Final Confession (4 page)

Each morning Phil and Bones would get up at sunrise and steal whatever they needed for the restaurant that day. Whatever meat or fish they stole at Faneuil Hall Marketplace or Boston's docks became the special of the day. The meat and fish taken care of, they would proceed to five-finger discounts on bread, soft drinks, milk, coffee, sugar, and whatever else the restaurant required. Their prices, as you may have guessed, were the best in Boston.

Angiulo got his cut, and everybody was happy. At Lucy's Snack Bar, a person could buy more than a meal. There were bargains on suits, sneakers, blouses, cashmere jackets—whatever the local wise guys had hijacked the night before. It was one-stop shopping at Lucy's. Phil continued running the diner until 1955.

Under Lombardo and Buccola, Angiulo had been a low-level numbers runner. With his outstanding organizational skills, though, he soon took over bookmaking in Boston. In the late 1950s, booking was profitable but still fragmented. Bookies didn't share their winnings. That changed as Angiulo gained power.

According to Phil Cresta, during the time Angiulo was consolidating bookmaking, Phil and three or four of his buddies, all of whom were on Angiulo's payroll, were given a list of local bookies to hit. They'd go into the bars or clubs where an intimidated bookie worked and take his betting slips. The very next day, after the Suffolk Downs pari-mutuel number had been published in the newspaper, the same four or five guys would return and tell the bookie they'd hit that pari-mutuel with
him
. They would then produce one of the bookie's own slips, from those taken the day before, as proof. Many of the bookies at first refused to pay, but they soon changed their minds.

“Me or one of my buddies would stick a gun down the bookie's throat and tell him he either paid up or he died,” Cresta stated. Once a bookie was brought into line, he was told that one of Angiulo's men would be in once a week to see that things “like this” didn't happen again. It wasn't long before it was accepted that if a guy wanted to book in Boston he had to give a cut to Jerry Angiulo, whose lack of patience was becoming famous. Many of those who refused didn't last longer than their second chance.

Phil's early efforts at lock picking were not completely successful. In 1957 Phil was seen picking a lock to a house. The witness called police, who charged Cresta with breaking and entering, possession of a firearm, and assault with intent to kill. (They claimed he tried to shoot them; Phil said that never happened.) Before his case went to trial, the high-priced lawyers working for Angiulo had the charges reduced to entering a home by means of subterfuge. Phil was sentenced to serve two and a half years in the old Charlestown state prison, but later was transferred to the newer state prison at Walpole. It was at Walpole that Phil found a way to acquire the wealth he sought.

Phil hated prison, but he learned a lot there. He made friends with Joe “The Animal” Barboza, Vinny “The Butcher” Flemmi, and John Robichaud, all of whom would later become famous for their viciousness. Phil also got to know the guys who'd
pulled off the daring Brink's robbery in 1950 that became the subject of several books, television shows, and movies. He listened to the stories of the bank jobs and the murders that The Animal had been involved with. Phil decided that their style was not for him. Their fame, and where it got them, gave Phil warning: a guy in his kind of work was better off staying in the shadows. So he decided to get better at being unobtrusive.

By the time Cresta returned to Boston's streets in 1959, there weren't many locks he couldn't pick or alarms he couldn't disable successfully. Phil had also become adept at making perfect molds of keys, a talent that had many uses. He began working his new skills.

At some point around this time he also made an enemy who vowed to bring him down, a sergeant in the police department of Arlington, a bedroom community about six miles outside Boston. Nobody knows, or at least nobody is saying, why Sergeant Jim Doherty hated Phil Cresta so much.

Doherty did his utmost to make Phil's life miserable and, to a degree, he succeeded. It became routine for Doherty to drive into Boston, pick Phil up, not charge him with any crime, beat him up, and leave him bloodied.
Miranda
, of course, had not yet come to court. The only Miranda Doherty knew of was Carmen Miranda, the woman who danced with bananas on her head. Doherty knew he had no police authority in Boston, but he harassed Cresta there anyway.

Phil retaliated with psychological warfare. Every time a severe rain- or snowstorm hit the Boston area, Cresta would drive to Arlington, pick the lock of Doherty's car, roll down all the windows, and then return to Boston. After Sergeant Doherty's shift was finished, he'd find his car's interior completely drenched. He must have felt as if a permanent rain cloud were following him. For, despite his efforts to hide his car, Phil always managed to find it and go through his ritual.

