Posted on 04/23/2023 6:36:26 AM PDT by billorites
John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone.
At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career.
He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family.
But “Mob hitman” is a bit much.
Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin” from his c.v., after a pathetically feeble attempt in Florida to clear his name.
A state appeals court in Florida this month denied Zip “post-conviction relief” from his second-degree murder conviction. He was found guilty of setting up the 1982 gangland hit on a Boston businessman who was preparing to testify against Zip and his serial-killing, cocaine-dealing gangland bosses, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi. MONETARY GOLD IN-POST AD
Zip ratted out John Callahan, whose body then ended up in the trunk of a rented car in the long-term parking lot at Miami International Airport.
Zip’s job in the bloodthirsty crew was snitching on any plug uglies who might flip against his pals. The job of organized-crime finger man paid well. Zip ended up with mansions in Chatham and Lynnfield as well as a large boat. In those pre-direct deposit days he often went months without cashing his government paycheck.
He pocketed at least $200,000 in dirty cash over the course of his underworld career, which included supervisory duties. As the Florida court noted:
“(The mobsters) also used the defendant as a conduit for the delivery of cash and gifts from Bulger and Flemmi to other FBI agents.”
There were at least six G-men from the Boston office on the gangsters’ payroll. Zip delivered cash and booze and God only knows what else to his fellow feds.
At the time of his arrest, Zip was working on a Hollywood screenplay about his career as a fearless crusading G-man. He was convicted, first of racketeering and corruption in Boston, and then of Callahan’s murder in Miami.
Zip should still be down in Florida serving out his 40-year sentence. But he was released in 2021 due to his “terminal illness,” which has turned out to be not so terminal. Funny how these thieving Democrats all seem to have miraculous recoveries after they’re cut loose from prison.
Am I right, Sal DiMasi?
Zip filed a frivolous motion in Florida to get his murder conviction overturned, claiming a witness who could have cleared him was for some reason not allowed to testify at his murder trial in 2007.
His would-be witness was another corrupt ex-G-man in Boston by the name of Robert Fitzpatrick.
Back in 2016, Zip’s star witness was convicted in federal court of six counts each of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Which raises the question, what do you call an FBI agent in the Boston office who’s only been convicted of 12 felonies?
The best and the brightest.
Supposedly, Fitzpatrick could have testified that Zip had nothing to do with the Callahan hit. The problem was that before his death, Fitzpatrick was, as the Florida judges noted, “unstable.”
What almost landed Fitzpatrick in prison was a lousy book he wrote about his career as a fearless crusading G-man – stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Fitzpatrick just made up a bunch of lies about what he’d done, as if he were the president of the United States or a columnist for the Boston Globe. MONETARY GOLD IN-POST AD
But hey, Fitzie was a fed. That’s what they all do. They lie. You could ask Donald Trump, or almost any Republican for that matter.
Fitzpatrick got away with it until 2013 when he was sworn in as a defense witness at Whitey Bulger’s murder trial. This allowed the prosecution to ask the bent fed about all the BS he’d made up for his book.
It was classic courtroom theater when prosecutor Brian Kelly took him down.
Kelly asked Fitzpatrick about his assorted false claims, among them the brag that he had personally arrested Mafia boss Jerry Angiulo back in 1984. Was that true?
Fitzpatrick: “I wish I did arrest the – I did arrest him.”
Kelly: “Not what you wished you did. Didn’t you tell this jury, ‘I also arrested Angiulo?’”
Fitzpatrick: “I did arrest Angiulo.”
Kelly: “That’s a total bald-faced lie, isn’t it?”
The next morning Kelly resumed his cross-examination. It was brutal. Fitzpatrick claimed he couldn’t remember anything he’d said the previous afternoon before he staggered off to the Barking Crab for liquid refreshment.
Fitzpatrick: “You’re asking me to recall something that I may not recall.”
Kelly: “Do you have any medical issues with your memory?”
Fitzpatrick: “Not that I recall.”
