Carr: One-sided gang war spelled doom for ‘Indian Al’
Friday, June 21, 2013 By: Howie Carr
In yesterday’s parade of Whitey Bulger’s victims and survivors, the son of murdered gangster Tom Angeli got only a couple of minutes on the witness stand to talk about the 1974 murder of his gangster father, Al.
He was 17 years old, hanging out, he said, “when someone came and told me to come home, that my mother was looking for me.”
The prosecutor asked if the person who had come for him told him why he had to come home.
“He said my dad had been murdered.”
This was 10 months after his uncle Joe had been murdered. It was a one-sided gang war. His dad had murdered one of Jerry Angiulo’s bookies, and Angiulo sicced his new allies, the Winter Hill Gang, on the Angelis.
The dead bookie was named Pauline Folino. They hogtied him and buried him alive.
“He died the hard way,” said one of the cops.
I mention this only because not everyone who got whacked was “innocent,” you might say. As Johnny Martorano once explained, “A lot of the guys I killed had killed a lot of other guys, and probably would have gone on killing if I hadn’t killed them first.”
After his gang (and a couple of innocent bystanders) was wiped out, Indian Al wanted to come home. He sued for peace. He went to someone he thought would be a mediator, Howie Winter. Boy, did he get a wrong number. Apparently on the run on the West Coast, Indian Al hadn’t heard who’d been hunting him down.
First he came back and had a meeting with Jerry Angiulo. He now called him “Mr. Angiulo.” He gave the underboss $50,000 as a peace offering. He thought the war was over. It would be, once he was dead.
On the last day of his life, Indian Al was up early. He was staying at the Holiday Inn in Peabody. For his last meal, he had clam chowder and shish kebob. With a $1 tip, the tab ran to $8.20. At 5:21, he made the final phone call of his life, to the widow of another member of his gang who’d been murdered by the Hill in Fort Lauderdale.
He was picked up at the Northgate Shopping Center in Revere by Johnny Martorano and another guy. Whitey, as usual, was in the crash car. Indian Al was carrying a Bible, and Johnny became concerned. He’d just seen a Robert Mitchum movie in which Mitchum played a preacher who carried a gun in a hollowed-out Bible.
Johnny shot him immediately, twice. The body was dumped in another car and found in Charlestown. A new FBI agent named Zip Connolly came by and “exchanged information” with the BPD.
A few days later, Indian Al’s widow arrived back in Boston. She paid his tab at the Holiday Inn and called the Boston PD.
“She was interested in her husband’s property. Stated he wore a ring he had been given by his brother Joseph before Joe died ….”
Needless to say, Mrs. Angeli never got her husband’s ring back. The Indian war was over. Whitey had won again.
Carr: Rare survivor’s wit still sharp
Saturday, June 22, 2013 By: Howie Carr
Frank Capizzi is a special guy in the Boston underworld. He was shot two or maybe three times by Whitey Bulger, and lived to tell of it — well, he did once the judge granted him immunity earlier this week.
Not only has Capizzi lived to a relatively ripe old age, he now looks like a bleepin’ moonbat, a geezer with a gray ponytail like you’d see this afternoon at the town dump holding a Markey sign.
But up on the witness stand yesterday, he was still the same old Frank Capizzi, retelling the story of the night in 1973 when he almost bought the farm. He was with Al Angeli, and the Hill had a contract on him.
Winter Hill had a brand-new toy — a machine-gun. Johnny Martorano et al. were in love with that machine gun like they’d found it under the Christmas tree, all wrapped by Santa Claus.
So when the boys saw the car on Commercial Street with Indian Al inside, they were locked ’n’ loaded.
“A firing squad hit us,” Capizzi explained yesterday. “About a hundred slugs hit the automobile. ... It seemed like maybe a day and a half, but it was probably like only a couple of minutes.”
Capizzi was with Al, had been ever since that little problem in Vermont a few years before. Whitey’s lawyer, Jay Carney, asked Capizzi, “How did Al make a living?”
“Ask Al,” quipped ponytail boy.
Carney inquired as to whether he knew there were gang wars going on.
Capizzi replied: “The question would be, who didn’t know that?”
Jerry Angiulo wanted Capizzi — bad. There was only room for one loudmouth in the North End — Jerry’s. So he sent Whitey out looking for him.
Whitey caught up with Frank one morning in Winthrop after he’d dropped his kids off at school. Like everybody else in Indian Al’s gang, he drove a Mercedes, which Whitey perforated, in addition to Capizzi’s leg.
Capizzi escaped, then abandoned the bad-luck Benz, and called his wife and told her to report it stolen. Unfortunately, someone nearby noticed him tossing an unregistered revolver into a field after fleeing the Mercedes. As an ex-con, he was arrested.
A few weeks later, when he went for dinner with the gang, he was still limping from Whitey’s bullets.
Capizzi and another wounded Indian, Sonny Shields, got themselves patched up at the old BCH and then took it on the lam.
Months later, Capizzi decided the coast was clear to return to Winthrop. Three cops quickly showed up at his front door, all friends of Whitey Bulger, including young FBI agent Zip Connolly.
“I looked directly into John Connolly’s Machiavellian eyes and told (him), Mr. Connolly, James Bulger shot me three times!!! ... (FBI agent) Dennis Condon listened attentively, writing it down.”
Too bad they let Capizzi off the witness stand so quickly yesterday. That interview he had with Zip might have made another interesting line of questioning.