor Hurley that no one had identified Patriarca in the Brookline jewelry theft. They had, but recanted, like many witnesses to Patriarca’s crimes.

The commission recommended Dapper Dan Coakley’s impeachment.

Fagin. He didn’t exist in real life, either

Mud Bath

Reporters dubbed the Senate trial the “Mud Bath.” It took the entire month of September 1941.

During the Mud Bath it came out that Patriarca didn’t even take care of his mother—his brother Joe did.

The trial also exposed Coakley’s Statehouse trickery. One executive councilor had told Coakley he would not vote for Patriarca’s pardon. But during the meeting to issue pardons he left for 15 minutes to take a phone call. The Patriarca pardon passed, and the councilor read about it in the newspaper the next day.

Patriarca even failed to give the customary thanks to the governor for the pardon.

Massachusetts Statehouse

Coakley offered a spirited defense, but the state Senate voted 33-6 to remove him from office.

As the senators filed out of the chamber, Coakley stood in the doorway greeting his supporters and glaring at those who voted against him. “I can say ‘forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do’,” he then said in a statement to the press.

New England Mob Boss

Getting out of prison won Ray Patriarca new respect from the mob because it showed he had political clout.

In 1954, New England mob boss Philip Bruccola returned to Sicily, helped along by an IRS investigation into tax evasion. Patriarca stepped into his Italian footwear and ran the mob for the next 25 years.

Ray Patriarca, R.I. police I.D.

From his Coin-O-Matic building in Providence’s Italian section, Patriarca insisted he ran a legitimate vending machine company. Actually, he ran loan-sharking, gambling and pornography operations from Maine to Connecticut as well as real estate interests from Las Vegas to Florida.

Between 1962 and 1965, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had the Coin-O-Matic bugged without a warrant. FBI agents heard talk of bribes to lawmakers, judges and governors’ appointees in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island. But the FBI couldn’t admit the evidence in court.

Over his lifetime, Ray Patriarca was arrested or indicted 28 times, convicted seven and imprisoned four for 11 years. But he honored the code of silence — omerta –and he never snitched to law enforcement.

He died of a heart attack in 1984 at the age of 76. Dan Coakley died in 1952 at the age of 86. He never finished his autobiography, The Sparkling Past.

Images: Ray Patriarca By Rhode Island State Police – http://www.wrko.com/whitey-watch, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40688140the impeachment]. Massachusetts Statehouse By King of Hearts – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94906441.

With thanks to The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill and The Knave of Boston by Francis Russell for American Heritage August 1976. This story last updated in 2022.

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Jesse Pomeroy, Boy Fiend, Does the Unthinkable in 1874 – Twice

In 1874, Jesse Pomeroy was sentenced to death for murdering at least two children. For the next 50 years America was fascinated by the ‘Boy Fiend’ from Boston.

Jesse Pomeroy

At the height of his notoriety, Jesse Pomeroy’s name was synonymous with evil. He had a statue at Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, a special gallery in the world-famous wax museum featuring murderers and ghouls. It was an era when the public was fascinated by murder, the grislier the more interest — for a time Jesse Pomeroy was a top celebrity criminal.

Pomeroy’s early years were conventional enough. His father, from Massachusetts, married his mother, from Maine. After bouncing around a bit, they settled in South Boston to raise their family. Jesse and his older brother Charlie were fairly standard kids, according to Pomeroy’s autobiography. They occasionally quarreled and skipped school to hang out with their dad while he worked at the Navy Yard. (Other versions of his story suggest a less fortunate childhood.)

Though Pomeroy would admit to a certain mischievous streak – like the time he lit off fireworks in school and was punished – he later insisted he was largely a good boy in his early years. The story changed in 1872, when he was 13.

Jesse Pomeroy Shows A Mean Streak

Beginning in July of 1871, a series of horrific attacks took place on children in Boston. Though the details have undoubtedly been mangled in retelling, the sensational nature of the attacks terrified the city. Young children – as young as 3 and 4 – abducted, beaten, stripped and left bound outside in the elements of the marshlands. Disfiguring injuries inflicted with knives and pins seemed intended to leave the children marred, but alive. None died.

