US panel indicts Bulger, Salemme

The charges allege a long partnership in organized crime

The two reputed kingpins of the New England rackets, both fugitives for nearly a week, were indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury as longstanding partners in organized crime.

Alleged Mafia godfather Francis P. (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and alleged South Boston crime boss James J. (Whitey) Bulger are charged with extortion and racketeering.

Five other men, including Stephen (The Rifleman) Flemmi -- a close associate of Bulger and Salemme -- were charged with loansharking, conspiracy and money laundering. Conspicuously absent from the indictment were charges of

drug trafficking and murder, even though law enforcement officials have investigated Bulger, Salemme and Flemmi for those crimes.

Bulger and Salemme escaped a law enforcement dragnet last week. Flemmi is being held without bail pending a detention hearing next week; the other four men are either in jail or have agreed to surrender.

For the first time, law enforcement authorities in Boston have brought

criminal charges that allege an alliance dating to 1965 between the Irish mob and the Mafia that has allowed the two not only to coexist but also to coordinate crime schemes such as the collection of "rent" from bookmakers.

US Attorney Donald K. Stern called the 90-page racketeering indictment ''far-reaching and significant," saying the charges against the alleged leaders of the Winter Hill Gang and the Mafia, "if successful, will deal a serious blow to organized crime in Massachusetts."

Defense attorneys in the case said the 37-count indictment merely recycled allegations from past cases.

Attorney Anthony M. Cardinale, who represents Robert P. DeLuca, a reputed Mafioso from Lincoln, R.I., who was charged in yesterday's indictment, said: ''It's like the federal Greenpeace movement, a recycling of a lot of old allegations. It's the same old stuff, but putting different names with some of the old stories."

DeLuca, who allegedly was involved in a 1989 Mafia induction ceremony in Medford that the FBI secretly captured on tape, was arrested Friday on related charges

Stern declined to comment on where law enforcement authorities believe Salemme and Bulger may be hiding, or whether they may have left the area or the country.

He said State Police and the FBI last Thursday had hoped to make ''simultaneous arrests for three persons who don't typically make themselves available to law enforcement anyway."

Of Salemme, Bulger and Flemmi, only Flemmi was arrested last week. He was handcuffed by 7 p.m. Thursday at Schooner's restaurant on Boston's High Street. Flemmi's son, Stephen, partly owns the restaurant, according to sources.

Word spread quickly that the dragnet was out for Bulger and the older Salemme. WCVB-TV (Ch. 5) reported at 10:30 p.m. Thursday that Flemmi was in custody and Salemme and Bulger were being sought.

Stern declined to comment on what went wrong in the arrests, saying only that "there is a track record for defendants in these kinds of cases to flee."

The federal indictment also mentions an alleged offer that former Mafia boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca made in 1974 to Flemmi to be inducted into the Patriarca crime family. Flemmi -- a leader of the Winter Hill Gang, according to authorities -- allegedly declined the offer, but pledged his and Bulger's enduring loyalty to Patriarca.

The indictment makes frequent mention of threats of violence in tandem with extortion of bookmakers and others, but missing are murders and drug dealing offenses that recent media reports had advertised.

In addition to the criminal offenses charged, the indictment leaves the door open for a forfeiture charge to the possible seizure of a lottery jackpot that Bulger, of South Boston, won in 1991. Bulger split $14.3 million with two others.

Salemme, of Sharon, was a fugitive from 1967 to 1973 in an attempted murder case, the car-bombing of lawyer John Fitzgerald, for which he was arrested in New York City and served 15 years in prison. Fitzgerald lost a leg in the explosion. Yesterday's indictment repeats that charge in the racketeering counts.

Flemmi, of Quincy, was a fugitive during approximately the same years.

Many of the offenses in the indictment have been charged in cases already tried, and some which have resulted in convictions. Under the federal racketeering statute, crimes for which a defendant has already been convicted can be used to support the umbrella RICO charge.

Attorney MaryEllen Kelleher, who represents Flemmi, said yesterday: "We can't wait for the trial. It's a rehash of many incidents and charges that we've seen in other indictments."

Kelleher, an associate in Richard M. Egbert's law firm, said she was surprised to see Flemmi charged in the attempted murder of Fitzgerald, noting that the state dismissed the charge against Flemmi years ago when it prosecuted Salemme.

Egbert declined comment on the case. Besides Flemmi, Egbert represents the senior Salemme and his son, Frank Salemme, also of Sharon, now in ill health and expected to surrender. Egbert also represents defendant James M. Martorano, a reputed captain in the New England Mafia, who is in federal prison in Pennsylvania on a related conviction.

A lawyer for George Kaufman, Paul Haley of New Hampshire, could not be reached for comment. The indictment seeks forfeiture of $508,425 in assets

from Kaufman, a Brookline resident who has run a garage in Boston and has been described along with Flemmi as forming the linchpin between the two crime groups.

Many of the charges against the two Salemmes were first aired in a 1992 indictment against the younger Salemme, as well as Patriarca family associate Thomas Hillary and alleged mobster Dennis LePore, for trying to bribe two former Teamsters so a movie could be made without Teamsters on the set.

At trial last month, a jury convicted former Teamster official William Winn of conspiracy and acquitted another Teamster official in the case. Frank Salemme was not tried because of his illness.

The case also underlies charges in the indictment against both Salemmes for traveling across state lines in aid of racketeering, in connection with a May 1990 trip to Las Vegas.

The indictment paints Salemme as an expansionist who sought to bring an increasing number of bookmakers under his umbrella and collect "rent" from them.

Salemme allegedly expanded his turf into Framingham and Milford with the assistance of Hillary, now a protected witness, who grew up on the east side of Providence with Raymond J. Patriarca, and was taken under the wing of his father, Raymond L.S. Patriarca.

Martorano, formerly of Quincy, has a criminal record stretching back to the 1960s and early 1970s, when he and his brother John were allegedly high- ranking members of the Winter Hill Gang, law enforcement sources have said.

Martorano spent time in prison for loansharking and a scheme to fix horse races in which jockeys were threatened. Martorano studied law while in prison and worked as a paralegal for Egbert in the 1980s after his release.

The indictment also charges Flemmi with suborning perjury and intimidating grand jury witnesses, as well as with participating in the car bombing of Fitzgerald.

It charges the older Salemme and his son with conspiring with Hillary and missing Westwood businessman Steven DiSarro to place video poker machines in restaurants and bars for illegal operation.

DiSarro, former manager of the South Boston nightclub The Channel, has been missing since May 10, 1993, and law enforcement officials believe he may have been killed by mobsters fearing he had become an informant.

The indictment is the culmination of decades of work by the FBI and the State Police Special Services Section, as well recent contributions from Middlesex County District Attorney Thomas Reilly's office, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the IRS.