Vincent “The Animal” Ferrara is a former capo in the New England Patriarca crime family who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison after the FBI secretly recorded his 1989 Mafia induction ceremony, then released in 2005 when a federal judge found that prosecutors had coerced his guilty plea by hiding evidence that their key witness had recanted.1 His case is one of the most consequential prosecutorial misconduct rulings in the history of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.
Who He Was in the Patriarca Family
Born around 1948 or 1949, Ferrara came up through the Boston faction of the New England Patriarca crime family. By the late 1970s he was an associate in the regime of Boston underboss Danny Angiulo. He was made a soldier in 1983 and eventually rose to capo, overseeing criminal operations in Boston’s North End.
Two younger associates, Pasquale “Patsy” Barone and Vincent James “Jimmy” Limoli Jr., worked under him from the 1970s onward, starting out selling illegal fireworks on his behalf. Barone told others he was “under Ferrara’s wing” and needed Ferrara’s permission to commit crimes. Those relationships would sit at the center of the federal case built against all three men.
Prosecutors alleged Ferrara had been involved in violence from a young age. Witness Elizabeth DiNunzio testified that on December 11, 1977, Ferrara shot Giacomo “Jackie” DiFronzo in the head at an Endicott Street club on orders from Gennaro Angiulo, then set the club on fire with the body inside. He was also alleged to have taken part in the July 1979 killing of Anthony “Dapper” Corlito. The district court would later describe the evidence tying him to both killings as “sparse and weak.”
The 1989 FBI Induction Ceremony
On October 29, 1989, at 34 Guild Street in Medford, Massachusetts, the FBI did something federal agents had never managed before: they recorded a Mafia induction ceremony. The operation was made possible by Angelo “Sonny” Mercurio, a Boston Mafia soldier turned informant, who tipped agents months in advance and, on the night itself, drove New England boss Raymond “Junior” Patriarca to the house.
The night before, FBI agents posing as utility workers ran a wire from the house to a nearby property. Agents photographed attendees from a building across the street. The tapes captured the induction of four new members, complete with pricked trigger fingers, the swapping of blood with “godfathers,” burning holy cards, and pledges of loyalty. Ferrara, then about 41, was identified through FBI surveillance photography at the ceremony, along with Joseph “J.R.” Russo and Robert Carrozza.
The Guilty Plea and 22-Year Sentence
Ferrara was indicted in 1989 in United States v. Ferrara, Crim. No. 89-289-WF, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. A 1990 superseding indictment charged him in 35 of 65 total counts, including racketeering conspiracy and substantive racketeering. Three predicate murders were alleged to establish the pattern: the killings of DiFronzo, Corlito, and Limoli. He was separately charged with conspiring to murder and murdering Limoli, but not with substantive counts for DiFronzo or Corlito.
The Limoli case rested almost entirely on Walter Jordan, a cooperating witness and Barone’s former brother-in-law. Jordan claimed Ferrara had ordered the October 1985 killing of Limoli, who had stolen a bag of cash and cocaine from a Patriarca soldier, and that Barone carried out the shooting on Ferrara’s instructions.
On January 22, 1992, Ferrara pleaded guilty to all 35 counts and received a 264-month sentence. The plea agreement granted him immunity from federal prosecution for other uncharged murders but did not require him to admit any role in the DiFronzo or Corlito killings. He consistently denied ordering the Limoli murder and refused to accept responsibility for any of the three killings in probation interviews.
The Suppressed Recantation That Freed Him
In 1991, before Ferrara’s guilty plea, Jordan told Boston Police Detective Martin Coleman that his testimony against Ferrara was false. Coleman documented the recantation in a handwritten report and gave it to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn, the lead prosecutor. Auerhahn never turned the report over to Ferrara’s defense.
Jordan went public with the recantation in 2002, saying he had lied at the direction of government agents and that Auerhahn and an FBI agent had pressured him into sticking to the false story.
Judge Mark Wolf called the suppressed memo “the smokingest gun I’ve ever seen” and said it could have led to Ferrara’s acquittal. He described the plea deal as a “horrible charade” and found that prosecutors may have coerced Ferrara into admitting to a murder he had no part in. Both the district court and the First Circuit characterized Auerhahn’s conduct as “outrageous,” “egregious,” and “blatant misconduct.”
On May 13, 2005, the district court vacated Ferrara’s two Limoli murder convictions and resentenced him to time served on the remaining racketeering counts. The government argued he posed “an immediate and significant danger to the public” and asked the court to hold him during appeal. The court refused. Ferrara walked out of federal prison on May 26, 2005, after roughly 16 years inside. The First Circuit affirmed the ruling on August 10, 2006, finding the government’s suppression and manipulation of Jordan had rendered the guilty plea involuntary.
The same misconduct freed Barone. Judge Wolf determined in 2003 that Auerhahn had also withheld Jordan’s recantation from Barone’s defense, and Barone was eventually resentenced to time served. The judge publicly apologized to him.
What Happened to the Prosecutor
Auerhahn faced very little professional consequence. In 2005, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility found he had acted with “reckless disregard of discovery obligations” and exercised “poor judgment.” The U.S. Attorney issued a private written reprimand.
In 2007, Judge Wolf asked Massachusetts Bar Counsel to open formal disciplinary proceedings. A three-judge panel denied the petition in full, concluding Bar Counsel had not proved by clear and convincing evidence that Auerhahn had actual knowledge of Jordan’s recantation. The panel found some of his other disclosure failures negligent but held that negligence alone did not establish a disciplinary violation. In July 2013, the First Circuit dismissed Bar Counsel’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction, ruling it lacked standing. Auerhahn was neither disbarred nor suspended and remained employed with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.
Life After Prison
Ferrara’s release came with three years of supervised release, which barred him from committing crimes or associating with felons or people engaged in criminal activity without his probation officer’s permission.
In April 2008, weeks before that term was set to expire, a Norfolk County grand jury indicted him on a charge of conspiracy to use a telephone for bookmaking. Prosecutors said he had been caught on wiretaps speaking with Dominic Santoro, identified as the chief architect of a gambling ring. Federal prosecutors moved to revoke his supervised release. Judge Wolf found probable cause for the gambling and association violations but not for an added extortion allegation, and refused to send Ferrara back to prison. The parties reached a tentative resolution: Ferrara would admit to the association violation, the government would drop the gambling piece, and the recommended sentence was one day in prison followed by two years of supervised release. In September 2009, a Norfolk Superior Court jury acquitted him of the state conspiracy charge. He said throughout that his calls to the alleged bookmaker concerned his restaurant business.
In September 2021, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office seized $268,000 from two of Ferrara’s bank accounts under a search warrant. Ferrara, then 73, said he received no notice or explanation. He stated that $250,000 came from a fee he earned as a “facilitator” in a legitimate real estate transaction and the remaining $18,000 from lawful business income and Social Security. After a February 2022 demand letter went unanswered, he filed a complaint in Suffolk Superior Court in late April 2022 seeking an injunction ordering Attorney General Maura Healey’s office to return the money. The Attorney General’s office responded that the seizure was tied to a “broad, ongoing criminal investigation” in which Ferrara was a person of interest. Judge Elaine Buckley denied the injunction, and ordered the state’s written response impounded for three years, until May 2025, to protect the investigation.