From the author of Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy
"Joseph Barboza is the most dangerous individual known." -FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover, 1965
Joe Barboza knew that there were two requirements for getting inducted
into the Mafia. You had to be Sicilian. And you had to commit a contract
killing. The New Bedford-born mobster was a proud Portuguese, not
Sicilian, but his dream to be part of La Cosa Nostra proved so strong
that he thought he could create a loophole. If he killed enough men, if
he did enough of the Mafia's dirtiest biddings, then they would have no
choice but to make him a Made Man.
Barboza's brutal rise during one of the deadliest mob wars in US history
became the stuff of legend, both on the bloodied streets of Boston and
in the offices of the FBI and the US Attorney General. He took sick joy
in his crimes, and it became increasingly difficult for the mob to keep
the Animal on his leash. But soon the hunter became the hunted. Betrayed
by the mob and now on the run, Boston's most notorious contract killer
forged a Faustian bargain with two unscrupulous FBI agents - a pact that
would transform the US criminal justice system.
From false testimony and manipulated evidence that sent mob leaders to
death row, to the creation of the Witness Protection Program so the feds
could protect their prized, cold-blooded witness, this was the horrific,
dramatic first act in a story of murder and FBI corruption still being
played out today in the news and the courtroom with the capture and
trial of Whitey Bulger. Barboza's legacy, buried for years thanks to the
murders or deaths of its participants, is finally coming to light and
being told in its unvarnished brutality by one of America's most
respected true crime writers.