Though their memories varied, a picture of the attacker began to emerge. The attacker was a boy himself, but older. As an older boy, possibly with red hair. Jesse Pomeroy had, ‘til then, not been accused of any serious offenses. People would recall that he could be rough when playing with younger children. But it hardly seemed to make him a suspect.

But when police took one of the victims through the schools, looking at the older boys in search of a suspect, he identified Pomeroy. He knew him, he would testify, because Pomeroy had one eye that was nearly white, the unusual feature that made him stand out.

Under questioning, Pomeroy confessed. He would later claim he was duped into it. Nevertheless, Pomeroy was locked up in reform school. His behavior there was exemplary. He seemed to have rehabilitated himself. After less than a year and a half, Pomeroy was sent home.

Mayhem Turns To Murder

Poster offering a reward for the capture of Jesse Pomeroy

Reward poster for capture of Jesse Pomeroy. Source: Boston City Archives.

Then, barely one month after Pomeroy’s release, in March of 1874, 10-year-old Katie Curran disappeared. Next, the body of four-year-old Horace Mullin was found on a beach, beaten and nearly decapitated. The city fell into a frenzy of fear. It didn’t take long for police to zero in on Jesse Pomeroy. They arrested Pomeroy for the murder of Horace Mullin, but the evidence was flimsy. A witness had seen Pomeroy, or someone similar, and a boy headed toward the beach.

With renewed public anger at the Pomeroy family, Jesse’s mother, Ruth, had to close up her dressmaking shop, where her son Charlie also sold newspapers. When new tenants moved into the building on Broadway in South Boston, another gruesome discovery shocked the city. In the former Pomeroy basement, buried under a heap of ashes, lay the decomposing body of Katie Curran.

Locked in jail, Pomeroy again confessed. He would later say he only made the confession for fear his mother or brother would be charged with the crime. Nevertheless, he went to trial and his lawyers presented an insanity defense. Doctors testified about strange feelings Pomeroy had in his head, how he would slap his head to drive the feelings out and he sometimes blacked out and couldn’t remember what he had done.

The trial produced a jury verdict of guilty, setting the stage for a seesaw debate over what the proper punishment was for the ‘Boy Fiend,’ as the New York Herald dubbed him.

Jesse Pomeroy Execution Ordered

Though the jury did not accept Pomeroy’s insanity, it did recommend leniency because of his age. The judge disagreed, and recommended execution. The governor, meanwhile, refused to sign the order of execution. The governor’s council, however, refused to commute a death penalty sentence; twice the council refused.

The standoff ended with a compromise. The state spared Jesse Pomeroy, but would lock him up for life in solitary confinement in the state prison at Charlestown.

For more than 40 years Massachusetts kept Jesse Pomeroy locked away in solitary confinement, held at bay like a monster. He tried to escape at least a dozen times. In one instance he managed to trigger a gas explosion. He hoped it would blow open the door to his cell and he could somehow fight his way out. The door did, in fact, break open but the explosion also knocked Pomeroy silly. He couldn’t execute the rest of his plan.

The Lifer Reemerges

In 1917, the governor’s council finally allowed Pomeroy back into general prison population and he began spinning a narrative of a reformed man. He had mastered a half dozen languages while in solitary and dabbled in several more. He had begun writing poetry, some of which he would publish and read aloud at prison shows.

During World War I, Pomeroy had sold war bonds in jail. And in 1923 and ’24, he speculated in stocks, with much of the rest of America, but from his jail cell. He further tried rehabilitating his image in 1928, suing local political activist Alice Blackwell. In a letter arguing against his release, she had written that he had tortured animals in prison – a charge he vehemently denied.

In 1929, Pomeroy would set foot outside the walls of the Charlestown prison for the first time in 43 years. The state transferred him to the state hospital at Bridgewater, but a year later a story suggested that the old murderer had not fully reformed. Jailers found saw blades and tools in his possession, evidence that he planned one last escape attempt. He never made it.

