In Boston, Guilty Plea From Mob Informant

In a major step in the probe of official corruption in Boston, mob informant Stephen “the Rifleman” Flemmi pleaded guilty Tuesday to racketeering charges, and he accused the former FBI agent who recruited him of helping to arrange a killing.

The plea bargain allows Flemmi to serve a life sentence in prison without parole and to avoid the death penalty. It came before his federal trial in 10 slayings, which was scheduled to start next week.

“I’d like to extend my deepest apologies to the families, the victims, my family, the public at large and the court,” Flemmi, 69, announced in U.S. District Court in Boston. He gained his nickname during the Korean War for expert marksmanship.

He told victims’ families seated in the courtroom that he was sorry, and he asked for their forgiveness. Some sobbed when they heard federal prosecutor Fred Wyshak Jr. describe how their relatives were shot, strangled and buried in shallow graves. Steve Davis, the brother of one victim, shouted curses at Flemmi and had to be removed from the courtroom. Prosecutors said Debra Davis, who was Flemmi’s girlfriend, was killed because gang members feared she knew too much.

Flemmi has been cooperating with prosecutors, and on Thursday police in Florida arrested his former FBI contact, retired agent H. Paul Rico, 78. Rico is accused of murder in the 1981 slaying of Roger Wheeler, an Oklahoma businessman who suspected that the mob was skimming profits from his Florida company, which operated jai alai venues known as frontons.

Rico became head of security at World Jai Alai after he retired in 1975 from the FBI’s Boston field office, where he won praise for his successful efforts to turn mobsters into federal informants. The former FBI agent allegedly told Wheeler’s killers about the businessman’s habits and movements. Wheeler was shot to death in his car after playing golf in Tulsa, Okla.

Wheeler believed some of the profits from World Jai Alai were being diverted to members of Boston’s Winter Hill gang, including Flemmi and the gang’s leader, James “Whitey” Bulger, who like Flemmi was an FBI informant. Bulger is a fugitive.

As part of the plea deal, state authorities in Oklahoma and Florida agreed to end their efforts to seek the death penalty against Flemmi.

The plea Tuesday was another chapter in a long-running investigation of the FBI’s relationship in Boston with its informants.

John J. Connolly Jr., the FBI’s former drug crimes supervisor in Boston and Bulger’s handler, was convicted last year of protecting the mobster, who is accused of 21 murders.

Prosecutors said that Connolly warned Bulger of investigations and that he notified him in 1995 when the gang leader was about to be indicted.

In 2001, Flemmi, Bulger and John Martorano were charged in Wheeler’s killing.

Martorano, a confessed hit man, pleaded guilty to killing Wheeler and John Callahan, who was fired as president of World Jai Alai after suspicions that he was involved in skimming money.

Martorano told investigators and later testified that Flemmi and Bulger ordered Wheeler’s slaying, and that Rico helped by giving gang members Wheeler’s schedule.

U.S. Atty. Michael Sullivan said the probe of corruption in law enforcement was continuing.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.