BELOW RIGHT: Gerald M. Tillinghast, center, in 1978, with his arm around the man he was convicted of murdering, George Basmajian, left. Matthew L. Guglielmetti is at right.

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Journal files

To hear Harold L. Tillinghast Jr. tell it, he has been running from the sins of his father his whole life.

He was 15 years old, a student at Cranston High School East who “never stole a candy bar,” when his father, the notorious mob figure Harold L. Tillinghast Sr., was convicted of murder one. The father and his brother, mob hit man Gerald M. “Gerry” Tillinghast, had pumped nine rounds into a loan shark, George Basmajian, in a stolen car near T.F. Green Airport.

His uncle was a feared enforcer for the Patriarca crime family in the 1960s and 1970s. In one famous case in which he was acquitted, Gerald Tillinghast was accused of participating in the Bonded Vault heist of 1975, when mobsters cleaned out safe-deposit boxes of an estimated $3 million in cash, gold and jewelry reputed to have been stashed by other wise guys.

His father was arrested more than two dozen times, including several busts for breaking and entering around the time of his son’s birth. When a state police detective bumped into him in prison and asked how he was doing, Tillinghast responded, “Not guilty.” In a more candid moment, Tillinghast attributed his criminal conduct to poor judgment, stupidity and putting himself in risky situations.

Between his parents’ break-up and his father’s imprisonment, the son says that he didn’t really meet his father until he was 21, when he was working as an intern at the Rhode Island State House and dad was at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Later, when his father went back to prison for his role in a mob gambling ring — a ring that Uncle Gerry ran from his prison cell in New Hampshire –– the son had embarked on a career in government. He worked on the campaigns of James R. Langevin, first for Rhode Island secretary of state and later for Congress, and found work on Langevin’s staff.

f“My father was proud of me, that I never got into trouble, that I had stayed out of jail,” said Tillinghast. “I didn’t know wise guys. My father would never allow me to associate with them. He’d say, ‘It’s not your world. It’s not who you are.’ ”

Harold Tillinghast Sr. was last released from prison in 2004, two days after his son’s 40th birthday. He died four months later.

“He was involved with organized crime, he was a tough guy,” the son recalled. “But when I met him, he wasn’t. He was a little different than he was portrayed. But I’m looking at it from a son’s perspective.”

Asked about his uncle Gerry, Tillinghast smiled and said, “No comment.”

The son gravitated toward politics, not crime. He worked on local campaigns in Cranston, attended City Council meetings, was appointed to the city purchasing board and hoped to run for local political office someday. He drove Representative Langevin to campaign events. He served on the board of a Providence food pantry.

But in 2001, the son made a fateful decision. He quit his job at the State House to become an organizer with the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Rhode Island. The work –– organizing in the public sector, dealing with companies, using his political and communications skills –– appealed to him. He put aside the fact that, over the years, the Laborers’ had been honeycombed with wise guys, and the target of a massive federal racketeering probe. Or that his boss was the nephew of reputed New England mob boss Louis “Baby Shacks” Manocchio and had done time for manslaughter.

He also put aside the advice of his father, a union member, who he says told him not to go to the union but to stay at the State House. Harold Tillinghast Sr. was a member of the Laborers; his obituary listed his occupation as “laborer.”

In retrospect, the son says that the father was right.

“Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I would have done something else,” he said. “But I didn’t think that when I went to work for the Laborers’ that I was going to walk into the middle of an FBI investigation.”

THREE WEEKS AGO, Harold Tillinghast Jr., 44, of Cranston and contractor Gerald Diodati, 59, of Seekonk, were charged in federal court in Providence with conspiracy to commit labor racketeering.

According to an FBI affidavit, Tillinghast took $2,500 in kickbacks from an undercover FBI agent posing as a corrupt contractor seeking entry into the tight-knit Rhode Island construction industry. Authorities allege that the agent also enlisted an unsuspecting Diodati as his partner, and that Diodati helped open doors with the mob and the union.

Tillinghast also allegedly acted as a go-between with other, unnamed union officials and passed along a $2,000 Christmas-time payoff to one identified only as “LIUNA Official Number One.”

When Mafia capo regime Matthew L. Guglielmetti confided that he was a silent partner in the firm, Tillinghast purportedly responded that he now had to “work harder” to get the company more union construction contracts, the affidavit says. In another conversation for which Tillinghast was not present, Guglielmetti allegedly told the undercover FBI agent that “his status as a member of La Cosa Nostra afforded him special influence with LIUNA in Rhode Island and elsewhere.”

The undercover agent secretly recorded his dealings with union officials.

Tillinghast says that he knew Guglielmetti casually, having met him once at a Johnston bar during a Monday Night Football game, and from a gym they both belonged to.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente declined to comment on the status of the investigation, or to say if more people are expected to be charged.

In January 2005, FBI agents marched into the Laborers’ offices in Providence with search warrants for the offices of Tillinghast, his boss Nicholas P. Manocchio and a union training fund administrator, state Sen. Dominick J. Ruggerio. The same day, they arrested Guglielmetti.

