Parolee is arraigned on robbery charges

Despite the family’s arguments that Gerald M. Hill had not been rehabilitated, a divided board in July 2006 granted him parole, although Hill had to spend three more years in progressively less secure prisons to show he was fit to be released. On Sept. 3, he was freed.

On Monday, just 67 days later, Hill was arrested on charges that he and another man robbed a Fenway taxi company at gunpoint and pistol-whipped a dispatcher. The 47-year-old, who had been living in Dorchester, was arraigned yesterday in Boston Municipal Court and held on $1 million cash bail.

Shapiro, whose father-in-law, Max Fishman, was shot to death while delivering oil in snow-covered Roxbury during a holdup by Hill and two other men on Feb. 10, 1978, days after the blizzard paralyzed the Northeast, said Hill struck him as a “wolf in lamb’s clothing’’ at the parole hearings and that this week’s arrest proved him right.

“He always came across as though he was the victim in this crime,’’ Shapiro, a 63-year-old real estate agent, said of Fishman’s murder. “During his incarceration over these 30 years, a lot of people said: ‘He served 30 years. He went in when he was 15. He served enough time.’

“But we weren’t wrong in our judgment of him. I think the Parole Board was wrong in their judgment of him.’’

Donald Giancioppo, executive director of the Parole Board, said in an e-mail to the Globe yesterday that Hill had obeyed his parole conditions during his eight weeks of freedom. He was in a job-training program, had met with parole officers eight times, had tested negative for drugs, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous sessions as required.

Still, his arrest appeared to vindicate board members who dissented when the panel voted 4-2 in July 2006 to free him. None of the members were identified in the three-page decision.

The two dissenters said that when Hill and two other men participated in the slaying of Fishman, Hill was free on bail in connection with a manslaughter charge. Hill and three other youths had participated in the 1977 fatal stabbing of Leo Murphy during an argument near Washington Street in Boston, when Hill was 14. Hill was sentenced to 12 to 20 years in prison for that slaying, to run concurrently with the life sentence he received for his second-degree murder conviction in Fishman’s 1978 slaying.

The dissenting Parole Board members also wrote that while in prison, Hill had received 65 disciplinary tickets, many for assaults.

“Gerald Hill’s continued negative and violent behavior precludes him from being considered a viable candidate for community supervision,’’ the dissenters wrote. “His release at this time is not compatible with the welfare of society.’’

But the majority said Hill should be freed because he was so young when the crimes occurred, because he had been eligible for parole for 13 years, and because he had matured and taken positive steps, including obtaining his GED and completing a computer course.

“The majority of the board is of the opinion that gradual reintegration into the community via a prerelease program will afford Mr. Hill the opportunity to become a stable and law-abiding citizen of the community,’’ the board wrote.

In 2008, the Parole Board reaffirmed its vote.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said yesterday that his office consistently opposed paroling Hill.

“We just did not feel that this individual was an appropriate candidate for release,’’ he said. “He traumatized and changed the lives of two families.’’

Hill was arrested Monday after he and another man allegedly burst into the Boston Cab Dispatch office on Kilmarnock Street around 10 a.m., pistol-whipped a dispatcher, and fled with bags of cash.

At his arraignment yesterday, Hill appeared in court with his shirt pulled up to cover the lower part of his face until his lawyer, Gregory St. Cyr, told him to stand out of public view. St. Cyr entered a not guilty plea to multiple charges, including armed robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Several of Hill’s relatives, including a brother and sister, attended the hearing but declined to comment as they left the courtroom. St. Cyr said they believe he is innocent.

Armen Mahferejian, 42, general manager of Boston Cab Dispatch, is one of the people who was herded at gunpoint into a room at the garage while the two robbers stuffed cash into bags. Police later recovered two bags containing $21,502 in cash, according to a police report.

“I thank God I am still alive,’’ he said in a telephone interview yesterday.