Some Mafia observers contend that New England’s Raymond Patriarca was the most double-dealing Mafia boss in the country. The head of the Massachusetts state police once told a legislative committee that Patriarca was so ruthless and devious that he regularly hijacked liquor shipments he was hired to protect.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Patriarca, until his death in 1984, was much respected by other Mafia bosses, and he was frequently called in to serve as a mediator in gang wars. While doing time in the early l970s for his part in a double murder conspiracy, Patriarca was, much like Vito Genovese, able to run his mob from behind bars. And whether imprisoned or free, he often warned other Mafia bosses to stay out of his territory—all of New England—and they did.
Patriarca ran his organization with an iron fist. He once ordered an old mafioso to murder his own son because the son had cost Patriarca some money in a crime arrangement that went awry. When the old mafioso fell to his knees, crying he could not kill his own son, Patriarca threw the man out of the organization. The only reason he did not have the old man killed was that Henry Tameleo, his underboss managed to cool Patriarca off and get him to relent on the murder order.
    |
Patriarca’s ruthlessness extended to his men in other ways. Once Patriarca put up $22,000 for his men to handle a load of stolen cigarettes. Unfortunately, the FBI seized the load. That did not interest Patriarca in the least; he wanted his money back— Patriarca was always a partner in profits, but never in losses. His men had to scrounge up the $22,000 to pacify their boss.
Patriarca also tolerated no upstart trying to start up criminal activities in his area. He demonstrated his thoroughness in the Irish wars in Boston when a young gangster named Bernard McLaughlin tried to muscle in on the mob’s loan-sharking rackets. McLaughlin and his supporters were virtually exterminated to the last man. In another explosion of his infamous temper, Patriarca for a time put a death sentence on his own brother because, while in charge of mob security, he had failed to spot a FBI bug placed in Patriarca’s office.
Born to Italian immigrant parents in 1908 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Patriarca moved to Providence when he was four. He left school at eight to shine shoes and work as a bellhop. Eventually he discovered that armed robberies and working for liquor smugglers during Prohibition were more rewarding. In the 1930s the Providence Board of Public Safety branded him “Public Enemy No. 1” and ordered the police to arrest him on sight.
Yet in all Patriarca went to jail only once in that period, for armed robbery in 1938. He got five years but only served a few months, which brought legislative calls in Massachusetts for an inquiry into the pardon granted him by then-Governor Charles F. Hurley. It turned out that a prime factor behind the pardon was a heartrending plea from one Father Fagin, who turned out to be a nonexistent priest. It developed the petition had been drawn up and guided past government officials by the governor’s right-hand man, Executive Councilor Daniel Coakley. Coakley was later impeached and barred thereafter from ever holding public office in the state.
The scandal marked Patriarca as a man with political connections, and by the early 1940s he had assumed a major Mafia leadership role. In the 1950s, he became the top boss, his influence extending from Providence to cover Boston and the rest of New England.
For a quarter of a century, as Patriarca built his base, he enjoyed relatively little public exposure. Finally though, because of Joseph Barboza, a Patriarca enforcer and hit man who turned informer, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, specifically having a mob member, Rocco DiSiglio, eliminated for being the fingerman for a stickup gang victimizing mob crap games.
He did six years for that, and when he came out he resumed leadership of the organization. Yet Patriarca enjoyed a spirit of loyalty where it might not be expected. Another mob informer, Vinnie Teresa, who effectively crippled much of the mob with his testimony in a number of trials, refused to testify against Patriarca. Raymond, he said, had always treated him fairly, and he would not cross him. There were few men who would have said that about Patriarca.
