John Connolly (FBI)

John Joseph Connolly, Jr. is the namesake and son of an Irish immigrant, John Connolly, Sr., a Gillette employee for 50 years. Connolly's mother, Bridget T. Connolly (née Kelly), was a housewife. They lived in the Old Harbor housing project on O'Callaghan Way until John Jr. was 12 years old.

In 1952, his family moved to the City Point neighborhood of South Boston. John Jr. was able to attend Columbus High School, a Catholic high school in the Italian North End neighborhood. He has a sister, Mary Ann, and a younger brother, James, who later sought a career in law enforcement, joining the DEA New England Division based in Boston. As a boy, Connolly would later tell reporters, his first memory of Whitey Bulger was of Bulger using his illicit earnings to buy ice cream cones for all the boys who swarmed around him in adoration.

Connolly would later answer to the nickname "Elvis" because of his thick black hair, and to "Neighbor", because of his early years growing up in the projects. Connolly was a neighbor of the Bulger family, future US Representative Joseph Moakley, and Francis "Buddy" Leonard, who would later be murdered by Bulger in 1975 during his battle for power over the rackets. Connolly again met Bulger when Connolly was being beaten up by bullies at a park; according to Connolly, the teenaged Bulger came in and chased the bullies away.

Connolly graduated from Boston College and briefly attended Suffolk University Law School.[1] He later earned a graduate degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.[7][8]

After completing his studies, Connolly worked as a teacher at South Boston High School and at Dorchester High School. In 1968, he met with H. Paul Rico's FBI partner, Special Agent Dennis Condon, and Boston Police Department Detective Edward Walsh, an old friend of the Connolly family's. Both Condon and Walsh would later brag that they had "recruited" Connolly. He visited his former neighbor, State Representative William Bulger, to discuss career opportunities in law enforcement.[9]

On August 1, 1968, U.S. House Speaker John W. McCormack wrote a personal note to J. Edgar Hoover on behalf of a constituent. The letter began, "Dear Edgar, It has come to my attention that the son of a lifelong personal friend has applied to become a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ..."[9] Connolly was appointed to the FBI in October 1968. FBI Supervisor John M. Morris, who would also later face charges of corruption, was Connolly's supervisor during much of Connolly's time working for the FBI.

Connolly began his FBI career in the Baltimore and San Francisco field offices before being transferred to New York City.[1] He wanted to return to Boston to be closer to his ailing father.[10] A year after he arrested Mafioso Frank Salemme, the FBI transferred Connolly to its Boston field office in the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in 1973.[1][11][12]

In 1980, he moved to 48 Thomas Park in the Dorchester Heights neighborhood, across the street from South Boston High School. During his career in the FBI, Connolly investigated organized crime. He was one of the primary agents involved in developing the Top Echelon Criminal Informants Program in New England. Over the span of his career he received eight commendations from every Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from J. Edgar Hoover through L. Patrick Gray, William Ruckelshaus, Clarence M. Kelley, James B. Adams, William H. Webster, John Otto, and William S. Sessions. He is the brother-in-law of Arthur Gianelli, who was later indicted with Joe "Joey Y" Yerardi, who oversaw Johnny Martorano's criminal operations when Martorano was a federal fugitive in Florida between 1978 and 1995.

In 1989, the DEA was probing the Winter Hill Gang for suspected drug trafficking.[13] The DEA was aware that both a former roommate and John's brother James both worked for the DEA. As an FBI supervisor later noted in a memo, the head of the DEA's Boston office "quietly changed the duties of both these DEA special agents so they would not become aware of this matter."[14]

Boston FBI Special Agent Robert Fitzpatrick said:

Connolly just became a force unto himself, a vortex in a constantly changing system. He stayed put as new agents in charge came and went. And he could take care of other agents. He became the guy who could get you sports tickets. He could help you get a day off through the secretaries. He made no secret that he could help you get a job after retirement through Billy Bulger. But he wasn't that much of an agent. He couldn't write a report. He was no administrator. He was just this brassy bullshit artist. We enabled him to some extent. No one had the stomach for examining what he was up to. We just never came to grips with that guy.[15]

Before he was brought up on criminal charges, Connolly was mentioned in Gerard O'Neill and Dick Lehr's crime fiction book, The Underboss: The Rise & Fall of a Mafia Family (1989), which followed the FBI's campaign against Gennaro Angiulo with Connolly, John Morris, and a team of fellow FBI agents.[16]

Connolly's first wife, Marianne Lockary, was his childhood sweetheart whom he married as he neared graduation from Suffolk University Law School. In January 1982, he and Lockary, who cited an "irretrievable breakdown" of their marriage after a four-year separation, divorced. In 1988, Connolly married Elizabeth L. Moore, a court stenographer who worked at the FBI headquarters at Government Center, Boston.[1]

Connolly had no children with his first wife but fathered three sons with his second wife, Elizabeth. When John and Elizabeth first married he bought an $80,000 condominium for them in Brewster, Massachusetts, and took regular vacations to Cape Cod. His sister-in-law Mary Ann Moore is married to Arthur Gianelli. Gianelli and Connolly purchased adjoining properties in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, from Rocco Botta, a reputed Mafia extortionist.

