March 27, 2019

When Ralph Francis DeLeo first began his criminal career in the 1960s, he hardly showed promise as a future mob boss. He was a loose associate of the Patriarca crime family, through being a lifelong friend of underboss Gennaro Anguilo, and pals with fellow Patrarica associate Franklin M. Goldman. DeLeo was described in the '70s by the Marion Star newspaper as a petty loanshark, but he established himself early on as a prolific stick-up artist… albeit not a very successful one.

In April of 1968, the 25-year-old DeLeo was arrested for three different stick-ups - an Orbit Department Store robbery in Boston's Dorcester section that took place that month, a 1966 South Shore Randolph branch bank robbery which netted him a mere $2738, and a San Juan, Puerto Rico supermarket robbery. In what was probably an oversight by the judges, DeLeo was granted a combined $107,000 bail on all three cases. Failing to learn his lesson, the one-man crime wave held up a bank in Cambridge for $35,000 only one month after his initial arrest and was arrested for that too.

DeLeo went to trial on December 18, 1968. Doomed for a long sentence behind bars, Ralph - who had amazingly been granted bail for the fourth time - robbed the Capitol Bank and Trust Co. in Boston on January 2, 1969, netting somewhere between $10,000 to $15,000. After a bumbling attempt to evade the law, DeLeo was arrested later that day. That would be the last of DeLeo's earliest shenanigans for the time being, but after his release on bail, he jumped right into the art of stick-ups. In 1976, the bumbling thief was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping, and given a 25-to-40 year sentence at the Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts.

But DeLeo was the type that apparently didn't take kindly to prison. He orchestrated a grand plan for his escape, relying more on luck than actual planning. On October 11, 1977, only a year into his sentence, DeLeo overpowered a guard at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. He was being treated for a stomach ailment in the hospital's special correctional ward and had concocted the perfect scheme to escape. He asked to go to the men's room and was accompanied by a guard.

"DeLeo was washing his hands and pulled what looked like a gun on the guard," said Corrections Department spokesman Larry Parnell. "Then he led (Corrections Officer) Scofield through the lobby of the outpatient clinic after forcing him to remove his chains."

He took the guard hostage as he escaped through the parking lot, where he jump-started a late-model car which had apparently been left for him by an accomplice. He used a screwdriver to start the car and was able to evade police across the city. After taking the guard's revolver, he dropped him off at Franklin Park and continued his stint on the lam.

DeLeo traveled to Columbus, OH., where he allegedly reconnected with former cellmate Dr. Donald Plotnick. Laying low on Plotnick's farm, Ralph was introduced to Dr. David Ucker, a deputy county coroner and medical professional who hired the Boston bank robber for a job. Ralph was tasked with kidnapping Dr. Walter T. Bond, a prominent African-American physician and an organizer of a local abortion clinic in Columbus. In a plot straight out of a hospital soap opera, Ucker had apparently been dating a pharmacist, and Dr. Bond allegedly drugged and raped her.

On Halloween Night, 1977, Dr. Ucker came to DeLeo's trailer on the farm and gave him a gun and a deputy sheriff's jacket that he had swiped per his role as a coroner. Ucker even got him a sheriff's badge which DeLeo pinned to his coat.

"He (Ucker) said he wanted to get even somehow," later recalled DeLeo. "He said he wanted to ruin the man medically." DeLeo offered to dish out a beating to Dr. Bond, but Ucker demanded the man be castrated. On October 31, 1977, DeLeo - donned in the full sheriff's attire - approached the alleged rapist, Dr. Bond, as he left his office and told him he had a warrant for his arrest. What exactly happened on Bond's doorstep is unclear, but the abortion doctor ended up with two bullets in the head and chest after a deadly, heat-of-the-moment change of plans.

Ucker, who hadn't signed up for murder, helped DeLeo hide the phony uniform on a railroad track and threw the .38 revolver in a creek. He then paid DeLeo $1000 for the botched hit, and the fugitive went back to life on the run. With help from Dr. Ucker, DeLeo was hooked up with a doctor in Chicago who performed plastic surgery on him to change his appearance, but he fled the hospital without paying his tab. With investigators hot on his tail, DeLeo even rubbed his fingerprints off with sandpaper.

In a last-ditch effort for money, DeLeo tried to rob the City National Bank in downtown Colombus., on March 11, 1978. His bizarre weapon of choice was a hand grenade, and after a panicked attempt to hold the bank manager hostage, DeLeo fled in a stolen Mercedes. Police shot and wounded DeLeo, forcing him to a stop, and he was apprehended under his assumed name, Matthew C. Loren. On his person were a wig and a fake beard.

Reading the writing on the wall, DeLeo agreed to cooperate with authorities. He told them about a jewelry heist he did on February 23 and decided to return the gems. But, of more importance to prosecutors, he implicated his former employer Dr. Ucker in the murder of Dr. Walter Bond. Initially, a local drug addict named Anthony Washington was arrested for the killing, but cops quickly released him when DeLeo spilled the beans in March of 1978. The gun identified as the murder weapon was found in a creek where DeLeo, removed in handcuffs and leg chains from the county jail in Columbus, had been taken by police to search for the weapon. Interestingly enough, the Columbus Dispatch wrote in 1978 that as the Massachusetts Parole Board reviewed DeLeo's cooperation, the FBI, in the meantime, reportedly expressed an interest in talking to DeLeo about organized crime in the Boston area.

