Vincent Flemmi

Vincent James Flemmi (1935 - 1979), aka "Jimmy The Bear" aka ""Vinnie the Butcher" was a hitman for Somerville, Massachusetts's Winter Hill Gang and was the brother of government informant Stephen Flemmi.

Biography

Vincent J. Flemmi was born to first generation Italian immigrants Giovanni Flemmi and Mary Irene Flemmi. He was raised in the Orchard Park tenement located at 25 Ambrose Street in Roxbury, Massachusetts. It was the same neighborhood that Patriarca crime family capo Illario Baione and Illario Zannino were born and raised. His father Giovanni was a bricklayer who, according to fellow mobster Kevin Weeks, served in the Italian Army during World War I. His mother was a full-time homemaker who never lost her thick Italian accent. During the McLaughlin-Hughes Gang War Vincent, along with Joseph Barboza became so feared, that the city's newspaper photographers often attached a note on the back of their arrest photos: "NO credit on photograph." He was a pedophile and serial killer like his brother Stephen. Once in 1964 he murdered an ex-con named Francis Benjamin in an Uphams Corner bar and then decapitated him. Flemmi left the headless torso in a South Boston housing project (the head was never found). He is the brother of Stephen Flemmi and Michael S. Flemmi.

Relationship with FBI

In May 1964, FBI Special Agent John Connolly filed a report on a conversation another one of his informants had with Vincent: "Flemmi told him all he wanted to do now is kill people, and that it is better than hitting (robbing) banks." Vincent's homicidal tendencies became so out of hand that Gennaro Anguilo held a sit down with Vincent inside an FBI-bugged room on Tremont Street. From now on, Anguilo told him-- Raymond Patriarca would have to approve each of his hits , personally, just as he had done with Joseph Barboza. In March 1965, H. Paul Rico wanted to make Vincent a Top Echelon Informant for the FBI. On March 10, 1965 H. Paul Rico filed a report quoting an informant as saying that Vincent was going to murder Edward Deegan and that a "dry run has already been made and that a close associate of Deegan's has agreed to set him up." Two days later, despite their knowledge of the impending murder of Deegan, the Boston FBI office approved Vincent as an informant and assigned him to the agent who had recruited him, H. Paul Rico.

Edward Deegan Murder

That evening, Edward Deegan was shot to death by Vincent Flemmi and Joseph Barboza, among others in an alleyway in Chelsea. Within hours, J. Edgar Hoover had a memo from the Boston field office on his desk accurately identifying all the shooters, the actual shooters, as opposed to the four innocent men who would be convicted of the crime on the false testimony of Joseph Barboza in 1968.

Deegan Murder Coverup and Conspiracy

Investigative reporter Howie Carr would later surmise, "For the FBI, it was more important to keep Vincent, and later Barboza, on the street as informants than it was to prevent the framing of innocent men. In fact, the railroading of the four men served two purposes for the FBI, it would enable Vincent and Joseph Barboza to escape conviction for a murder they had committed, and it would also remove several Patriarca crime family members or associates from the criminal world that the FBI had not been able to eliminate in a legal manner"." One of Deegan's friends told him about a bank burglary in Chelsea, and he'd meet up with several guys from from Ebb Tibe, a mafia-run gin mill on Revere Beach. Vincent's shooting party would include mob associate, Joseph Barboza.

Theodore Deegan was a maternal nephew of Bonnano crime family capo Alphonse Indelicato and Anthony Indelicato. Once they got Deegan into the alleyway, they would open fire. This particular murder would quickly involve the FBI in a cover up, followed by perjured testimony, and finally the railroading of four innocent men to prison for more than thirty years for a crime they did not commit. And thirty five years later, the murder of Theodore Deegan would lead to a congressional investigation of corruption in the Boston office of the FBI. Rico did not care how many people Vincent murdered, as long as he could feed the FBI information about the Patriarca crime family.

Untimely Suspicious Death

In 1975, while serving an eleven-to-eighteen-year sentence for assault with intent to commit murder, he'd received one of the state's first weekend furloughs from prison. Vincent had immediately fled, and was not apprehended until three years later, in Maryland, Maine. On October 16th, 1979 Vincent died of an apparent heroin overdose at the state prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

References

* [http://thebrothersbulger.com/Jimmy%20(The%20Bear)%20Flemmi.htm]

* The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century by Howie Carr