Feb 12 2007
Man who helped bug the Mafia dead at 70
Mafia soldier Angelo “Sonny” Mercurio, who helped the FBI land the first-ever bugging of a mob induction ceremony, has died in Little Rock, Ark., where he lived in the federal witness-protection program, relatives said yesterday.
The 70-year-old former member of the Patriarca crime family died on Dec. 11 of a pulmonary embolism, relatives said.
“He never wanted to be outed [as an informer] . . . it was something he was ashamed about,” said Michael Liston, a Boston lawyer who represented Mr. Mercurio, who had been living under the name of Anthony Valenti. “He described it as being the worst level of hell.”
Born in Boston’s West End, he grew up working in his family’s business, Pearl Bakery, in Malden. After having trouble with the law, including a conviction for stealing securities, he started Vanessa’s Italian Food Shop, named after his daughter, in the Prudential Center. There, he and other mobsters planned many criminal transactions, according to accounts in court.
Mr. Mercurio, who had been a liaison between the Boston Mafia and the Winter Hill Gang, became one of the FBI’s principal informants in the late 1980s, after the FBI bugged his food shop and gathered enough evidence to indict him and others for extorting a couple of elderly bookmakers.
Mr. Mercurio’s FBI handler was John J. Connolly Jr., the now-disgraced former agent who also used James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi as informants. While Connolly was taking a course at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1989, he occasionally met Mr. Mercurio in Harvard Yard to glean information about the mob, according to revelations in court.
Mr. Mercurio told the FBI an induction ceremony would be held at a Guild Street home in Medford that October. He ferried others to the house and attended the ceremony, where 17 mobsters, including the hierarchy of the New England family, gathered as four new members were “baptized.”
During the ceremony, in which the four pricked their trigger fingers, burned holy cards, and pledged their lives to La Cosa Nostra, Mr. Mercurio even turned down the television to make it easier for FBI bugs in the home to pick up the conversation, according to accounts in court.
The tapes were hailed as critical because it was the first time law enforcement had infiltrated the secret proceedings . The evidence helped bring down the Patriarca family, with the head, Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, sentenced to eight years in prison.
Mr. Mercurio’s work with the FBI also played a role in the downfall of Connolly, who was convicted on federal racketeering charges in 2002 and is serving a 10-year sentence.
