H. Paul Rico
| H. Paul Rico | |
|---|---|
FBI mugshot of Rico
|
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| Born |
Harold Paul Rico April 29, 1925 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | January 14, 2004 (aged 78) Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| Occupation | FBI agent |
| Years active | 1951–2003 |
Harold Paul Rico (April 29, 1925 – January 14, 2004) was an FBI agent. Indicted for murder in 2003, he played a significant role in the 1968 framing of four men for murder, unjustly imprisoning them for decades.
Rico was born in 1925 in Boston. He graduated from Boston College with a bachelor's degree in history. Rico joined the FBI in 1951 at the age of 26 and worked in the Boston area. He used members of the Winter Hill Gang as informants. In 1956 he recognized a disguised James "Whitey" Bulger in a Revere bar and arrested him.
In 1965, Rico received word that gangster Edward Deegan was killed by members of the Winter Hill Gang. He then watched as Joe Barboza testified in court against four men: Peter Limone, Henry Tameleo, Joe Salvati and Louis Greco. Tameleo died in 1985 in prison and Greco died in 1995 in prison, too; Salvati was released in 1997, and Limone in 2001. During U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearings in October 2003 looking into the Deegan killing, Rico responded to questions about the innocent men imprisoned with "What do you want, tears?"
The two survivors and the estates of the deceased were awarded $101.7 million by U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston on July 26, 2007.
Rico was in charge of cooperative witness John "Red" Kelley, an Irish American mobster and sometime associate of the Patriarca crime family, during a murder trial of family boss Raymond Patriarca and four members of the family, Maurice Lerner, Robert Fairbrothers, John Rossi, and Rudolph Sciarra. The five were tried in 1970 for murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 1968 shotgun murders of Rudolph "Rudy" Marfeo and Anthony Melei. Kelley testified he had been contracted by Lerner to kill Marfeo and Melei, whom Kelley and Lerner allegedly murdered. After the trial, Kelley went into the federal witness protection program.
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