At the same time that he was cooperating with the government concerning the Bond case, Ralph DeLeo was also being questioned about the possible involvement of two friends in a 1976 slaying in Maine. James A. Cassidy, 43, a banker from Brooklin, Mass., disappeared on April 4, 1976, with at least $350,000 in valuable stamps. He lived in Brookline and operated a stamp and coin collection business in the Chestnut Hill section on Newton, Mass. in his free time. Cassidy was also accused of stealing $1,150,000 from the bank he worked at, and after police uncovered his badly-burned body in his torched station wagon, neither the stamps nor the embezzled money was found. Despite DeLeo's cooperation, nobody was ever charged with Cassidy's murder.

On May 17, 1979, Ralph F. DeLeo formally pleaded guilty to being the "trigger man" in the Bond murder and was sentenced to 15-to-life in state prison. He would be eligible for parole by 1989. Since he had cooperated in part with investigators and had given some information about organized crime in Boston, DeLeo was quoted as saying he expected to be killed if forced to return to state prison in Massachusetts. He instead volunteered to be moved to a federal prison, where he hoped he'd be safer. James E. Phillips, assistant Franklin County prosecuting attorney, worked for months to get the cooperation of the Massachusetts parole board, the state Department of Corrections and federal prison officials to agree to DeLeo's requests. He was assured that he could serve his time in a fed institution, that the Massachusetts Correction Dept. would give him credit for time served elsewhere and that the parole board would give him some consideration if he applied for parole in ten years, sources for the Columbus Dispatch said. He was arraigned and released on bail, pending the trial of Ucker, where his testimony would hopefully sink the crooked doctor.

On May 25, Dr. David Ucker was indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on charges of aggravated murder, complicity to kidnap and unlawful transfer of a firearm. The trial began on August 20, in which DeLeo spelled out the Bond murder from start to finish." I was mad," DeLeo gave as his simple explanation for killing Bond.

But the case against Ucker began falling apart for other reasons. On August 30, Robert E. Cornette, a laboratory analyst, testified that the bullets found in Dr. Walter Bond could never have been in a human body. Cornette, the operator of Maple Knoll Laboratories in Columbus, said he conducted tests on the bullets at the request of Ucker's attorneys. Cornette said he soaked the shells in a physiological saline solution but was unable to find any trace of human blood or tissue." It is my belief these bullets never came in contact with human blood or human tissue," he told the court, an allegation which was sharply contested by prosecutors.

The three-week trial of Ucker ended in September, and the jury needed only a day to decide that the doctor was not guilty of Bond's murder. This didn't matter to DeLeo, who had received the go-ahead from the Massachusetts Parole Board to serve his sentence in federal prison.

In moving to the prison at Baxtrop, Texas, DeLeo went from fearing that the Boston Mafia would kill him to befriending one of New York's most up-and-coming caporegimes. It was a bizarre change of pace indicating that DeLeo never really feared Boston mob retribution, but was more concerned with state prisons in general which are generally harsher than federal institutions.

In December 1986, the 43-year-old DeLeo became the cellmate of Alphonse' Little Allie Boy' Persico, 32. In fact, DeLeo also became close to incarcerated Gambino soldier Oreste' Ernie Boy' Abbamonte, a pal of the late John Gotti. Neither men had heard about DeLeo's testimony or his reputation as a New England mob snitch.

Little Allie Boy was serving a 12-year sentence for racketeering charges as a captain in the violent Colombo crime family, and the heir of imprisoned-for-life boss Carmine' Junior' Persico. During his stretch of incarceration, DeLeo watched as Little Allie Boy waged a mob war from federal prison, which left twelve people dead on the streets of Brooklyn. In fact, Allie even ordered his estranged wife's lover to be whacked, all from the confines of a Texas prison.

Despite an indictment for the mob war crimes in 1993, Alphonse was acquitted and released from prison the following year. With his rivals either dead or imprisoned, Allie Boy was crowned as the next Colombo family boss, with the blessing of his father. Carmine, meanwhile, was still commanding the crime family through his brothers and sons from a cushy 'country-club'-type prison in Lompoc, California.

DeLeo was rejected bail a few times but eventually got out of prison in 1997. The Patriarca crime family was dealing with its own internal warfare and apparently didn't notice that DeLeo was back out on the streets, living with impunity. His pal Allie kept him touch with him and made him an "on-record" associate. It was generally uncommon for crime family bosses to have direct links to associates, but Little Allie Boy disregarded those rules on multiple occasions. This is because the Colombo's official "books" had been closed for the past decade - courtesy of the bloody Brooklyn street war that Allie Boy waged from prison. That meant that, during the late '90s, associates were often held in the same regard as made members. Allie's right-hand-man and driver, Frank Guerra, hadn't been made, but attended high-ranking meetings with capos, and was often mistaken for a soldier. Similarly, un-made Florida wiseguy Reynold Maragni was Persico's point-of-contact for the Florida crew.

