Joe Salvati: The FBI Frame-Up and $101.7 Million Judgment

Joe Salvati was a Boston truck driver who spent nearly 30 years in prison for a 1965 gangland murder he did not commit, framed by FBI agents who knew the real killers were their own informants. The Salvati FBI frame-up ended with his 1997 release, a 2001 exoneration, and a $101.7 million federal judgment against the United States for the bureau’s role in sending him and three other innocent men away for life.

The 1965 Murder the FBI Saw Coming

Edward “Teddy” Deegan, described in court records as a “low-level tough,” was shot dead in Chelsea, Massachusetts on March 12, 1965. Two days before the killing, FBI Special Agent H. Paul Rico had sent a memo to Director J. Edgar Hoover reporting that Joseph “The Animal” Barboza and Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi were planning to murder Deegan.¹ After the killing, the bureau received further information confirming that Barboza and Flemmi had done it. Both men were FBI informants. The bureau suppressed everything.²

How Salvati Ended Up in the Story

In 1968, prosecutors put Barboza on the stand as the star witness against six men accused of killing Deegan. Barboza was a contract killer and one of the FBI’s most prized sources; the federal Witness Protection Program was essentially built around him.¹ He lied. Instead of naming Jimmy Flemmi, he pointed to Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone, Enrico Tameleo, Louis Greco, and two others.

The reason Barboza named Salvati was small and personal. Salvati owed him $400.¹ Agents Rico and Dennis Condon knew Barboza was lying. In a 1967 interview, Barboza had told them explicitly that he would never give information that would allow Jimmy Flemmi to “fry.”³ The agents understood he would shield his partner and pin the murder on others. They told state prosecutors they had checked out his story and it was true.⁴

Conviction and Life Sentences

On July 31, 1968, Salvati, Limone, Tameleo, and Greco were all convicted. Three received death sentences that were later commuted to life imprisonment after Massachusetts abolished the death penalty.⁵ Salvati was convicted as an accessory to murder and sentenced to life.⁶ A fifth defendant, Wilfred Roy French, was convicted as an accessory before the fact and later said he had participated only out of fear of Barboza and Flemmi.⁷

In the 1970s, Barboza apparently developed misgivings and tried to recant. FBI agents visited him in prison and threatened him: if he did not fire his lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, and refuse a polygraph, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.³ He backed down. The convictions stood.

Thirty Years Inside

Salvati went to prison with four children between the ages of four and fourteen. His wife, Marie, raised them alone, working while attending college and eventually running a Head Start program. She visited him every week for three decades. The children were taunted by classmates and subjected to invasive body searches on prison visits.⁸ Salvati missed birthdays, communions, graduations, weddings, and the births of his grandchildren.⁹

The person who kept the case alive was attorney Victor J. Garo. Another client asked Garo in 1977 to look at Salvati’s file. Marie Salvati gave him a $2,500 retainer; he handed it back and worked free of charge, putting somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 hours into the case over the next three decades. In 1988, Garo turned up a Chelsea police report that helped establish Salvati’s innocence.¹⁰

Nine more years passed before Massachusetts Governor William Weld commuted Salvati’s sentence on March 20, 1997. He was paroled after roughly 29 years in prison.⁸ WBZ-TV journalist Dan Rea spent 15 years reporting on the FBI’s role in the case and later called it his most important work in television.¹¹

The 1965 Documents Surface

Commutation was not exoneration. That came only after a Justice Department task force began digging through the FBI’s relationship with James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. In the summer of 2000, a special prosecutor found 1965 FBI documents proving that agents had known from the start that Salvati and the others were not involved in Deegan’s killing. On January 31, 2001, all charges against Salvati were formally dropped.⁶

Peter Limone was freed after more than 33 years when Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle vacated his conviction, ruling that undisclosed FBI documents cast fundamental doubt on Barboza’s testimony.¹² Wilfred Roy French was released in December 2001 after 34 years.⁷ Enrico Tameleo died in prison in 1985 after 18 years. Louis Greco died in prison in 1995 after 28 years.⁴

Congressional Hearings and an Apology

The House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Dan Burton, held hearings on the case in 2001 and 2002. Joseph and Marie Salvati and Victor Garo testified on May 3, 2001.⁹ Former agent Rico, subpoenaed to appear, denied helping to frame innocent men. Asked whether he had any remorse about Salvati serving 30 years for a crime he did not commit, Rico said: “What do you want, tears?”¹³

Committee members called the case one of the “greatest failures in the history of Federal law enforcement” and Representatives Burton and Christopher Shays offered formal apologies to the Salvati family. Marie Salvati had said that in all the years of her husband’s imprisonment, “no one ever had said sorry.”⁹

The $101.7 Million Judgment

Salvati, Limone, and the estates of Tameleo and Greco sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The case, Limone v. United States, went to a 22-day bench trial before U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner.¹⁴