Sergeant Doherty wasn't the only cop who knew that Phil Cresta was more than a car salesman, but few were able to discover exactly what he did for his “real” job, now that the diner
was long closed. Phil received some unwanted publicity when on November 12, 1959, a worker in the Everett dump found the body of Joseph “Angie” DeMarco. A well-known North End criminal, DeMarco was found lying faceup, with six bullets in his head. His body was covered with wooden crates and rubble. “He definitely wasn't killed in Everett,” Lieutenant Henry Fitzgerald of the Everett Police Department told the
Boston Herald
. “His body was dumped here by his attackers.” DeMarco had last been seen at an after-hours joint in Boston called the Coliseum, which was owned by the Mafia. The last person he was seen talking to was Phil Cresta.

Middlesex District Attorney John Droney was aware of the public's fascination with the Mafia and did not let go of the story until he'd milked it dry. He called the DeMarco slaying a gangland execution, and assured reporters that he was not going to stand by and watch Middlesex County become a dumping ground for “racketeers, dope peddlers, loan sharks, and other hoodlums.” DeMarco's background was publicized: he had spent the better part of his forty-two years in prison. In 1943 he had been sentenced to fifteen to twenty years for manslaughter; he was released in 1955. Three years later he was arrested and sent away briefly for carrying a concealed weapon. He was released in November 1958, but was back in jail in March 1959, this time after a wild auto chase. The grand jury proceedings on the DeMarco killing became more of a media show than an inquiry.

When the grand jury convened in Middlesex County Superior Court in Cambridge, they called six witnesses: Jerry Angiulo; Larry Baione, who would later become an underboss in the Angiulo syndicate; Phil Waggenheim, who was a notorious contract killer; Henry Noyes, a well-known Mafia member; Peter Jordan, the former mayor of Revere; and a young upstart named Phil Cresta Jr. It was pretty heady company for the former North End kid.

Years later Cresta would say callously, “Angie DeMarco was a piece of shit, a low-life scumbag who couldn't be trusted. He'd
started robbing Angiulo's ‘protected' bookies after leaving jail in 1959. It made us look bad—and that made him dead. DeMarco was also a fool. He knew he was playing with fire and he got burned.”

It is not clear from Cresta's tales who actually shot DeMarco, though Cresta certainly wouldn't have had any problem putting bullets into DeMarco's brain if he'd been given the contract. Cresta had no pity for the district attorney's office, either, who never got their indictment for DeMarco's murder. “They knew they'd never solve that DeMarco hit. The number of people who wanted to see DeMarco dead could fill Boston Garden.”

Though Droney's public indignation did not bring about an indictment, Phil Cresta did get in trouble because of the investigation. He had to show up at the courthouse daily, as did the other gangsters who had been subpoenaed with him. One day as he waited in the corridor Phil met one of his old friends from his younger days at the Concord reformatory, who was now a felon. The two went across the street to a deli and talked about their days at Concord and life since. Little did Phil know that his old nemesis, Sergeant Doherty, was sitting in a back booth.

After Phil and his buddy left, Doherty went straight to Phil's parole officer, turned him in for associating with a felon, and insisted on punishment. So, though Phil had recently been seen on television every night in the company of the known felons subpoenaed by Droney, Cresta was returned to prison for violation of parole. He did not stay there long.

By this time, Phil had a small army on his payroll: informants, hoods, elected and appointed officials. To him, crime was a game, and whoever had enough money, connections, or influence usually won. One of Phil's payees worked in Governor Foster Furcolo's office, and he gave Phil a get-out-of-jail-free card after he'd served only three weeks.

It just so happened that the day Phil left jail, it was raining. Hard. Phil decided to pay a debt. Instead of going to his favorite bar, he headed for Arlington. The next morning, after a night of steady rain, Sergeant Doherty discovered his car windows wide
open and about a foot of rainwater on the car floor. He complained bitterly about Cresta's release to a guy in the governor's office. The man listened to Doherty's claims that Phil Cresta was responsible for everything except the bombing of Pearl Harbor, thanked Doherty for all the information, then called Phil to tell him what the sergeant had just said about him.

P
HIL DIDN'T LIKE ANGIULO
. In Phil's words, “Jerry Angiulo was a greedy bastard who liked to have his ass kissed.” By the time January 1961 rolled around, Phil figured he'd made enough money for Angiulo and it was time to make some for himself. He was still doing some muscle work for Angiulo, but being a strong arm was never his forte. Phil had been working on an idea for quite some time. All he needed was the right day to set his plan in motion.