Two years later, at 74, Jesse Pomeroy finally died of a heart attack in prison. He insisted on his innocence with no explanation for how he became the ‘boy fiend.’

This story was updated in 2022.

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Sacco and Vanzetti, Guilty After All?

When a judge sentenced two Italian anarchists named Sacco and Vanzetti to die for a crime they said they didn’t commit, an international furor erupted.

Many believed Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of only two things: foreign birth and radical beliefs. The eyes of the world then focused their home, Boston’s North End, during their trial, conviction and appeals. Protesters demonstrated in major cities around the world. A petition demanding a new trial had 600,000 signatures and celebrities wrote letters begging for clemency.

One of those celebrities, muckraker Upton Sinclair, decided to write a novel about the case. But by the time he finished the book, called Boston, Sacco and Vanzetti had died. And Sinclair believed them guilty.

Sacco and Vanzetti

On April 15, 1920, two men shot and killed Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter in cold blood. A paymaster and guard for the Slater and Morrill Shoe Co., they were carrying the company payroll through the streets of Braintree, Mass. The two armed robbers grabbed the loot, more than $15,000, and fled in a getaway car.

Several weeks later, police arrested Nicolo Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fishmonger, on a streetcar. They had no police record, but they did carry loaded guns. Their trial then began the next June.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Red Scare

The crime took place during the Red Scare, a time of heightened fears about foreign terrorists.

In the spring of 1919, Italian anarchists tried to bomb political and business leaders throughout the United States. In April and in June they delivered 45 bombs to such prominent men as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Jr., and U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. Only some of the bombs detonated, killing two and injuring two.

But one bomb nearly killed Palmer and it demolished his house. Palmer responded throughout 1919 and 1920 by having thousands of people arrested just on suspicion of radical activity. Some who got caught up in his dragnet had done nothing but talk with an accent.

But Palmer got hundreds deported.

Anarchists then retaliated with bombings at U.S. embassies and on Wall Street, which killed 38 people.

Death Sentence

In Boston, the judge handed down the death sentence to Sacco and Vanzetti. Many viewed the trial as tainted by prejudice against Italians. Felix Frankfurter, then a Harvard Law School professor, said the judge handled the case with ‘misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions and mutilations.’

Sacco and Vanzetti became a cause celebre around the world. For the next six years, newspapers carried stories of efforts to save their lives. Protesters demonstrated on their behalf in major cities on every continent but Antarctica.

Portrait of a young muckraker

Upton Sinclair

In 1927, Upton Sinclair had a reputation as a bestselling writer and a Socialist. His novel The Jungle had exposed conditions in the meatpacking industry and led to the federal Meat Inspection Act.

Sinclair joined in the chorus from to stay the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

He called their conviction, ‘the most shocking crime that has been committed in American history since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.’

Sinclair had worked undercover for seven weeks in a meatpacking plant to write The Jungle. In researching his novel about Sacco and Vanzetti, Sinclair spent six weeks in Boston gathering material. He interviewed Vanzetti, attended a funeral, got the court transcript, interviewed reporters and sent hundreds of letters to verify facts.

As he wrote the novel, his doubts grew about their innocence. Then on Aug. 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti died in the electric chair in Charlestown State Prison.

Anthony Arthur, in his biography, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, recounted how the author discovered that Sacco and Vanzetti had committed the murders.

One of their lawyers, Fred Moore, told him they had done it — but that the whole legal system was corrupt.

“Alone in a hotel room with Fred, I begged him to tell me the full truth,” wrote Sinclair. “He then told me that the men were guilty and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”

Wonder and Doubt

Knowing their lawyer believed in the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, Sinclair didn’t know what to do. He called it the most difficult ethical problem of his life.

In the end, he left the reader of Boston uncertain – ‘to wonder and doubt,’ in his words — about their guilt or innocence. He believed that an unjust system condemned Sacco and Vanzetti as anarchists and foreigners from the start.

Sinclair hoped to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction that year, 1929, but lost out to Julia Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary.

Boston, By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13436452. This story was updated in 2022.

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