U.S. seeks to keep Patriarca in prison

This story is from The Journal archives

But if he's not sentenced for crimes committed by members of his crime family, he could be out in less than two years.

By W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN
Thursday, 9/28/1995

Raymond J. "Junior" Patriarca, the deposed New England crime boss who has spent the past five years in prison, can see freedom approaching.

But he's waging battle with a formidable foe: The government.

Federal prosecutors want to tack 65 years onto Patriarca's 8-year sentence, for crimes that were committed by members of his organized-crime family during his watch in the 1980s.

If the government fails, Patriarca, 50, of Lincoln, could be out of prison in less than two years.

U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf is not expected to issue a ruling for several months.

Two federal marshals ushered the once-powerful mobster into a paneled courtroom yesterday. It was only his second public appearance since he began serving his prison sentence, in June 1992. (The first was last week, when the hearing got under way.)

Patriarca, who arrived in handcuffs, had gained weight. His face was fuller, and his green prison-issue, two-piece outfit, similar to hospital pajamas, snugly covered his belly.

One of Patriarca's lawyers said that the uncertainty over his future has been taxing.

"He is in a dreadful state of psychological limbo," said Kimberly Homan. "It has taken a visible toll on him."

To the casual observer, Patriarca looked as if he didn't have a care in the world. He slouched in his chair at the defense table, slipped on half-moon reading glasses and joked with Homan.

During a break, he chatted with one of the few spectators, apparently a friend, about his prison garb. Patriarca sheepishly apologized for his appearance, saying family members couldn't deliver a suit on time.

"Maybe we had a Jewish cleaners or something," he said, a reference to Monday's Rosh Hashanah holiday. "We couldn't pick the stuff up."

Patriarca rose to the head of the New England mob in 1984, after the death of his father, Raymond L.S. Patriarca, a revered and feared crime boss who led the family for decades from a storefront on Providence's Federal Hill.

Word quickly spread that the younger Patriarca was a weak, indecisive boss living on his father's reputation.

His greatest legacy is one of the mob's greatest embarrassments.

In October 1989, he officiated over a mob induction ceremony in Medford, Mass., which federal agents captured on tape. It was the first time the FBI had ever recorded a Mafia baptism.

In March 1990, federal authorities arrested Junior Patriarca on racketeering charges. For the next two years, he was confined to the federal prison in Danbury, Conn., leaving only for court appearances and treatment for bladder cancer.

In December 1991, Patriarca pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering, conspiracy and interstate travel to further the operations of the crime family that bears his father's name.

Six months later, in June 1992, he was sentenced by Judge Wolf to eight years and one month in prison, minus the two years already served.

The judge called Patriarca an "ambivalent and unusually weak boss," noting his tenuous grip on organized crime in New England, especially in Massaschusetts and Connecticut.

Wolf decided that he should be sentenced only for crimes for which he was personally charged.

Federal prosecutors disagreed and appealed the sentence.

In September 1993, the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government and sent the case back to Wolf for resentencing.

The appeals court ruled that Patriarca could be punished for crimes - even if he did not participate or authorize them - if they were within the scope of his racketeering conspiracy.

Prosecutors have cited these crimes in asking Wolf to increase Patriarca's sentence:

*The slaying in 1985 of Boston mob associate Vincent James Limoli Jr., who had stolen drugs from another Mafia soldier.

*The 1986 killing of Theodore Berns, of Peabody, Mass., whose body was found buried under the garage of a mob associate in Hamden, Conn. Government prosecutors said they had evidence Berns was having an affair with the wife of Salvatore "Mickey" Caruana of West Peabody, Mass., a mob drug smuggler.

*The narcotics activities of Robert Carrozza, a former mob captain in Boston.

*Drug trafficking involving Caruana, who disappeared in April 1983, while under indictment for the distribution of $173 million worth of marijuana. Caruana has never been found, and investigators think he was the victim of a mob killing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James D. Herbert argued before Judge Wolf yesterday that Junior Patriarca was Caruana's protector. The FBI, secretly recording conversations in the headquarters of Boston mobster Gennaro J. Angiulo in the early 1980s, established that Patriarca received a cut of Caruana's drug trafficking operation, Herbert said.

A Patriarca lawyer, Martin G. Weinberg, dismissed the government's argument, saying that Angiulo was notorious for running off at the mouth. He contended that Junior Patriarca was only a messenger for his powerful father in the early 1980s, and that he was not in a position to control Caruana or anyone else.

Weinberg also insisted that Patriarca and his father abhorred drugs.

Patriarca is currently imprisoned in the Plymouth County House of Corrections. Also there now, ironically, is his latest successor, Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme.

Salemme, of Sharon, Mass., was captured in Florida last month, eight months after FBI agents were poised to arrest him on racketeering charges.