Jury deliberates in Connolly murder trial

November 5, 2008 11:21 AM Email| Comments (3)| Text size – +

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

MIAMI -- A jury continues to deliberate the fate today of retired FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., who is accused of plotting with longtime informants James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi in the 1982 gangland slaying of a Boston businessman in south Florida.

John J. Connolly

The panel of six women and six men, which weighed the case for about an hour yesterday after hearing closing statements and instructions on the law, resumed deliberations shortly before 9:30 a.m. today and is huddled in the locked courtroom with a stack of documents, old FBI files and flow-charts with the names of underworld figures and murder victims.

Sixty-eight-year-old Connolly, who retired from the FBI in 1990, is accused of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the slaying of John B. Callahan. Flemmi, now serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified that Connolly warned him and Bulger that the FBI planned to question Callahan and the businessman likely would implicate the gangsters in a 1981 murder.

Prosecutors argued that Connolly's tip was like "signing the death warrant" of Callahan, who was shot to death by admitted hitman John Martorano at the request of Bulger and Flemmi. The body of Callahan, a 45-year-old father of two, was found Aug. 2, 1982 in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport.

But the defense argued that Connolly was doing his job when he used Bulger and Flemmi to get information that helped decimate the New England Mafia, and was an honorable man who never plotted to kill anyone.

Though Connolly is only charged with Callahan's slaying, prosecutors were able to present voluminous evidence dating back to the 1970s in a bid to prove he was a corrupt agent, who took bribes from Bulger and Flemmi and leaked them information that led to the murders of two FBI informants, one in 1976 and the other in 1982.

Jurors have not been told that Connolly was convicted of federal racketeering in Boston in 2002 and is serving a 10-year prison term in that case. He was found guilty of protecting Bulger and Flemmi from prosecution and helping Bulger evade capture by warning him to flee just before the gangster's 1995 indictment. Seventy-nine-year-old Bulger, who is wanted for 19 murders, remains one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted.

If Connolly is convicted of Callahan's murder he faces life in prison. If he's acquitted, he will finish up his federal sentence in June 2011 and become a free man.