On July 26, 2007, Judge Gertner ordered the government to pay $101.75 million. She found that FBI misconduct was “clearly the sole cause of this conviction,” that agents had protected informants by encouraging a witness to lie, and that they had treated the convicted men as “collateral damage” in the bureau’s war on the Mafia.⁴ She rejected the government’s argument that federal authorities bore no responsibility for a state prosecution, calling that claim “absurd” and writing, “No lost liberty is dispensable.”¹⁵

Using a baseline of $1 million per year of wrongful incarceration, the awards broke down as follows:¹⁶

Joseph Salvati: $29 million
Estate of Louis Greco Sr.: $28 million
Peter Limone Sr.: $26 million
Estate of Enrico Tameleo: $13 million
Family members: $1.05 million each to the wives of Limone and Salvati and to the estate of Tameleo’s deceased wife; $250,000 each to the ten children of the wrongly convicted men; $50,000 each to Greco’s ex-wife and Tameleo’s adult son

In August 2011, Judge Gertner added $716,745 in attorneys’ fees and costs, citing the government’s “bad faith” conduct in discovery.⁵

The Appeal

The government appealed. On August 27, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit modified the legal basis for liability but left the damages intact.¹⁴ The panel reversed the malicious prosecution finding, concluding that under Massachusetts law the FBI had not technically “instituted” the state case, but it affirmed liability on the separate ground of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court held that the bureau’s “knowing suppression of exculpatory evidence and assistance in framing the scapegoats” was extreme and outrageous conduct, and that the Federal Tort Claims Act’s discretionary function exception does not shield actions that violate the Constitution.¹⁷

On the size of the awards, the judges wrote that although the numbers were higher than they might have given themselves, they were not “so grossly disproportionate to the harm sustained as to either shock our collective conscience or raise the specter of a miscarriage of justice.”¹⁴ In May 2010, the government let the deadline for further appeal pass.¹⁰

Why It Happened

The frame-up was not a single bad decision by two agents. It grew out of the FBI’s “Top Echelon” informant program, in which the bureau cultivated organized crime figures and, in practice, gave them cover to commit serious crimes, including murder, in exchange for intelligence. Vincent Flemmi, the man who actually killed Deegan, was being developed as a Top Echelon informant by Agent Rico on the very day of the murder. He was never prosecuted for the killing.¹²

A 2004 House committee report found that FBI officials, including in Hoover’s own office, knew their informants were committing murders and continued to protect them. Former U.S. Attorney Jeremiah O’Sullivan testified that agents treated their informants as the “holy of holies” and that trying to investigate them would “precipitate World War III.” The lead prosecutor in the original Deegan case told Congress he was “outraged” by what the FBI had hidden and would never have brought the indictment had he known.¹²

What Happened to the Agents

Rico faced criminal charges, though not for what he did to Salvati. In 2003, he was arrested at his home near Miami and charged with murder in connection with the 1981 killing of Roger Wheeler, president of Telex Corporation and owner of World Jai Alai, where Rico had become chief of security after retiring from the FBI. Prosecutors alleged he gave Winter Hill Gang hitman John Martorano Wheeler’s address, car description, and daily routine; Wheeler was shot in the head after a round of golf.¹⁸ He was also indicted in Florida for the 1982 murder of World Jai Alai executive John “Jack” Callahan.¹³

Dennis Condon, Rico’s partner in handling Barboza, was subpoenaed by the House committee but cited poor health during the proceedings.¹ FBI Special Agent John Connolly, who ran Bulger as an informant and tipped him off to an impending indictment, was convicted and sentenced in 2002 to 10 years in prison for protecting organized crime figures.¹⁹

1
U.S. Government Publishing Office. The FBI’s Controversial Handling of Organized Crime Investigations in Boston
2
Seacoast Online. FBI Memos Show Hoover Knew
3
U.S. Government Publishing Office. House Committee on Government Reform Hearing
4
NBC News. Men Framed by FBI Awarded Millions
5
Courthouse News Service. U.S. Must Pay Fees for 1960s Mob Frame-Up
6
National Registry of Exonerations. Joseph Salvati
7
UPI. Judge Frees Mob Hit Convict
8
Hartford Courant. Wronged by the FBI, Free at Last
9
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Investigation Into Allegations of Justice Department Misconduct in New England
10
Boston Herald. After Three Decades, the Defense Rests Its Case
11
Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Dan Rea
12
U.S. Government Publishing Office. House Report 108-414
13
CBS News. Ex-FBI Agent Charged in Mob Hit
14
FindLaw. Limone v. United States, 579 F.3d 79
15
CBS News. Wrongfully Convicted Men Awarded $101M
16
Prison Legal News. First Circuit Upholds $101,750,000 in Damage Awards in FBI Misconduct Case
17
Casemine. Limone v. United States: Affirming FTCA Liability for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
18
New York Times. Ex-FBI Agent Is Charged in a 1981 Gangland Killing
19
Lawrence Journal-World. Men Framed for Murder by FBI Get Nearly $102M