The FBI’s Boston office has quietly disbanded its organized crime office. It’s a testament to the current toothlessness of the New England Mafia, which once controlled illegal gambling, loansharking, and extortion rackets throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and beyond.
Raymond Patriarca, the feared mob boss who ruled the New England Mafia for three decades with an iron fist. The organization has been severely weakened since his death in the early 1980s. (Image: Crime Library)Sources who spoke to The Boston Globe this week said agents from the anti-Mafia squad had been reassigned to other priorities as the agency focuses on more immediate threats, such as terrorism, foreign espionage, and cybercrime.
However, the FBI will continue to “dedicate significant resources to work and eradicate transnational and regional organized criminal enterprises,” Kristen Setera, a spokesperson for the agency, told The Globe.
Shadow of ItselfThe once-feared New England Mafia has been in decline for decades thanks to in fighting between rival factions and countless prosecutions, often aided by some members’ willingness to break the previously sacrosanct “Omerta” code of silence – or “rat” in Mafia parlance.
Steven O’Donnell, former superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, estimated that there were now only about 30 “made” members of the New England Mafia, compared to hundreds during its heyday in the 1960s.
It’s mostly figurehead people and wannabes … people pretending they are doing their best Sopranos act,” former Massachusetts State Police detective lieutenant Steve Johnson told The Globe. “It’s mostly just in name. They are certainly not what they used to be.”
The news comes shortly after the death at age 93 of Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, former boss of the , perhaps the last “old-school” gangster to lead the New England Mafia.
He rose through the family ranks in the 1960s under its most powerful boss, Raymond Patriarca, who ruled for three decades. Following Patriarca’s death in 1984, the family descended into internal warfare as members of the Rhode Island and Boston factions vied for control.
Breaking Up the FamilyThe 1980s and 1990s also saw a glut of federal prosecutions that sent eight bosses and underbosses to prison.
These were aided by improvements in surveillance technology that enabled the Boston office to capture the first-ever recording of a Mafia induction ceremony. This helped secure the prosecution of Patriarca’s son, Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, among other mafiosi.
Some of these convictions were also aided by information provided by James “Whitey” Bulger, boss of the Irish American Winter Hill Gang and longtime FBI informant
Bulger AffairBut the Boston organized crime office didn’t always cover itself in glory. In 1982, Bulger’s FBI handler, John Connolly, leaked information to the mobster that colleagues at the FBI were investigating links between the Winter Hill Gang and John Callahan, president of Florida betting operation World Jai Alai.
Bulger had already murdered World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler after the latter discovered the gang had been skimming profits from his business.
Connolly told Bulger and cohort Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi that Callahan was about to spill the beans on Wheeler’s death. Callahan’s body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac in a parking lot at Miami International Airport soon after.
Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in 2002 on racketeering, obstruction of justice, and murder charges, all tied to his relationship with Bulger. He was paroled in 2021.
Bulger famously went on the lam for 16 years before he was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011 at the age of 81.
In 2018, he in prison by an inmate with
