Deegan Four

Suffolk County, MA

Deegan Four

Mar 12, 1965

Peter Limone, Joseph Salvati, Henry Tameleo, and Louis Greco were convicted in 1968 of the murder of Edward Deegan. At trial, the main witness against the four was Joseph Barboza, a hit man, who later admitted that he had fabricated much of his testimony. All except Salvati were sentenced to die but were spared when Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1974. Tameleo and Greco died in prison in 1985 and 1995.

Salvati was released in 1997 after the Governor commuted his sentence. Limone was released in 2001 after released FBI documents showed that informants had told the FBI before the murder that Barboza and another man would soon kill Deegan, and the FBI was also told after the murder that the same two men committed it. The FBI also knew that at the time of Deegan's murder, Greco and his wife were watching a movie at a theater in Miami, Florida.

Deegan was a small time thief. At the time of Deegan's killing, Tameleo and Limone were reputed leaders of the New England mob, while Greco and Salvati had minor criminal records. FBI agents Dennis Condon and H. Paul Rico not only withheld evidence of Barboza's fabricated testimony, but also told state prosecutors who were handling the Deegan murder investigation that they had checked out Barboza's story and it was true. Barboza was the first person ever accepted into the federal witness protection program. He was relocated to California, where he was involved in at least two more murders.

Agent Rico was arrested in 2003 on murder and conspiracy charges in the 1981 killing of Roger Wheeler, a former World Jai Alai owner. In 2004, he died in an Oklahoma prison while awaiting trial. John Connolly, Rico's replacement at the Boston FBI office, faces trial in Sept. 2007 for the 1982 murder of a former World Jai Alai president. In July 2007, Salvati, Limone, and the estates of Tameleo and Greco were awarded a combined total of $101.75 million, the largest wrongful conviction award in U.S. history. (BUSL) (FJDB) [7/07]