Final Confession (23 page)

In between Angelo's and Kelley's arraignments, the police brought Cresta to the Suffolk County Courthouse. He also was held on $250,000 bail, and sent back to the Charles Street Jail, where Kelley and Angelo were incarcerated.

The next day the
Record American
ran a huge front-page picture of Cresta being taken out of the back of a patrol wagon on his way to his arraignment. The caption read, “William Cresta, in custody of a detective as he was taken into Boston Police Headquarters. He was one of four men named when a Suffolk County grand jury returned secret indictments in the $800,000 hijacking of a Brink's truck in the North End last December.”

P
HIL SAW THAT PICTURE
as he was having his shoes shined in a Pennsylvania barbershop on his way to Chicago. “When you're on the lam, the last thing you want to do is to draw attention to yourself. But as soon as I saw my brother Billy on the front page of that paper, I just started to laugh.” The FBI and the Boston Police wouldn't think it was all that funny.

All the detectives who worked Organized Crime had been at Superior Court testifying when the indictments had been issued. They had sent regular cops to round up the suspects. The only known address listed at police headquarters for Cresta was Billy Cresta's house. When the cops had gone to his house they'd asked, “Is your name Cresta?” Billy, who just happened to be away from Miami on one of his stays in the Boston area, had answered, “Yes, it is.” And he was placed under arrest. It wasn't until that picture appeared in the paper that the Organized Crime guys realized they had the wrong Cresta. By the time they got to Phil's last-known address—in Lynn—he was long gone. That extra twenty-four hours had given Phil ample time to tie up some loose ends before he headed to Chicago.

Boston and federal authorities had converged on Phil's house, armed with subpoenas and search warrants, but they were a day late and in the wrong place. Phil was, of course, separated from his wife, and had been living at the Fenway Motor Inn for over five years.

At the same time that police were converging on the Lynn house, another team of police, also armed with subpoenas and search warrants, was charging into a number of Boston area banks, trying to confiscate the contents of Phil Cresta's accounts and a number of safe-deposit boxes. The first bank was located in Coolidge Corner, two doors down from where Phil had unlocked a Skelly armored truck and driven away with $58,000 in 1966. The agent in charge explained to a teller why they were there. After some confusion, two safe-deposit boxes were placed on a table by the bank president and unlocked. There was one single piece of paper in the box that read,
“Ha, ha! Kilroy was here!
” The same thing happened to other policemen when they opened Phil Cresta's other safe-deposit boxes in South Boston, East Boston, Charlestown, and Revere.

Phil left Boston with more than half a million dollars in cash. He paid a friend five thousand dollars to drive him to Pennsylvania. When he arrived there, a driver and a room were waiting for him, courtesy of his Chicago friends. The driver would later say, “He was as cool as a cucumber. I was shittin' my pants. We keep hearing on the radio how he's a fugitive from justice and considered armed and extremely dangerous. He's laughing at the news reports, but I'm still scared that we'll be stopped. As we're heading into Pennsylvania, there's a multiple-car crash on the road ahead of us! I'm going to speed up and go around the accident but Phil tells me to stop. I can't believe it! He gets out of the car and starts helping people who are still trapped in their cars. I keep looking for the cops, but he's totally unconcerned. Here he is, one of the most wanted fugitives in America, and he's in the middle of a huge accident with television cameras and police on their way! Finally I grab him by the arm and pull him back into our car and get out of there. When I dropped him off at the designated
spot in Pennsylvania, he gave me the five thousand dollars we agreed on, and twenty-five hundred more
for my conversation
. He was unbelievable.”

Phil wasn't worried about himself, but he felt bad about Angelo. And he believed it was only a matter of time before Tony was pulled in. All the crime cops knew that Tony and Angelo were part of his team, and that if Phil and Angelo were involved in something, it was a pretty sure bet that Tony was there, too.

What Phil didn't know was that Red Kelley was already singing like a canary, and he had given up Tony, Merlino, Roukous, and Santo Diaferio. Kelley thought his high-priced lawyer could get him off on any pinch, as long as he rolled on his accomplices.

“Ben Tilley must've been laughing his ass off, since all three of us took the hit,” Phil said. “I knew I screwed up by not killing Kelley when I had the chance. Angelo was right, we should've taken that asshole out the day he walked out on us. By not killing Kelley and DeLeary we set ourselves up for a big fall. I shouldn't've let them off the hook.”