It took a Commission meeting at the turn of the millennium for the Borgata to finally be allowed to induct new blood. This was the right timing for DeLeo, since prison pal, Allie, had just been arrested on gun charges, and DeLeo wouldn't be able to stand up for himself if he wasn't made. According to mob researcher JD (http://lcnbios.blogspot.com/), DeLeo was inducted in mid-2000, and the Boston crook traveled to a residence in Babylon, L.I. to attend the ceremony.

Following his induction, DeLeo quietly formed a tight-knit crew of drug traffickers, loansharks, and bookies, all the while maintaining a full-time job as a maintenance man. As the Colombo family battled with federal prosecutors and informers in New York, DeLeo's crew quietly came to rule Somerville, a densely-populated community of artists and hipsters in Boston. He met every day with his two top lieutenants, driver Edward' Big Ed' Kulesza and former Patriarca family associate Franklin M. Goldman, at Vinny's Superette & Ristorante on 3320 76 Broadway, Somerville, just around the corner from Kulesza's house, or at Dunkin' Donuts when Vinny's wasn't available. A 275-pound Somerville native, Big Ed Kulesza, according to federal prosecutors, was DeLeo's chief "enforcer" and sometimes driver. His full-time job was mostly to iron out loansharking debts for the Somerville crew, but he also had a lucrative side racket selling his prescription painkillers.

Franklin M. Goldman, then in his 60s, had a similar backstory to DeLeo. He was an on-record associate of the Patriarca crime family in the 1960s and 1970s and was DeLeo's friend back in the day. But Goldman got caught up in legal troubles through most of the 1970s, and a 1993 cocaine sentence got him a 21-year sentence due to his status as a "repeat offender." Not scheduled for release until 2013, DeLeo bailed him out by confessing that a 1977 attempted kidnapping conviction - which was the basis for Goldman's "repeat offender" label - was committed by Ralph, not Franklin. Goldman was subsequently released in 2008 and quickly began working under DeLeo. He was involved in loansharking, and also supplied a woman with Kulesza's painkillers, referring to them on the phones as "shirts" or "salads."

With his two principal lieutenants, DeLeo's bread-and-butter rackets extended to Greater Boston, Arkansas, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. DeLeo kept off the radar, holding court at his basement apartment on Russell Street, in between Davis and Porter squares." He was actually a hard worker. He was a maintenance man for a local company. He put in a full days' work, then he got home, got on his computer, and read about the Colombo family and was very much involved in the daily activities of the Colombo family," said FBI Special Agent Todd Richards in February 2013. 

A third member of the crew was Little Rock, Arkansas gangster George' Karate George' Wylie Thompson, a former karate instructor, and Vietnam war vet. Thompson had previous convictions for cocaine, assault, and firearms possession back in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, but since his release from prison had stepped up his criminal game by forming a powerful gambling ring that took bets on NBA games and other sports. The operation Little Rock City Council alderman Sam Baggett helped hook Thompson up with some of the 147 weapons that police later found in Thompson's house. City council alderman Cary Gaines, an indebted gambler to the tune of thousands of dollars, even tried to scam the city to help pay off his gambling debts to Thompson. Gaines steered North Little Rock city business towards a particular concrete company and a landscaping company who, in turn, provided kickbacks to Thompson. Crew member Dana Kuykendall laundered some of the crew's money through the Mandalay Bay Casino. 

By this point, DeLeo's association with the Colombos wasn't really doing him much good. Little Allie Boy had been behind bars since 1999, fighting charges that he ordered his underboss whacked. This meant that DeLeo had no real connection to the Colombo family whatsoever, and it's unknown if he was even in a formal Mafia "crew." Nevertheless, DeLeo was able to earn some money from another pal he had befriended in prison, a Gambino soldier named Oreste' Ernie Boy' Abbamonte. From 2006 to 2008, the pair shook down the Deca Development company of Lynbook, Long Island, and when the company won a multi-million dollar construction job in Boston in 2008, DeLeo made sure to get his piece. He threatened labor problems for the contractor who was bidding on "the renovation of the Brooks Brothers store on Newbury Street" in the historic Back Bay section of Boston, according to Gang Land News, which reported that DeLeo and Abbamonte made off with over $1 million. DeLeo's relatively quiet criminal empire was thrust into the spotlight in June of 2008 when he found himself unexpectedly promoted as the Colombo crime family's newest street boss. Tommy' Shots' Gioeli, a longtime capo and feared hitman, had commanded the crime family on Little Allie Boy's behalf since 2003. He held an iron grip on the family by inducting all of his young, murderous underlings, and promoting them to leadership positions in the family, but FBI Colombo squad supervisor Scott Curtis poked holes in his defense. Curtis amassed evidence on old murders committed by the crew throughout the 1990s. He started with a low-ranking Bonanno associate who spilled the beans on an accidental 1992 killing. Fearing a life sentence on this hit, a young Gioeli underling named Joey Competiello began cooperating, and the domino of informants moved up the chain to Gioeli's longtime right-hand-man, capo Dino' Big Dino' Calabro, who copped to a total of eight murders. Gioeli was indicted in June of 2008, and again in December, all but ensuring he'd die behind bars. 

