Copyright 1990 Globe Newspaper Company  
The Boston Globe
March 27, 1990, Tuesday, City Edition
SECTION: METRO/REGION; Pg. 1 p.

LENGTH: 1161 words

HEADLINE: He had his father's clout but his own style

BYLINE: By Kevin Cullen, GLOBE STAFF

BODY:
A couple of years ago, the voice of a regular caller to the radio talk shows in Providence started getting the attention of police who track the Mafia.

The voice was that of Raymond J. (Junior) Patriarca who was calling in, like everyone else in radioland, to pontificate about the extraordinary and the mundane.

It was Patriarca all over: the boss who did not act like a boss. A man who supposedly was petrified of electronic surveillance and extraordinarily circumspect in his infrequent excursions into public, Patriarca was exposing his voice for all to hear.

According to an indictment unsealed yesterday, Patriarca exposed that voice within earshot of an FBI listening device planted inside a Medford home making it clear, the government says, once and for all, that Junior Patriarca, 45, was in fact the Boss of the Mafia family his father built.

Also charged with racketeering along with Patriarca were his two closest associates from Providence, Nicholas Bianco, 47, the reputed underboss, and Matthew Guglielmetti Jr., 41, a reputed capo regime, or lieutenant.

Many in law enforcement, and even wise guys themselves, have said Junior Patriarca's ascension to the throne left vacant by the July 1984 death of his father, Raymond L.S. Patriarca, is proof that nepotism is alive and well in the Mafia.

It was Bianco, many felt, who walked the walk and talked the talk of a boss. It was Bianco who had spent time with one of the five New York families, who had supposedly killed his share of people, and who commanded the respect of the Mafia soldiers who do the everyday gambling, loan-sharking, extortion, drug-dealing and leg-breaking that keeps the money flowing.

Junior Patriarca, many have said, was too reticent, too young, and too - for lack of a better wise guy word - wimpy to be boss.

But, the FBI says, The Commission, the Mafia's governing body, chose Junior Patriarca to succeed his father. Besides his familial connection, what may have convinced The Commission of his fitness for the job were the very characteristics that set the soldiers grumbling over their cappuccino.

While his father was a street-educated hoodlum with a record of 40 arrests, a liability that meant prison time for even minor infractions, Junior Patriarca was college-educated and "clean." His only arrest, a misdemeanor, was in the late 1960s for receiving stolen property, building materials used in the construction of a house.

"His old man got that expunged from his record," said one longtime Mafia investigator. "The old man was obsessed with Junior not having a record."

Living in suburban Lincoln, R.I., Junior Patriarca told the world he was a real estate developer, building single family homes that sold for $ 300,000 to $ 500,000.

And he looked the part. When Lincoln Police Detective John Shea saw Patriarca, the reputed boss was without bodyguard, tony clothes or fancy car.

"He didn't act like a boss, said Shea. "He'd drive around in his Wagoneer, alone, in work clothes."

The indictment illustrates the grooming of Junior Patriarca, who allegedly went from delivering messages for his father in the early 1980s, to proposing new soldiers for the Mafia, to giving orders in the wake of his father's death.

In February 1981, according to conversations taped by an FBI bug in the North End headquarters of the Angiulo brothers, who allegedly ran Boston for the Patriarca family, Junior Patriarca and then-consigliere Vittore Nicolo Angiulo, known as Nicky, met to discuss "the line of authority and reporting within the Patriarca Family between Massachusetts and Rhode Island."

On Aug. 25, 1983, one month before he would be indicted on the strength of the conversations recorded by the 1981 bugging operation, Ilario M.A. Zannino was overheard by another FBI bug recalling a conversation he had with then underboss Gennaro J. Angiulo. Jerry Angiulo reportedly warned Junior Patriarca that he would be indicted for narcotics trafficking along with Salvatore M. Caruana, a Mafia-protected drug trafficker from West Peabody.

Angiulo was right about Caruana; he was indicted, and subsequently jumped bail. But Angiulo was wrong about Junior Patriarca. There was not enough evidence to charge him in the Caruana case.

The indictment says that in August 1985, a year after his father's death, Junior Patriarca was busy handing out orders to the likes of Robert F. (Bobby Russo) Carrozza, a reputed capo regime for the family in East Boston, and Peter J. Fiumara, the owner of a Revere strip joint.

Carrozza, Junior Patriarca allegedly explained, would be getting the loan-sharking proceeds that Fiumara, owner of the Squire club in Revere, used to give to Henry Tameleo, a Mafioso who had just died in prison. Patriarca, the indictment alleges, instructed that Carrozza "whack it up," or split, the money with his brother, Joseph A. (J.R.) Russo, then a reputed capo regime, now allegedly the consigliere.

The slaying of Junior Patriarca's alleged underboss and the botched assassination of another Patriarca loyalist last summer presented Patriarca with his biggest leadership challenge. William Grasso, the New Haven mobster who allegedly served as Patriarca's second-in-command, was found floating in the Connecticut River with a bullet in his head the same June day that Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, was shot outside a pancake house on Route 1 in Saugus.

The slaying of Grasso, in particular, was said to have shaken Patriarca, and it left the family's control of the rackets in Connecticut and western Massachusetts in a shambles.

On Aug. 10, the indictment says, Patriarca dispatched Guglielmetti to Connecticut to meet with three soldiers from Connecticut and one from Springfield. Guglielmetti told the four men "that no capo regime would be appointed for Connecticut; instead they were to report to Guglielmetti, all money they collected was to be turned in to Rhode Island and the hierarchy in Rhode Island would then 'decide whatever they want to send back.' "

It was a bold move by Patriarca, and one that apparently angered his underlings. The indictment says two of the men with whom Guglielmetti met, Louis R. Failla of East Hartford and Gaetano J. Milano of East Longmeadow, objected to being told that if they had a problem with the new arrangement they were to take the "beef" to Bianco rather than Russo, the consigliere.

"Who in the (expletive) are they to tell us we can't go directly to Boston to see the consigliere," Failla complained.

For all the evidence the FBI had gathered against Patriarca, however, it was not until last Oct. 29, sources said, that Patriarca had spoken enough to get himself indicted as a racketeer.

Inside a home on Guild Street in Medford, Patriarca allegedly presided over the baptism of four men into the Mafia.

An FBI listening device recorded the ceremony, during which that voice, as distinctive as the one heard on radio talk shows, was heard, loud and clear.