“When I woke up on the morning of Kennedy's inauguration, I knew that was the day. The weather had to be some kind of omen. Not only was there a couple of feet of snow on the ground, but this was the one day when everyone, at least everyone in Boston, would be home watching Kennedy. It was perfect.”

Phil left the house wearing a large trench coat and a mask, which could be pulled down over his face to ward off both the weather and nosy witnesses. He also carried a large black suitcase. Inside was a hacksaw. Phil was the only person on downtown Boston's Washington Street that day, which gave him an eerie feeling. “I knew there wouldn't be a lot of people on the
street, but it was like I was in the Twilight Zone or something. There was nobody around, nobody. All the time I'm walking down Washington Street, I can hear radios broadcasting Kennedy's being sworn in, and his inauguration speech.”

If someone had been watching the area that day, that person would have seen a trench-coated man stop at a parking meter, open his suitcase, and take out a hacksaw. He then very quickly sawed through the pole, just below the meter, as he kept an eye out for possible witnesses, snowplows, or police vehicles. There were none. Once the top of the parking meter was free, the man placed it in his suitcase and continued his stroll through downtown Boston.

After he had cut the heads off three parking meters, Phil headed back to the warmth of his favorite North End social club on Hanover Street. “I was frozen by the time I got to the North End, but I knew I had what I'd come for, which made the trip a little easier,” Phil said. “As I walked into the club, there were about fifteen wise guys hanging in front of the TV, watching the Kennedy stuff. They looked at me like I was crazy to be out in that kind of weather, and when I opened the suitcase, they
really
thought I was crazy.” Phil laughed.

The puzzled onlookers watched in amazement as Cresta brazenly dropped the three parking meter heads on a card table. The puzzlement quickly turned to scorn. “Hey, big fucking score, Cresta, you gutta have at least a double sawbuck in there,” one guy yelled out as everyone laughed with the speaker. “Hey, Phil, ya get caught with that and you do life with no ticket,” a well-known mob figure screamed. “No ticket, ya get it?” In the parlance of Walpole State Prison, where most of the guys in that room had spent some time, a ticket was more formally known as parole.

“I stayed in that zoo just long enough to get warm and then I loaded the three meters back into the suitcase and screwed,” Phil said. “Where ya going, Cresta, on ya honeymoon?” “What ya gut, a new sex toy?” some of the goons called out as Phil
closed the door behind him. They may have all thought that Phil had lost his marbles, but the laughter soon turned to jealousy when Phil Cresta became Boston's most wanted scofflaw.

The day after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States, Phil Cresta took a cab from his home in Lynn, where he was living at that time with his wife Dorothy and his four children, to Logan International Airport in East Boston. He had in his possession one black suitcase. With his newspaper, suitcase, and boarding pass for a flight to Chicago, he looked like any normal passenger. But while other passengers' suitcases contained clothes and personal items, Phil Cresta's contained items that belonged to the City of Boston. By this time, though his sister had not yet married Augie Circella, Phil had some very good friends in Chicago's syndicate, a hugely profitable corporation grown out of the efforts of people like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, and Tony Accardo. Nobody in Boston's mob could hold a candle to Chicago, and nobody could “smoke” (duplicate) keys like the Chicago guys.

While serving time, Phil had become captivated with cons who were called “picks” by the other cons. Picks weren't the biggest or the toughest prisoners; in fact, they looked like accountants or businessmen. But they impressed Phil with their expertise and with the fact that they didn't tend to get rubbed out like the mob's heavies did. Cresta was close to six feet tall and his weight, though it fluctuated, averaged about 190 pounds. He was as tough as any con in prison, but though he didn't graduate from high school, he was intelligent enough to see that learning to pick locks was a win-win situation. He decided in prison to become the best pickman in Boston.

As Phil later said, “I could've been muscle for anybody in the United States, but those guys, like Barboza and DeMarco, always wind up with a bullet behind their ear, and that wasn't going to happen to me.”

When he had left prison in 1959, Phil used his prison friends to get the necessary introductions to their pick counterparts in
Chicago. It was a match made in heaven, and this trip in 1961 would not be the last time Phil traveled from Boston to Chicago.