From prison, Little Allie Boy Persico was dividing his time between running the family and putting his college-educated brains to work to fight his own murder charge. According to Gang Land News, Persico was still concerned that rival mobsters, sour over the bloody 1990s war that tore the family apart, would seize the family for themselves. In fact, a tape-recording of one family capo seems to indicate that Persico's fears almost came true. In July of 2008, Teddy Persico Jr. was tape-recorded naming a former rival of the Persicos, Ben Castellazzo, as the new "acting boss." The details are scant, but it appears that very shortly after Castellazzo grabbed the top spot, the Persicos demoted him to "underboss.” In his place, Allie Persico made one of the Mafia's most bizarre and unorthodox moves. He made his old prison pal and confidante Ralph Francis DeLeo, 64, the new "street boss," even though the Somerville native knew almost nobody in the Big Apple.

For the most part, DeLeo was nothing more than a temporary figurehead for the Persico clan. He only traveled to New York once or twice a month, either by car or by plane, and placed the street-level decision making in the hands of the family's most prominent and experienced capos - Theodore "Skinny Teddy" Persico Jr., Benjamin "the Claw" Castellazzo and Richard "Richie Nerves" Fusco. To many of the lower-level soldiers and associates, DeLeo was a ghost, a non-entity in family affairs. When disputes arose over loansharking debts and gambling territories, it were those three captains on the street who organized sit-downs and heard grievances. It was Teddy Persico Jr. who ironed out a dispute between an imprisoned Colombo soldier who claimed others in the family were encroaching on his rackets. It was Richie Fusco who distributed lists of proposed inductees to others in the family for approval. It was Castellazzo who promoted and demoted captains in the wake of the family’s most recent bust in 2008. In the hundreds of hours of tapes from informants within the Colombo family during 2009, DeLeo’s name hardly comes up and when it does, he didn’t seem to have much authority. One Colombo captain who worked with DeLeo was Reynold Maragni, who met with the elusive new street boss in 2009. The pair talked business; Maragni had put DeLeo in touch with a contact in Montreal who could ship marijuana south of the border. DeLeo already had a small-time drug empire in Massachusetts, and met with Maragni to discuss shipping more marijuana down to Maragni’s crew in Florida. At the meeting, Maragni told DeLeo he was interested in the cross-country venture but cautioned that - despite DeLeo’s position as "boss" on the streets - he would still need to ask permission from higher-ups in the Colombo family.
"I told Ralph, I said, before I go forward, I want to get an okay," Maragni recalled. He met with Michael Persico, the son of the family’s imprisoned-for-life boss, Carmine. Since the life sentence of Carmine’s other son and designated heir Allie, Michael was seen by many as a conduit and representative for the Persico clan despite never being formally inducted.
"Well, I told Michael what Ralph's intentions were. I, I said: ‘Listen, this is what we laid out what we wanted to do, what we're interested in doing, but I'm not going to go forward with this unless I get an okay from your father.’ I said: ‘I know what his rule is against this so I want to make myself very clear of what we're planning to do here and I want to get an okay from your dad so I need to get a message to him.’ I said: ‘Now, I know your father. The minute that he hears what we're planning to do, he's going to blow his top in the visiting room and he's probably going to get pissed off and call me some kind of a name.’ Michael started laughing. ‘What if my father says no?’ I said: ‘If your father says no, that's no, that's it, that's the end of the story. I don't want anything to do with it.’"

It appears that DeLeo's promotion was only a temporary move until someone suitable was able to take the helm. Allie Persico, for instance, still had a fighting chance of beating his retrial, and various loyal capos - Andy Russo and Teddy Persico Sr., among others - would all be exiting prison within the next few years. In July of 2006, long before DeLeo’s promotion, Colombo associate Eddie Garofalo was tape-recorded discussing the upcoming trial of Allie Persico and its ramifications for the family. Eddie claimed that by 2010, once Andy "Mush" Russo was released from prison and completed the terms of his supervised release, he would run the family. This four-year prediction was spot on; Russo’s supervised release ended in March 2010, and Colombo informants tape-recorded Russo that month being introduced as such to other family members. Court records further indicated that Teddy Persico Jr. was being groomed to take over the crime family to keep the Persico regime alive.

Unfortunately, the FBI began honing in on DeLeo almost immediately. The Persicos thought it would be strategic to promote a guy that the FBI didn't know, but DeLeo didn't have the same 'street smarts' that his predecessor Tommy Gioeli had. At his racketeering trial in 2014, FBI agents testified about how Gioeli managed to identify and shake FBI investigators who followed him and used a relationship he had with a phone company to prevent the feds from bugging his calls. On the other hand, DeLeo and his crew were pretty careless when talking on phones and evidently weren't too good at escaping law enforcement tails. The FBI first began investigating DeLeo's inner circle in the Fall of 2008, only a few months after he started his new role. They began by looking into a bookmaking operation that George Wylie Thompson ran in Cabot, Arkansas. They got their first lead on DeLeo himself in December 2008. The Boston mob boss was caught on a wiretap giving a Vietnamese drug courier, Tri Cam Le, directions from Arkansas all the way to the Doubletree Hotel in Cambridge, Boston. DeLeo had invested $50,000 in a 2.2kg cocaine shipment that Le picked up from a drug dealer, Tony' Viet' Doan, in Los Angeles, and drove with his friend Bao Chan to Little Rock, Arkansas. There they met with George Wylie Thompson, the Cabot bookmaker, who came for the trip to Boston. 