Tillinghast said that he first met Manocchio years ago, when Manocchio ran a baseball-card shop on Oaklawn Avenue in Cranston and Tillinghast was a collector. Years later, while working for Langevin, Tillinghast said that he bumped into Manocchio at the State House and then wound up talking to him when he was interested in a job with the Laborers’.

Tillinghast knew that Manocchio had been in prison for manslaughter, convicted in the beating death of a former rock band stage manager outside a North Providence nightclub in 1980. The crime occurred when Manocchio, a graduate student in microbiology, was home on vacation. Tillinghast said that he also knew that Manocchio’s uncle was Baby Shacks Manocchio. But he didn’t hold that against him.

“I didn’t want to judge him on his uncle any more than I wanted him to judge me on who my father was,” said Tillinghast.

After headlines about the raid, Langevin said in an interview last week, he confronted Tillinghast, who was working part time for the congressman’s campaign as his driver.

“I asked him what’s this about? Was he involved in anything that could negatively reflect on this office?,” said Langevin. “He said absolutely not. He didn’t know why they had searched the office.”

Langevin said that he was “angry and disappointed” at Tillinghast’s arrest. In 2002 and 2003, when Tillinghast was being secretly recorded by the undercover FBI agent, he was also working part time in Langevin’s district office in Warwick, then as the disabled congressman’s driver to campaign events on the weekend.

Responds Tillinghast, “No one is more disappointed in the system than I am.”

Tillinghast volunteered on Langevin’s first campaign for secretary of state, in 1994, then worked six years as an administrative assistant and constituent services representative in the secretary of state’s office at the State House. He also worked on Langevin’s first campaign for Congress, in 2000, and then part time as a staff assistant in Langevin’s district office in Warwick for two years.

As a campaign aide, said Langevin, “he would help set out the pastries and coffee at the senior high-rises prior to meet-and-greets.”

Tillinghast continued to work part time as a paid driver for the campaign until last year, when Langevin says he fired him upon learning that Tillinghast’s driver’s license had been suspended for a motor-vehicle violation. Tillinghast, who says he lost track of an old Massachusetts traffic ticket that he has since taken care of, continued to volunteer for the congressman’s reelection campaign this year.

Tillinghast’s arrest also came as a surprise in Cranston, where he has served on the city Board of Contract and Purchase since 2003.

Councilwoman Paula McFarland initially appointed Tillinghast to the board, which has the power to approve millions of dollars in purchases for the city, ranging from supplies to building repairs. McFarland said that Tillinghast was recommended by Langevin’s office as well as a Cranston state senator, Beatrice Lanzi, on whose campaign he had volunteered.

“It surprised me when I read that he might have been involved in some sort of union kickback scheme,” said McFarland. “Ethically, you want people you appoint to public boards to uphold the highest ethical standards.”

Tillinghast’s appointment has been renewed annually since 2003, even after publicity over the 2005 FBI raid on his union office.

City Council President Aram Garabedian said that he wasn’t aware of the FBI raid. He and other members of the purchasing board praised Tillinghast’s service on the board.

But after his arrest, Garabedian called Tillinghast prior to the board’s next meeting and said that it would probably be best if he didn’t come to meetings “while this is hanging over him.” Tillinghast agreed.

Garabedian said that the criminal charge against Tillinghast surprised him, because he has always found him to be a “conscientious” member of the board, very responsible in decisions regarding the expenditure of taxpayer money.

Tillinghast echoed that, citing an instance when he questioned the city’s plan to purchase a floor waxer for a new elementary school, insisting that it be shared among several schools.

“I was always on the side of the taxpayers,” he said.

He declined to comment on the criminal charge, saying only that he is innocent, that the Harold Tillinghast depicted in the FBI affidavit “isn’t me.”

Now, he says, his status on the Cranston board is in limbo, as is the good name he has tried to build to escape his father’s shadow. After the FBI searched his office in 2005, Tillinghast said, he left the Laborers’ and went to work for Diodati, the contractor with whom he was recently charged, attempting to develop an old textile mill in Coventry, the Harris Mill Complex.

Last year, Tillinghast said, he helped arrange for his uncle Gerry to get a job at Harris Mill as a security guard when he was paroled after serving nearly 30 years in state prison for the Basmajian murder. Harold Tillinghast said that he did so at the request of another family member, persuading a reluctant Diodati to hire him.

His uncle worked there six or seven months. Harold Tillinghast worked for Diodati until early this year; he says, leaving because the project has floundered in the poor economy. Now, he is out of work as he contemplates his fate. A youth sports coach, he says a rival coach is out to have him banned from the league. And he was asked to resign as president of the board of the Camp Street Community Ministries, the Providence food pantry, though he says he will continue to volunteer.

“I know my last name. I’ve spent 44 years working hard to stay out of trouble, bringing people turkeys, working with youths, working in the public sector,” he said. “How do I put myself back together after this, even if I’m found innocent? It’s a black mark forever.”

mstanton@projo.com