The grisly story of ‘Jimmy the Bear’
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist
Sunday, July 29, 2007 - Updated: 08:47 AM EST
All it rated was a couple of paragraphs and a footnote on Page 29 of a 223-page decision, but at least U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner mentioned one of the more remarkable FBI memos ever in her decision this week.
As you know, she awarded $101.7 million to the four men, two of whom are now deceased, who were framed by the FBI for the murder of Teddy Deegan in Chelsea back in 1965. One of the real killers was Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi, but the FBI gave him a pass, even though they knew he was one of the shooters, because he was one of their informants. In fact, the FBI knew Flemmi was plotting the Deegan hit days before it happened and sent the information to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington.
That much has been known for years, but Gertner got onto another aspect of the sordid saga that has received virtually no ink. It is now certain that the FBI didn’t just know Jimmy the Bear killed Deegan, they knew about a bunch of his other murders. Not rumors or vague information either; they knew the names of his victims.
This, from a June 4, 1965, Boston FBI memo on Flemmi:
“The Agent handling the informant believes, from information obtained from other informants and sources, that BS 919-PC has murdered FRANK BENJAMIN, JOHN MURRAY, GEORGE ASHE, JOSEPH FRANCIONE, EDWARD ‘TEDDY’ DEEGAN, and ‘IGGY’ LOWRY, as well as a fellow inmate at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Walpole, and, from all indications, he is going to continue to commit murder.”
At the time this was written, the four guys the FBI framed for murdering Teddy Deegan wouldn’t even be arrested for another two years. Yet the FBI was already routinely including Deegan’s name in a list of Flemmi’s victims.
“Jimmy Flemmi’s victims did not matter to the FBI,” Gertner writes.“All that mattered was that Flemmi ‘has been in contact with RAYMOND L.S. PATRIARCA and other members of La Cosa Nostra’ and therefore ‘potentially could be an excellent informant.’ ”
The feds liked to recruit rats who were gangsters but weren’t Mafia. The G-men were after LCN, and independent hoods got a free ride. If you weren’t inducted, you were invited . . . to become a snitch on the guys from the North End.
The local FBI office cultivated another such hoodlum in late 1964; his name was George Ashe. Too bad Jimmy the Bear murdered him,too, and stuffed his body in a Ford Falcon. But that’s life, or death, and since Flemmi was giving his G-men handlers better stuff than Ashe, they let that one slide too.
Ditto the Frankie Benjamin hit. That was a particularly gruesome 1964 murder of yet another of the Bear’s former fellow inmates at MCI-Walpole. The Bear shot him in the head in a bar owned by the Bennett brothers, then realized he’d used a cop’s gun. So the Bear chopped off Frankie’s head (it was never found), left his torso in a car in Southie and then torched the bar to destroy any evidence.
Hey, big deal. What can you expect from a guy who told another FBI informant that all he (Flemmi) wants to do is kill people and that it is better than hitting banks. Gertner mentions that memo and several others in a series of footnotes on Page 28 of her decision.
And of course Flemmi’s FBI handler was H. Paul Rico. Rico himself set up at least two gangland hits back in 1964-65; he died two years ago in a prison hospital awaiting trial on a Oklahoma gangland hit masterminded by Jimmy’s brother, Stevie Flemmi.
But I digress. . . .
This particular report was written the day after Flemmi was shot and wounded in Dorchester by a party named James “Spike” O’Toole. FBI agent Rico thought enough of his boy to go visit Flemmi at Boston City Hospital.
“Informant advised that they had told him he would be released in 10 days, but that he will have to wear a bag for six weeks, and probably will not be in any sort of condition until September. . . .
“Informant advised there is still some lead in him that cannot be removed. Informant advised that he heard that JIMMY O’TOOLE plans to take a vacation when he (informant) gets out of jail.”
Even 42 years later, it’s amazing to read this stuff. Here is Rico, the FBI gangster, lapping up what this serial killer is telling him, even when Flemmi basically informs Rico he’s planning to whack the guy who shot him.
Jimmy the Bear eventually went to state prison, but escaped on a Mike Dukakis weekend furlough in 1975 and spent three years doing drugs and beating up women before he was recaptured. He died of a drug overdose at MCI-Norfolk in 1979. His two younger brothers, another serial killer named Stevie and a crooked Boston cop named Michael, are both in prison.
And they still haven’t found Frankie Benjamin’s head.
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