The across-the-country directions from DeLeo proved to be fruitless, and the frustrated Le passed the phone mid-conversation to Thompson, according to the Cambridge Wicked Local. A few nights later, on December 12, at about 4 p.m., Arkansas State Police pulled over Tri Cam Le as he was driving on the Interstate 40 between Little Rock and Memphis, Tennessee. Police found the coke, and Le was hauled away in handcuffs. Le's first call was to Thompson, whom he begged to bail him out. Thompson made a panicked call to DeLeo to let him know what happened, and the feds' bugged phones of DeLeo & Thompson began to bear fruit; "What they did was a state trooper on the interstate, he pulled them over… and went and got the dog," Thompson reported. DeLeo then asked, "They got it?" to which Thompson responded, "Yep… well, she knew exactly how much was in there… she said 2.2 kilos." Two nights later, DeLeo called Thompson again to express his worry." I don't know if I can sleep tonight. That was devastating!" DeLeo said. Thompson replied; "Worse than fuckin' devastating!" According to Gang Land News, when Thompson ended the call with; "Have a good evening," DeLeo responded with "How am I going to have a (expletive) good evening?" Initially, Le's bond was set at $50,000, and cops caught DeLeo expressing his optimism that the charges must not have been that bad since the bond was so low. But Le would be the first domino to fall in the case and began cooperating with authorities after being handed a 14-year state sentence for possession with intent. As it so happened, the feds didn't really need Le's help to catch DeLeo.

Instead, all they needed to do was listen to his phone and let the elderly crook implicate himself in crimes, including drug smuggling, loansharking, and gun running. The very month that Le was arrested, Thompson was taped discussing guns he was going to ship to DeLeo. Feds also gained information about Thompson's bid-rigging scheme back in Little Rock, according to wiretap transcripts. On December 22, 2008, he called Little Rock alderman Cary Gaines about the no-bid concrete & landscaping jobs. The contractor later sought a half-million dollar project to pour sidewalks in the city and a project to landscape an exit off of Interstate 40, according to a November 2009 indictment. In one conversation, the transcripts read, the contractor bragged about his closeness to the mayor; "I could not be any closer to the mayor than I am right now. Never been like this. I'm helping him and he's helping me." It wasn't long after that conversation that DeLeo began discussing the affairs of the Colombo crime family over the phone. On January 31, 2009, DeLeo traveled to New York and hooked up with Colombo soldier Michael 'Mikey' Ferrara, who was DeLeo's main "point of contact" in the Big Apple, according to court papers.

DeLeo was in town on official Colombo business; to preside over an induction ceremony. The Bostonian boss had never met the men being inducted and needed to be taught on how to conduct the service, which took place on February 1. Six so-called "Persico loyalists," according to Gang Land News, were straightened out. These men, all of whom were based in South Brooklyn, can now be identified as;

• Salvatore' Sally from Coney Island' Castagno, 51.

• Emanuele' Manny' Favuzza, 50.

• Anthony' Big Anthony' Russo, 49.

• John Maggio, 46.

• Joseph 'Joey' Savarese, 46.

• Daniel' Fat Danny' Capaldo, 44.

Only two days after the ceremony, DeLeo was blabbing about it on the phone to his sister, an act which would make any self-respecting wiseguy cringe. The following wiretaps are courtesy of court papers and Gang Land News, May. 24, 2012; "I'm laying down. I'm tired. I didn't sleep for two days," DeLeo told his sister Michelle. "I was doing a lot of running around in New York, and it was kind of stressful, you know. That was my ahh, one of my first days on the job." I had a lot of, well, that weekend was, you know, it was like ahh, busy, busy weekend, I had to meet people and ahh, ahh, we had a couple of things going on that I had to reside over and I was ahh, I was tired. It was like overwhelming a little bit…"
Michelle: "Did you have a chance to go out?"
Ralph: "Oh yeah, that was the problem. One time I was out, you know, til 1 o'clock in the morning. I was eating constantly. I had to meet these people, everybody wanted to go out to eat. When I got back to my hotel room my stomach looked like it was a big basketball in there." I was eating all day. I started with meeting people for breakfast and right after breakfast I had to go meet somebody else at a restaurant at another end of town, ahh, then time I got back, ahh, I went over to this fellow Mikey's (Ferrara's) house… you haven't met Mikey yet but Mikey's an old friend of mine and, ahh, I had, ahh, his wife was insisting that I had a little something there, ahh, then we had to meet some people and then we went out to dinner at 8 o'clock, ahh, to meet more guys alright, and ahh, that 8 o'clock dinner lasted till 1 o'clock in the morning and ahh, my stomach, I, I just had too much food I couldn't sleep and the next morning we had, ahh, a thing going on, ahh, and, ahh, I'll tell you about it when I see ya, that was like, ahh, a ceremony… so ahh, anyhow, we had that, ahh, that going on that morning - actually all day, 'cause we had to go in different groups and different cars and make sure we weren't followed and all this type of stuff… (S)o it was a big deal, people picking us up here and driving us there, other people picking us up, taking us somewhere else and all that type of stuff - I wasn't ready for that."