THE BRINK'S ROBBERY TRIAL
for the available defendants took place in June 1969. The state's two leading witnesses, Red Kelley and Andrew DeLeary, buried the two defendants who stood trial at that time: Tony and Angelo. There was never any question as to their guilt, only to what sentences they would get.

Kelley and DeLeary pleaded guilty to conspiracy and were given three to five years.

Angelo and Tony received sentences of twenty-five to forty years each, to be served at Walpole State Prison.

Carmello Merlino, who evaded capture for more than a year, was later found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five to forty years.

Santo “Sonny” Diaferio suffered a heart attack as the opening arguments of the trial were just getting under way. His case was continued until June 23, 1971. Diaferio's doctor told Judge James C. Roy that his client had only five to six years to live because of
his heart condition. Roy was apparently unswayed; he gave Diaferio ten to fifteen years in Walpole State Prison. Diaferio died April 15, 1981, after his release.

Sonny Diaferio's attractive wife, Patricia, was also indicted, but she was never tried. She said that she was on welfare and had been forced to sell the family home to pay medical expenses.

Bench warrants were issued on June 12, 1969, for the arrests of Stephen Roukous and Phil Cresta. Like Cresta, Roukous was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list. When apprehended in 1972, he was tried and sentenced to twenty-five to forty years in Walpole.

PHIL CRESTA
was a lot smarter than your average wise guy. He had planned for the day when he'd have to flee as meticulously as he planned every score he was involved in. He'd kept his safe-deposit boxes in places easy to get to when going on the run. He'd nurtured his contacts, devised ways to stay in touch with family and friends back home, created aliases, studied disguise. Throughout the years that Cresta and his team had done their jobs, Phil never lost touch with the fact that there was always someone out there trying to take him down.

When he hit the bricks on May 14, 1969, Phil tapped into contacts he'd made while living a shadow life in Chicago (unbeknownst to everyone in Boston except Angelo and Tony) for almost ten years. His sister Mari, through her husband, Augie Circella, and his Follies Burlesque Theater, was tied in pretty well with Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo, Joseph “Joey O'Brien” Aiuppa, Jackie Cerone, and Joseph “Joe Negall” Ferriola—men who ran the Chicago mob as well as the Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Miami, Kansas City, and St. Louis operations. Mari became especially close with Joe Ferriola, who watched out for her and who later took over Chicago.

Years later, Mari reminisced about an evening after she and Augie had split, when she was getting ready to go out on a date with a local wise guy. Before her date came to pick her up she got a call from Ferriola. “Mari, are you going out with so-and-so?”
he asked. “Yeah, how did you know?” Mari asked. “Never mind that, just don't go out with him tonight,” Ferriola, the boss of Chicago at the time, told Mari. She'd been around long enough not to ask any more questions. When the wise guy came to pick her up, she told him she wasn't feeling well and apologized. He said he understood and left. The next day his body was found in the trunk of his car. Ferriola had saved Mari's life. Mari knew that everything around Chicago was probably bugged, and that mentioning Ferriola's phone call to anyone could implicate him in the murder and that she'd end up in someone's trunk just as her almost-date did.

In 1969, while Mari and her connections were helping Phil hide in Chicago, his whereabouts and ultimate capture became an obsession of a very powerful man in Washington: J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover and his Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in Boston would begin a massive paper trail concerning the whereabouts of Philip Joseph Cresta. In an internal FBI memo dated June 12, 1969, the FBI gave this description of Cresta (which made him somewhat smaller-than-life):

SEX
: Male

RACE
: White

HEIGHT
: Approximately 5′9″

WEIGHT
: 165 pounds, January, 1968

BUILD
: Medium

HAIR
: Chestnut-brown

COMPLEXION
: Dark

EYES
: Brown

DATES OF BIRTH
: March 2, 1938; March 2, 1928

PLACES OF BIRTH
: Boston, Massachusetts; Everett, Massachusetts

SCARS AND MARKS
: Scar right middle finger; scar left thumb; scar left ring finger; scar near point of left elbow; scar over right eye

OCCUPATIONS
: Counterman in restaurant; plumber; car salesman; salesman; mechanic's helper

ADDRESSES
: 16 Light Street, Lynn, Massachusetts, January,
1968, October, 1961, February, 1960; 1 Nelson Street, Lynn, Massachusetts, November, 1959; 56 Fountain Street, Medford, Massachusetts, November, 1959, November, 1955, March, 1945, June, 1942

