Hundreds attend funeral for former mob underboss Angiulo

The son of Italian immigrants, Angiulo was raised on Prince Street in the North End with five brothers and a sister and worked long hours at his parents' grocery store. He graduated from Boston English High School in 1936 and when the military initially rejected him because he had flat feet, he successfully enlisted by using a different middle name. He served four years in the Navy during World War II.

As his casket was carried from the church, a Navy honor guard played taps outside the church today to commemorate Angiulo's wartime service.

Angiulo's son told the crowd of some 400 mourners that his father had $12,000 in his pocket when he was granted an honorable discharge in 1946, then used his business skills to operate a string of successful nightclubs around Boston.

Law enforcement officials said it was Angiulo's ability to make money on the rackets that endeared him to New England godfather Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who anointed him underboss of the Providence-based crime family -- a position that put him in control of the family's business from Boston to Worcester.

On Sept. 19, 1983, FBI agents hauled him from Francesco's restaurant in Boston's North End in handcuffs as he yelled, "I'll be back before my pork chops get cold.''

But he never finished that meal. Instead, Angiulo and three of his brothers, Francesco, Donato, and Michele, were convicted of an avalanche of charges in 1986, largely based on FBI tapes of conversations captured by a bug planted in Angiulo's headquarters at 98 Prince St. for three months in 1981. After an eight-month trial, Angiulo was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his convictions of racketeering, gambling, loansharking, and obstruction of justice.

He considered it a personal victory that he survived 24 years in prison, won his release two years ago, and died a free man, friends said.

Since his release, Angiulo had been living at his waterfront home in Nahant with his wife, Barbara.

Though it's been two decades since Angiulo was a fixture in the North End, hundreds of friends and relatives stood in a line that stretched around the block for hours last night to attend his wake at the J.S. Waterman & Sons Waring-Langone Boston Harborside Funeral Home on Commercial Street in the North End.

Those who came to pay their respects at the wake included former New England Mafia boss Raymond "Junior" Patriarca, of Rhode Island; Anthony DiNunzio, who is the brother of current reputed underboss Carmen "The Cheese Man" DiNunzio; John "Jackie" Salemme, the brother of another former boss, Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme; and Peter J. Limone, who spent 33 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit and was among four men who won a $101.7 million judgment against the government.

There were also dozens of members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, many of whom showed up on their Harleys, sporting their leather jackets.