Ralph: "I wasn't used to that… it was kind of different. I was talking to a friend of mine here, and he said 'how does it feel?' It feel… it's kind of like a little overwhelming you know, 'cause it's, you know… I don't… here I'm, I'm nothing like that; there everybody is holding the door for ya, helping on your coat, giving you hugs… kissing you and all this type of stuff, 'oh you gotta sit in front, you gotta do this, are you comfortable? Can I get you coffee?"
Michelle: "Oh that is so cute." She repeated that four times, according to Gang Land News, before asking whether restaurant patrons stared at him, because he has "the look." "Well," Ralph said, "they're coming up and giving me hugs and kisses. That's why people are looking. People wonder why they kissing this guy."

DeLeo wondered aloud how he ever got himself into this, and told his sister that he kept his girlfriend in the dark about his "business" trip, and didn't want to be doing "this for a long time" because "it's risky." But some opportunities "to make money" in some "legitimate things" had come up." You know," said DeLeo, "there's some place in New Jersey, Bayonne, that we got, and there's a construction company here in Boston that wants the job. It's a 10-year job… Anyhow, I should make money there. That's what I'm hoping for. I gotta make money for my old age."

The calls with his sister provide an exciting glimpse into the life of a Mafia boss. DeLeo, who had spent most of his adult life in prison, had never experienced the food-filled jaunts that mobsters spent their days doing, and wasn't used to the hugs, kisses, and other unwanted attention he received from his underlings. And, lastly, he wasn't accustomed to the age-old Mafia rule that you shouldn't talk business on the phone, let alone to your sister.DeLeo left New York on a plane to Miami on February 27, where he took a five-day social-and-business trip to capo Reynold 'Ren' Maragni, the Colombo family's Florida caporegime. Ren, just like Ralph, had been an associate directly under Allie Boy Persico through the 1990s and was finally inducted in March of 2008. Within a few short months, the Colombo family promoted him to caporegime, meaning he now ran his own crew with members of the Colombo family beneath him. All the made members living in Florida would soon be under Maragni's belt, so it was a priority for Ralph DeLeo to meet with him as the new "street boss" for the Colombo Borgata.

Ralph: "Florida was good. I, like, saw my friends, you know, they uh, you know, uh, I know I can't, uh, hang out there, you know it's, um. You know they would bring a lot of heat on me. You know… yeah, 'cause they… they gave me a lot of attention, they gave me too much attention. You know, too many hugs, too many kisses. You know, holding the car door for me, holding doors for me, you know, all that type of stuff. And, um, I'm not into that type of stuff. I'm uh, you know, I'm a - at heart I'm a regular guy you know. Uh, you know to them I'm something else, but I'm really not that something else. I'm…" Asked if his girlfriend came with him to the Sunshine State, Ralph said he was just "with the guys" because he didn't have time to relax "because they were takin' me to people here and there and I didn't really want to expose her to that… that side of it, you know what I mean. You know, I really didn't want to have her see guys doing that to me you know, huggin' me, kissin' me and holdin' doors for me and all that type of stuff, it would get her nervous." DeLeo said she "doesn't know but that… would very suspicious to her." "You know what I mean, 'cause they definitely act like Sopranos and then when they… the way they (pay) attention to me is, you know, they would uh, you know, she would suspect something."

DeLeo then discussed the attention he was getting from "girls (who) know that these guys are like, are like, mobsters alright so they were thinking well, gee, we all thought they were, why is he treatin' this guy special, ya know?" Michelle asked if Ralph felt he could trust the people around him, to which he replied; "Yeah, around there, yeah, well just, well actually I only talked to one guy down there but he was introducing me to everybody else, but he introduced me to ah, three or four guys that are under me down there, alright, they met, we met separately and then we had a party for guys that were their friends, alright, so we all got together like in a private typeset and made our introductions and stuff like that and so, there is only maybe four guys down there that are I consider like me, alright, and, and that was that, but they have a lot of guys around them like associates, alright… So I didn't talk to any of the associates, I just said hi, how are you, all that type of stuff, but, you know, what I didn't like, I kinda got the feeling that the associates knew who I was… So, kind of got me, just food for thought, I just gotta watch it a little bit because I don't want that coming up." DeLeo agreed when his sister commented that "their exposure can… bring any just… suspicion or something more." The moment DeLeo was back in Boston, he immediately took another trip to Canton, Massachusetts, on March 11, along with his pal Franklin Goldman. He needed to collect a loansharking debt, and also got in contact with businessman Henry 'Hank' Lewis, who hired the DeLeo crew to administer a beating to an unnamed financial advisor. The advisor worked for Hank's brother Alan Lewis, who was pulling the plug on a merger with Hank. Hank, embroiled in a dispute with his brother, wanted the financial advisor to be violently dissuaded from rejecting the merger, according to a Boston Globe article from November 9, 2011. Goldman supplied DeLeo and Kulesza with a photo of the victim, and Kulesza went out to crack his skull.

It was during this trip that Ralph was alerted to the fact that he was under investigation. The following day, the Canton loanshark victim called him and warned him that the FBI had questioned him about the incident. Court papers revealed that the FBI subsequently questioned DeLeo and Goldman under the ruse that they were investigating area home robberies.