When Phil got off the plane in the Windy City, he headed for the Chicago locksmith who would help to make him a rich man. He asked the locksmith to make three keys, one to fit each type of meter he'd brought with him. The next day Phil was back in Boston with his new keys.

Within a week he was clearing $250 per day. And he did not get caught. Phil Cresta had done his homework.

Conveniently enough, Phil had made friends with a woman who worked as secretary to Bill Doyle, Boston's assistant parking commissioner. Phil knew that, sooner or later, he'd need an “ear” to the man who'd lead the investigation when someone discovered how massive the amounts of money were that Phil planned to siphon from meters.

Phil started out with the Beacon Hill area of Boston, which surrounds the State House. “I was a little too cautious at first. I thought everyone was looking at me every time I opened up a meter, but in reality I was invisible. Nobody gave a second glance to a guy dressed as a parking attendant unloading change from the meters. After the first week, it got too easy; there was no challenge, but the money was damn good,” Phil said. The city's traffic department had no idea what was happening, and the wise-guy population was no longer laughing at Phil Cresta.

“Angiulo and his soldiers wanted a piece of my action, but I just smiled and kept making easy money. Anything that was easy was attractive to Angiulo. He wanted a piece of everything, but I wasn't some frightened little bookie and he knew it. If they wanted my keys they were going to have to take them from my dead body—and they didn't have the balls to deal with that.” So for the next seventeen months, Phil Cresta was a one-man crime wave, stealing over a hundred thousand dollars from the City of Boston.

Finally, in May of 1962, the Boston traffic commissioner, Tom Carty, after looking at revenue shortfalls, called for an in-house
investigation. “They thought it was an inside job, so it took them another two months to determine that someone was clipping them from
outside
the department,” Phil commented. He found out from his lady friend in the commissioner's office that the investigation had come up empty and that the commissioner had decided to change all the parking meters to an Ace lock system, which was said to be theftproof. “She told me it would take three months after the bids were sent out before there'd be any changes in the existing meters. That was all I had to hear,” Phil said, chuckling. The next day, it seemed, Phil Cresta had a change of heart.

“I went down to the North End club and began to meet secretly with some of the wise guys who were always after me for a key. Separately, I told each man that I'd give him his own key for fifteen hundred dollars. But part of the deal was they couldn't tell anyone else, or I'd have to sell them a key, too. I sold twelve keys for fifteen hundred each, and all twelve of them thought I was the greatest guy in the world to give them a piece of my score. A couple of months later, the keys were as useless as tits on a bull. I walked out of that score with over a hundred grand and twelve new friends—no, make that eleven new friends and one archenemy.”

The archenemy's name was Ben Tilley.

In Phil's opinion, Tilley was a small-time hood who liked to hang around big-time gangsters. His claim to fame was that he had been an early suspect in the famous Brink's robbery of 1950. (The feds dropped him from their list of suspects, then found the crooks who'd really pulled the job.) “Tilley had about as much to do with that Brink's job as my mother did. Pulling that score took balls, and Tilley was short two of those. That little fuck went around telling anyone who'd listen that
he
was the one who got away,” Phil said. “Nobody got away.”

The one thing Tilley did have was a string of good informants who led him to some pretty good scores, although he never actually did the jobs. Tilley would case them and then hire some muscle to actually pull them off. “Tilley was a little pervert who
got his jollies by watching. I never liked Tilley,” Phil said, “and one of the happiest days of my life was when I sold him that bogus key for fifteen hundred dollars.”

About a week after Phil sold Tilley the key, Tilley got arrested on Beacon Street by two Boston cops. “The asshole was hitting parking meters in a three-piece suit!” Phil said derisively. “He deserved to get busted.” Tilley was arraigned for possession of burglarious tools and for petty larceny. He pleaded not guilty in Boston Municipal Court and was released on his own recognizance. A couple of months later he was found guilty on all counts.

Tilley was furious, but instead of taking the pinch and paying the fine, he appealed it on the grounds that a key, in and of itself, was not a burglarious tool. Tilley lost round after round until finally his case was heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The justices ruled that a key does not in and of itself constitute a burglarious tool. They also ruled, however, that if that same key was used in the performance of a crime, then it was, in fact, a burglarious tool. And Tilley had, in fact, used it for larceny.

The case cost Tilley six figures. He turned his hatred on Phil Cresta and told a number of wise guys that Cresta had set him up. Though nothing came of their enmity at the time, both would suffer for it in years to come.