SOCIAL SECURITY
#: 030-20-4003

RELATIVES
: Philip, father; Ruth, mother

MARITAL STATUS
: Married, November, 1959

FBI IDENTIFICATION
#: 4349239

NCIC FINGERPRINT CLASSIFICATION
: 1612010611180906tt12

OFFENSE CHARGED
: Fugitive from justice

U.S. CODE TITLE AND SECTION
: Title 18, US Code Section 1073

WARRANT ISSUED BY
: U.S. Commissioner R. Robert Popeo

DATE ISSUED
: 6/12/69

Another memo, dated November 1, 1969, from the SAC in Boston to the FBI director, said that Cresta was believed to have driven from Boston to parts unknown in a 1967 yellow Bonneville sedan, license plate number G2140. The feds thought they had a break in the Cresta case and they plastered his picture and one of the gold Bonneville all over the country.

The FBI offices in Boston were located directly across the street from Boston's Area A police station, where Phil had thought about hitting DeLeary as he was undergoing questioning by the Boston Police. For a year and a half, the memo from the FBI was posted in every police station in Boston. While the feds were looking all over the country for the gold Bonneville with license plate number G2140, a Boston police officer, working in Area A, was driving that very car every day and parking it twenty yards from the FBI offices.

The cop driving the gold Bonneville was a loudmouth whom Phil never liked. Two days before Phil went on the lam, the cop was drinking in McGrail's and Phil approached him. “Hey, Cresta, you're not in jail yet?” the cop said loudly enough for everyone in McGrail's to hear. Phil laughed, but deep inside he was fuming. “Now what would I be in jail for?” he asked. “I
can think of a hundred things,” the cop said, laughing. “You got me all wrong,” Phil answered. “As matter of fact, I'm thinking of opening a new restaurant.” Intent on needling Phil, the policeman said that he hoped this time Phil was going to buy his meat instead of stealing it. “Your last restaurant didn't last too long,” the cop said, laughing. By now he was really irritating Phil. “Well, I know how much you like my car, and I was going to see if you wanted to buy it from me. But if you're not interested, I'll sell it to someone else,” Phil said, drawing the cop in. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the cop said. “Are you serious?” “Yeah, I got to come up with fifty large to open the restaurant,” Phil lied. “How much you asking for the car?” “A grand,” Phil said. “Just one?” The cop smiled. “Yeah, I need the money tonight,” Phil said sadly. “You got the papers?” the cop, now beaming, asked. “Of course. This isn't hot, you know that. You've already checked it out.” “How'd ya know that?” The cop blushed. “I have my sources,” Phil returned. “I'll be back in an hour. You gonna be here?” the cop asked. “I'll be here,” Phil said as the cop hurried out.

Forty minutes later the cop was back with a thousand dollars in hand. Phil had all the papers ready and the exchange was made quickly. The cop, who loved the gold Bonneville loaded with extras, was thrilled with his new possession. “So long, sucker,” he yelled to Phil as he left McGrail's. “We'll see who the sucker is,” Phil said under his breath, knowing that DeLeary was close to breaking and he himself was close to fleeing.

The cop Phil sold his car to didn't bother to reregister the license plates. Thinking himself above the law, he simply put the bill of sale in his glove compartment. Two days later all hell broke loose and Phil beat the cops out of town. The cop reported nothing. Just because Cresta was gone was no reason to give up his new prized possession.

On April 8, 1970, a year after Phil fled, another internal memo sent from the FBI field office in Boston to Director J. Edgar Hoover stated, “Subject: Cresta (FBI # 4347) was last known to be driving a 1967 Pontiac Bonneville, hard-top sedan, yellow,
bearing current Massachusetts License G2140 issued to himself.” This FBI memo was put in the police stations throughout Boston, and was posted in the Boston FBI office, on top of the similar one posted the previous November. On May 12, 1970, a young FBI agent parked his car on New Sudbury Street and was walking to the back door of the FBI offices when he noticed a 1969 gold Bonneville parked in one of the spaces reserved for cops assigned to Area A. The agent ran upstairs.

Within minutes he had found what he was looking for. He raced back down to New Sudbury Street, approached the gold Bonneville, and was pleased to see that the license plate said G2140. He couldn't believe his luck. He told his boss about the Bonneville, and showed it to him from the window. Three FBI agents then walked across the street, where the police captain in command of Area A told them that the officer who owned the vehicle was working a detail at the Boston Garden.