DeLeo made some frantic calls to his pals, warning them of the impending danger. By this time, the shipment of guns that Thompson ordered had arrived. DeLeo kept a secret stash of weapons in the Boston suburb of Watertown, which police later discovered contained 11 firearms, together with a silencer, ammunition, police uniforms, patches from at least three different police departments, wigs, masks, and zip ties. Only one month after his trip to Canton, DeLeo was on the road again, this time traveling with his driver Big Ed Kulesza to the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut to meet with an unnamed member of the Colombo crime family. Back in Boston, DeLeo, as he put it, was "nothing." He was a quiet, unassuming elderly man working full-time as a maintenance man, arriving home each day to his basement apartment. But his role as street boss gave him more lucrative opportunities to earn money closer to home.

Michael Persico, the white-collar son of Carmine, traveled to Boston in 2009 to hook DeLeo up with the shakedown of a Boston-based demolition company, presumably the one Ralph discussed with his sister Michelle. Ruling panel member Teddy Persico Jr., acting capo and construction magnate Tom Petrizzo, trucking tycoon Eddie Garofalo Jr., and various other mob associates were also involved in the shakedown of the Boston-based Testa Corporation. According to a March 2010 indictment, the Colombo family controlled a trucking company, All Around Trucking, who bribed a Testa foreman to win bids on jobs at inflated prices. It's unknown what role DeLeo played in the shakedown, but he was never explicitly charged with those crimes. On May 12, 2009, the FBI began the first stage of their crackdown on DeLeo. Feds in Little Rock started by executing search warrants on several properties owned by George Wylie Thompson, and police found a staggering 147 firearms, over 80,000 rounds of ammunition, and five illegal silencers. The quiet Somerville crew looked like it was preparing for war. The feds were also able to find evidence against DeLeo in the bust; notably, handwritten notes of directions to "Exit 18, Doubletree," an envelope addressed to Thompson from DeLeo, handwritten notes referring to DeLeo, a notepad with the name of an Arkansas State Trooper who arrested their Vietnamese drug mule Tri Cam Le, and contact information for the Boston don. George Thompson, meanwhile, was able to slip out of the feds' grasp and fled to a casino resort in China. DeLeo didn't let the apparent federal intrusion stop his illegal activities. On June 16, DeLeo, Goldman, and Kulesza met at Vinny's Superette, which the FBI had bugged for sound. The FBI overheard interesting conversations about extortion and drug dealing. On August 26, the trio met again at their local bodega and discussed a marijuana shipment from Montreal to the United States. This was DeLeo's next business venture, court records revealed. On September 28, he traveled to Montreal and met with members and associates of an unknown LCN family to discuss the marijuana importation scheme. There was no elaboration into who DeLeo was working with, but given what we know about Montreal it was probably one of three Mafia clans; the largest and most active in Montreal, the Rizzuto family; their rivals, the Cotroni crime family; or the Bonannos, a family who have recently re-established in the region.

DeLeo was back in New York by the end of the month, and on November 8 he met with two unnamed Colombo mobsters to discuss the scheme. The FBI picked up on their conversations, and DeLeo revealed that 250 pounds of marijuana were on its way from Montreal. Crew member Franklin Goldman was also recorded bragging about his role in the importation; "He's (DeLeo's) gonna put the money together," Goldman said to unnamed associates in late August, according to a transcript released by the Boston Globe on January 10, 2010. "He's says 'how many pounds do you want?' Forty pounds (unintelligible), what you want, I'm here for you. He says no problem. I say there is more? Absolutely." Goldman told one man the pot was "hydro," and it would cost $1200 to $5000, depending on the grade requested. On November 3, police finally caught up to Arkansas crew member George Wylie Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand. Thompson had been waiting for a member of the Outlaws MC club, who had been hired back in the States by DeLeo to go to Thailand and hook Thompson up with prescriptions for his blood pressure and cholesterol.

