Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280298
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
Authorities say the 43-year-old Tortora became a Mafia "soldier" during a secretly taped blood initiation that confirmed an underworld of solemn oaths and codes of silence so vivid in popular imagination.
"Carmen . . . You were baptized when you were a baby, your parents did it, but now this time we gonna baptize you," an alleged Mafia lieutenant told him during the induction detailed in a 113-count federal indictment unsealed Monday.
U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh said the tape recordings of the "secret, clandestine operation" provide unprecedented proof that could help convict 21 accused mobsters, including the reputed boss of the Mafia in New England.
Thornburgh said that in his 20 years investigating organized crime, people often have asked whether the Mafia blood rite truly exists. The question was answered "once and for all," he said, on Oct. 29 in an unremarkable house on a modest street in suburban Medford.
"This is the first time that you're going to hear it right from their own mouths," said Dennis O'Callaghan, assistant special agent in charge of the five-year FBI investigation.
Tortora and three other men allegedly were inducted at the boxy, clapboard home during a Sunday ceremony presided over by reputed crime boss Raymond "Junior" Patriarca, who was arrested Monday at his Lincoln, R.I., home.
Authorities said that on that partly sunny autumn day, many leaders of New England's most powerful crime family came to Medford for the "baptism" of new members, one of whom was on a day's leave from prison.
Tortora was the only initiate named in the indictments, but 11 of the 17 alleged mob leaders at the ceremony were among those charged, authorities said.
There, before Patriarca and his "soldiers," Tortora pricked his "trigger" finger and recited in Italian: "I . . . want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends. I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta."
Omerta refers to the code of silence, which was explained to each new member: "We get in alive in this organization and the only way we gonna get out is dead," mobster Biagio DiGiacomo said, according to authorities.
"It's no hope, no Jesus, no Madonna, nobody can help us if we ever give up this secret to anybody. . . . This thing cannot be exposed," he said, according to court documents.
"This thing" refers to La Cosa Nostra, which in English means "this thing of ours," officials said.
Tortora, a bald man with a hangdog face, then cupped a flaming holy card bearing a picture of the Patriarca family saint in his hands while vowing: "As burns this saint, so will burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead," according to the indictments.
FBI officials said they did not know the name of the saint. They also did not say how the meeting was taped.
Thomas Hughes, special agent in charge of the investigation, said Patriarca family members could face grave consequences for their slip that fall day, when the FBI apparently was two steps ahead and armed with a bug.
"Patriarca and others should be in mortal fear over the embarrassment of having such a ceremony recorded," he said.
Witness previously have testified about Mafia induction ceremonies, but officials said the account revealed in Monday's indictments for the first time promised prosecutors solid evidence of such activity.
"It's consistent with everything we've ever said about what these ceremonies entail," said O'Callaghan. "Now we finally have the evidence and I don't think the value of that can be underestimated."
All but two of those indicted were in custody Tuesday, a day after the FBI launched a dragnet through Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, authorities said.
They were held on charges including murder, racketeering, kidnapping, drug trafficking, gambling, obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.
by CNB