Connolly first met FBI informants Stephen Flemmi and Whitey Bulger at a coffee shop in Newton, Massachusetts. Louis Litif, one of the top bookmakers and a Winter Hill Gang mob associate, was one of Connolly's handball partners at the Boston Athletic Club. Bulger nicknamed Connolly "Zip" because the lawman shared the same South Boston ZIP Code as the Bulger clan.[17]

He occasionally lectured FBI agents at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia on informant development tactics and techniques and was a member of the Boston FBI's Organized Crime Squad. Retired FBI Special Agent Joseph D. Pistone wrote in the book, The Ceremony, "The reign of the Patriarca Family is virtually ended. A substantial amount of the credit for the demise of that mob Family must be given to one man, Special Agent John Connolly."[18] Connolly retired from the FBI honorably in 1990 and accepted the position of Director of Security/Public affairs for Boston Edison, from former Boston FBI Special Agent John Kehoe.

• 
  Stephen Flemmi
• 
  Whitey Bulger

In 2005, Connolly was indicted on murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges in the 1982 slaying of John B. Callahan and the 1981 murder of Roger Wheeler, owner of the World Jai Alai sporting corporation. Connolly stood trial in 2008 in Miami, Florida.[19] Callahan was murdered by John Martorano, who left the corpse in the trunk of a Cadillac in a Miami International Airport parking lot.[20]

Prosecutors alleged that Callahan was killed on the orders of Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, after Connolly told them that the FBI was investigating Callahan's ties to the Winter Hill Gang in their ongoing investigation into Wheeler's death. Martorano had killed Wheeler in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May 1981.

During the trial, Bulger associates Flemmi, Martorano, and Kevin Weeks testified for the prosecution detailing Connolly's ties to Bulger and Flemmi. Bulger's former girlfriend, Theresa Stanley, testified for the defense about her travels with Bulger. Flemmi testified that Connolly warned them that the FBI wanted to question Callahan in the death of Wheeler, and that Callahan "wouldn't hold up" and would probably implicate them.[21] Also testifying against Connolly was his former FBI superior, John Morris, who admitted that he had accepted $7,000 in bribes from Bulger and Flemmi. Morris stated that he began leaking information to them after Connolly delivered a case of wine and an envelope stuffed with $1,000 cash from the pair.[22]

Former U.S. Attorney and current U.S. District Senior Judge Edward F. Harrington testified for the defense, stating that Connolly was a star agent who was credited with using informants to help weaken the New England Mafia.[23]

On November 6, 2008, a jury convicted Connolly of second-degree murder. According to the prosecutors, Connolly faced a possible sentence of 30 years to life in prison.[24] Sentencing was postponed until January 2009, while Circuit Judge Stanford Blake considered a motion by the defense to dismiss the case. The defense argued that in Florida, when Connolly was convicted, the statute of limitations had expired for second-degree murder.[25]

On January 15, 2009, Judge Blake sentenced Connolly to 40 years in prison, saying that Connolly "crossed over to the dark side." The judge agreed with the defense's argument involving the statute of limitations but noted that their motion was past the deadline for such motions.[26] The judge accepted the prosecutors' argument that Connolly abused his badge and deserved more than the 30-year minimum. The 40-year state sentence runs consecutively to the 10-year federal sentence.[27]

Connolly served his time in FCI Butner Low facility at the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner, North Carolina. He was released from federal custody on June 28, 2011[5] and was transferred to a Florida state prison to serve his 40-year state sentence. Connolly has stated that he had nothing to do with the Callahan murder. With Bulger's capture on June 24, 2011, Connolly's attorney said his client would appeal if Bulger corroborates Connolly's claim of innocence.[28]

On May 28, 2014, Connolly's murder conviction was overturned by a panel of Florida's Third District Court of Appeal by a vote of 2–1. The panel held that since Connolly did not "carry or discharge the gun that was used to kill John Callahan in South Florida", it was not appropriate to convict him of murder.[29] On July 29, 2015, the full court en banc reinstated Connolly's murder conviction by a vote of 6–4, finding that the conviction was legally proper, even though he was on Cape Cod when Martorano killed Callahan. Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg, who had been the lone vote for conviction in the earlier hearing, wrote, "It now no longer matters whether the defendant hired (procured) a hit man, turned to his mob friends to murder Callahan, served as a lookout, provided the gun, or pulled the trigger himself, he is a principal in the first degree." Under Florida sentencing guidelines, Connolly must serve at least one-third of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole. Unless his sentence is reversed, he will not be eligible for parole until 2021.[30]

• Black Mass (film)
• The Departed

• "The Search for 'Whitey Bulger': PROFILE John Connolly". Boston.com. December 31, 2003.