In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins unravels one of the most damning scandals in FBI history—a chilling story of corruption, betrayal, and a sanctioned murder that would stain the Bureau’s legacy for decades. Gary examines the sinister role played by FBI agent H. Paul Rico in the 1965 murder of Teddy Deegan. You’ll hear how, back in October 1964, Rico learned Deegan had been marked for a mob hit—yet the Bureau did nothing. Why? Because the killers were protected informants.

Gary breaks down how the FBI built its case on the false testimony of mob informant Joe Barboza. Instead of stopping the murder plot, the Bureau sat on exculpatory evidence and let Barboza’s lies send Louis Greco, Henry Tamaleo, Peter Limone, and Joe Salvati to prison—two of them to death row.

The FBI’s Informant Obsession:
The Bureau’s relentless protection of violent informants like Barboza and Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi reveals how an obsession with “winning” overshadowed basic justice. The Justice Department’s own admission in 2000 that they knew the real killers exposes just how far the corruption ran.

From Cover-Up to Vindication:
Follow the twisted timeline of the Deegan murder, the courtroom betrayals, and the decades-long fight to clear the names of the wrongfully convicted. Gary explores the human cost of a system that chose loyalty to informants over the truth.

Why This Story Matters:
This episode forces listeners to confront a haunting truth: when law enforcement trades integrity for convenience, innocent lives pay the price. Gary challenges you to rethink the myth of the Bureau’s infallibility—and to remember the names of the men who spent their lives behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit.

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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio. This is Gary Jenkins, former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, and I just heard something in that interview I just did with Detective Mike Huff from Tulsa that I had never heard before.

[0:18] I mean, I’ve heard a lot of corruption things, but this one, it just went beyond the pale, especially there at the end where he said that this H. Paul Rico asked him about his kids and how old his kids were. That was like, you know, and I, you know, I talked with that guy long enough to know that he wasn’t lying. You know, he wasn’t making that up. That was, it was just beyond the pale, if you ask me. But today’s episode is going to be a little bit more about H. Paul Rico and a dark chapter in the FBI history. Now, this is before John Connolly and the Whitey Bulger cover-up and all that. H. Paul Rico was the agent that really broke in Connolly, I think, and taught him the ropes. He was a slick FBI agent that had all the informants, that always had the inside track on everything, knew where the deals were. And so let’s talk a little more about this one incident that we glossed over in that interview with Mike Huff about the murder of the Roger Wheeler down in Tulsa at the golf course, the Southern Hills Golf Tournament.

[1:30] And it was all over control of Jai alai, all the money that came out of Jai alai. This thing, it just, it was a web of deceit that reached into the highest levels of federal law enforcement, as you could tell from what Mr. Huff was saying.

[1:44] And so I’m going to tell you the story of the Edward Teddy Deegan murder. This is the FBI’s legacy of shame. I read one article about this, and that’s what they call this, the legacy of shame.

[1:56] So let’s go back to October 1964, the year I graduated from high school, actually. Boston FBI agent H. Paul Rico wrote a memo. He’s got an informant whispering that Teddy Deegan, a known hoodlum in Chelsea, Massachusetts, is marked for death. There’s a contract out on him. It’s not just street talk, not just bullshit that he heard somewhere. This came from real solid mob insider informants. A few months later, another memo makes it all the way to J. Edgar Hoover himself. March 10th, 1965, it says that Vincent Jimmy the Bear Flemmy, who is Steve Flemmy, Stevie the Rifleman Flemmy’s brother, I believe, and a guy named Joe Barbosa, have asked New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca for a green light to kill Teddy Deegan. And the word is they’ve already had one dry run on it. So what did the FBI do with this information? You know, they did nothing with it. They did absolutely nothing. They didn’t warn Teddy Deegan, which I know FBI agents, and I know they’ve gotten information like this, and that’s the rule is you go warn the person. And usually it’ll be another guy involved in a lot of shenanigans that then they’ll try to bring him in with that warning. I know we had one in Kansas City. They went to him, and he could have come in. He could have talked. He wouldn’t talk, and like about two weeks later, he was dead. But you at least have to warn him, and it’s an option or it’s an opportunity for you to make a pitch to him.

[3:24] Later on, they talked about in another memo that identified, this Jimmy the Bear Flemmi as a murderer of seven men, including Teddy Deegan. But it also said that from all indications, Jimmy the Bear is going to continue to commit murder. But this informant’s potential outweighs the risk. It’s crazy. And, you know, they said that in this Teddy Deegan, they claimed that Flemmy and Barboza and a couple other guys were behind it. And one of them set the trap, lured Deegan into a fake break-in, then shot him in the back of the head. And then a couple others finished up the job, but Flemme and especially Joe Barbosa, Joe the animal Barbosa, were highly placed FBI informants at the time. Really valuable assets. Two years later, 1968, four men, Louis Greco, Henry Tamaleo, Peter Limone, and Joe Salvati are convicted based on the testimony

[4:25] of Joe Barbosa, who set up this murder, they’re convicted for this murder. And the FBI knew that Louis Greco was in Miami at the time of the murder. They even had the witnesses. They had proof that he wasn’t even in town at that time.

[4:39] But, you know, and of course, they didn’t reveal that, you know, that’s exculpatory information that you can get your conviction turned around and at least get another trial on it. Now that you’ve got that information that the U.S. Attorney withheld from you, the FBI, whoever the law enforcement was that withheld from you. H. Paul Rico was overheard bragging at a mob party how easy it was to convict the four pigeons. They called them the four pigeons. They said it was funny. And one of them, Greco, who wasn’t even in town at the time, got the death penalty. Now think about that one. There’s a federal agent laughing about sending an innocent man to the death chamber. It’s crazy. So over the next four years, you know, these guys are frantically trying to get the death sentences overturned, and they get them commuted to life after the Supreme Court hurt the case. Actually, it’s after Supreme Court’s ruling in Furman v. Georgia.

[5:35] Tamaleo will die in prison in 1985 at 84. He was the oldest inmate in Massachusetts. Greco died in 95, had colon cancer, and a broken Hart. His son, Lewis Jr., drank Drano and took his own life a couple years later. Meanwhile, the FBI was doing everything they could to keep the truth buried. They even funneled false information to Governor Dukakis at the time, blocking any.

[6:03] Opportunity for a commutation because they’d asked the governor for a commutation. They had, you know, these different pieces of evidence that proved they didn’t do it. And the FBI fought it like crazy. Yeah, like they fought Mike Huff from looking into this whole Roger Wheeler

[6:19] case any further than what he was able to do. Finally, in 2000, the Department of Justice uncovered secret FBI files that proved what many people had suspected over the years, that the FBI knew who really killed Deegan, and they had let four innocent men rot in prison just to protect informants. 2001, court will vacate the convictions of Salvati and Peter Lamone. Peter Lamone had spent over 33 years behind bars, but he was a young man when he went in, and he was 66 when he walked out a free man. Of course, they filed lawsuits, $300 million in claims for wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecutions, and civil rights violations. And the judge that h...

The Murder of Teddy Deegan and the FBI