Shortly thereafter, Fitzpatrick was indicted for perjury. But that was far from the first time he’d channeled Da Nang Dick Blumenthal or Brian Williams.
As the Florida judges said, “The record before us is replete with irreconcilably contradictory statements rendered by Fitzpatrick in the years leading up to his death.”
This was the guy Zip was counting on to provide him with an alibi. But the court said no.
So Zip is still officially a Mob hitman. That’s the bad news. The good news is, Zip is now years past the deadline Florida gave him to be dead by, lest he be returned to state prison. He’s still living large on his bloated G-man pension, just as Fitzpatrick did right up until his death in 2021.
It’s great to be a Democrat fed, isn’t it?
If he still wants something positive for his obituary, Zip might use the fawning tribute Whitey Bulger’s brother Billy – the Corrupt Midget – delivered at his FBI retirement dinner in 1990.
“He’s a splendid human being,” Billy said. “He’s a good pal…. John Connolly is the personification of loyalty.”
That statement is on videotape, Zip. And I’ll add my own encomium that you can feel free to use.
Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.
Zip Connolly was a good friend. They don’t make Mob hitmen like Zip Connolly any more.
Respect for Howie Carr. The man has talent!
And, the article says it all.
A likely case of humblebragging, and privately enjoying his Wild and Crazy Guy legacy.
They could have gone with "mob torpedo".
Lately I've gotten hooked on the old "Untouchables" TV series on YT - and now I know all the words. (Excellent series, BTW, with some surprising guest stars. Lee Marvin was particularly good as a mobster).
My father went to Boston College with Zip Connelly. Dad says he was an asshole then too.
Someone needs to ask Mueller who was the Federal Atty at the time— just what he agreed to allow Whitey and his pals to do, such that they were all part of a Fed operation, as informants and clearly much more- to rid Boston of the Italian mafia (which was marginally worse than the “loyal” Southie Irish Mob of Murderers who were “OK” to the Irish FBI led by a Kraut). Yeah, and also- how did he get the 80 plus year old Whitey transferred to a pithole WV fed prison to be murdered on the first day he was there (so he wouldn’t talk to media, and complete a book on the entire thing)== murdered by a lifer Italian hit man. The first day.
Convenient, and another example of the shining fen bee eye.
A pity that the cameras weren’t working in the area where the sainted James Bulger was dispatched. The video would have been hilarious. Looking forward to his crooked brother’s death.
Yup,he does.His show is on at 3PM (Eastern) on WRKO (available on iHeart Radio).
You mean the brother who’s getting a $200,000 a year pension courtesy of the taxpayers of the Commonwealth?
The very same!
Howie is one of the people I miss most since leaving the Boston area.
If he were a liberal, they would call him a “Mob activist.”
Serious bunch of cooney micks, and don’t forget the krauts. Le Cage Aux Folle. Follow the trail of “law enforcement” all the way to McCabe (looks like the cartoonist Mike Judge, and snivels just like Beavis & Butthead). It was McCabe who “tookover” the investigation of Seth Rich’s murder- right after a shootout with gangers— on the campus of the US Capitol. At the time McCabe was still getting money from the Clinton’s for his wifes VA Senate race. The delivery bag man... another mick. Governor at the time who set up Charlottesville— McAulliffe (the “green car” scam artist who was wiped out by Youngkin. But will rise again with a bottle of day of bourbon on board.)
Yeah— not loss there. But more important is just how BENT Mueller has been ever since those times. And don’t forget where Rosenstein is now— he, along with Gina Haspel, is now a lawyer at Atlanta mega firm— King & Spaulding. The same group of shysters that Christie recommended to clearly set up Trump to replace Comey-— one Chris Wray (ex King and Spaulding.. spook laundry lawyers. Just like Bill Barr— son of Ukrainian born daddy who was OSS in Ukraine in WWII, the ones who gave up White Russians to Stalin to murder. The wheel goes round and round, and nobody wants their chair pulled out from them when it stops (mixed metaphor).
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