Unfortunately, airport security found the prescription pads and honed in on Thompson, who was charged on multiple counts of weapons possession, drug trafficking, illegal gambling, and fraud. Meanwhile, another segment of the gang's criminal activities was unraveling closer to home. In addition to his duties as "Big Ed" the enforcer, Kulesza allegedly filled prescriptions for Roxicet and Diazepam at the Winter Hill Rite Aid, which he would sometimes sell. Fellow crew member Franklin Goldman was shuttling the drugs from Kulesza to an unnamed female addict. At one point, the two took a trip to the Revere office of Leonard Friedman, a psychiatrist whose license was later revoked. Friedman, whose license was also suspended in 2003 for writing improper prescriptions, was later arrested and charged with that same crime. A Somerville man, Victor Hernandez, was also arrested in September 2010 for allegedly performing illegal liposuctions out of the Revere office. On November 6, 2009, a few days after Thompson's Bangkok arrest, FBI agents saw the unnamed female addict buy pills off another man driving a car with Florida plates, and afterward stopped and questioned her. The first person she called, suspiciously, was Goldman's bugged phone. Feds finally closed in on DeLeo at 6 a.m. on November 16, 2009, when a federal search warrant was executed at his basement apartment on 17 Russell St., Somerville. Despite the ever-increasing heat, DeLeo was careless and had done little to cover his tracks. According to his detention memo, feds seized $50,000 in cash, a disguise kit (including wigs, masks, and rubber fingertips), an ounce of an unknown white substance, 10 grams of cocaine, drug trafficking paraphernalia (scales, plastic ziplock baggies and Inositol, a standard cutting agent), two garrotes, two police scanners, a .45 caliber Model 1911, a replica air pistol, two Rolex watches, and a book titled "On Killing," which examined the psychological impact of killing another person. Perhaps DeLeo was feeling guilty about his 1977 botched murder. DeLeo was arrested along with his two top lieutenants, Big Ed Kulesza, and Franklin Goldman, charged in Arkansas State Court with cocaine trafficking. George Wylie Thompson was also indicted on illegal gambling offenses, as were three members of his crew; Dana Kuykendall, 54, Tony Millner, 37, and Gene Baker, 59, all from Little Rock, and the two Little Rock aldermen - Cary Gaines and Sam Baggett - that worked with Thompson. DeLeo and his crew were shipped down south to face the music. On December 3, the feds searched a Watertown warehouse that DeLeo had been using, during which they found a box secured by three locks, as well as eleven firearms, including a semi-automatic pistol, a pistol-grip shotgun, a .22 caliber rifle with scope, several handguns, at least one silencer, several holsters, several hundred rounds of ammunition, three rubber masks, two wigs, arm patches for police departments, a police uniform cap, a blue "POLICE" T-shirt, a "POLICE" rain sticker, an Airborne Express hat, polo & windbreaker, two bulletproof vests, a black tactical belt, a Boston Municipal Police Office badge, a pack of 24 and 14 inch cable ties, bear pepper mace, and several pairs of latex and cloth gloves. Feds dropped their Boston indictment on December 17, 2009, charging DeLeo with racketeering conspiracy, cocaine trafficking conspiracy, firearms trafficking conspiracy, interstate travel in-aid-of-racketeering, extortionate collection of credit, marijuana trafficking conspiracy, prescription medication trafficking conspiracy, and aiding and abetting a fugitive. Goldman, Kulesza, and Thompson were also charged." What we're seeing here is the Colombo family has grabbed a foothold in this area," Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston Office said during a press conference.

The bust took area crime-watchers by surprise. The media was rife with speculation on what this meant for the local Boston mob, which had been weakened by waves of prosecutions over recent years. Newspapers noted that it was previously "unheard of" for other families to be operating in Patriarca family territory. "You can't just come to the conclusion or the assumption that they are no longer in business," said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, referring to the Patriarca crime family. Kulesza was the first of the core crew to plead guilty, on January 12, 2010. He admitted to being an enforcer under DeLeo's squad. Meanwhile, Gambino soldier Oreste 'Ernie Boy' Abbatemonte was indicted that May with the Deca Development scheme, but DeLeo avoided criminal charges in that scheme.

DeLeo kept himself busy in prison, and got himself in even more trouble, promising someone in law enforcement $10,000 if they were to "lose" evidence before his trial. But this scheme failed and, on June 1, 2012, DeLeo - after three delays, including a courthouse fire - pleaded guilty to a slew of racketeering offenses. A couple of months later, DeLeo was shipped back down to Little Rock, Arkansas to go to trial on the cocaine charges. He was unsurprisingly convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to deliver a Class D drug; use of a communication device in a Class E drug crime; and possession with intent to deliver a Class D drug. On November 21, at sentencing, DeLeo asked the court to consider his "age (and) health," and also referenced his 15-to-life sentence commutation from Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste, which he said came due to a federal agent's threats to have him killed. But Assistant US Attorney Timothy Moran laid into the mobster, according to the Boston Globe." I think it's safe to say that of the defendants who are regularly brought into this court, Mr. DeLeo has to be among the most dangerous on a personal basis and organizationally," Moran said. "The… arsenal of weapons and criminal history, frankly, speak for themselves. They describe a person who was both capable and equipped for great violence, and it would be hard to exaggerate that." The judge apparently agreed and dished out a hefty 235 month (almost 20 years) sentence, followed by three years' supervised release and a $50,000 fine. His sentencing came only one week after Boston's official moss, Anthony DiNunzio, was sentenced to six years in prison in Rhode Island." Our office continues to investigate and prosecute organized crime wherever it attempts to establish a foothold in the Commonwealth," said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz on the two sentencings. Since his sentencing, DeLeo hasn't kept quiet. In July of 2013, he asked a federal judge to toss his conviction, claiming that the signature on his guilty plea was forged by an "unknown officer of the court." According to the Boston Globe, DeLeo said the "extraordinary circumstances stated in the affidavit and here in this motion has eviscerated the defendants (sic) Fifth Amendment rights." In May of 2014, he demanded that feds return the Rolex watches, cash, and thirteen other personal items to him, claiming that they were "not subject to court forfeiture." Meanwhile, there's been no word on how the Colombo family coped with the news that DeLeo was once a government informant who allegedly provided information on the Patriarca mob. Word of DeLeo's former cooperation wasn't revealed until a Gang Land News article from December 24, 2009, titled; "Colombos Made Stool Pigeon The Family's 'Street Boss.'"