R.I. mobster ‘Bobo’ Marrapese, 70, back in prison

BY W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Frank “Bobo” Marrapese, one of the state’s most notorious mob figures, was sentenced to nine years in state prison on Monday after he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, extortion conspiracy and criminal usury.

Marrapese, 70, who was on parole for murder at the time of his arrest in May 2011, exhibited no emotion as he stood before Superior Court Judge William E. Carnes Jr. for sentencing. Long known as one of the most vicious enforcers in the Patriarca crime family, Marrapese looked like an ordinary senior citizen with gray, slick-backed hair, dress slacks, black sweater and oversize glasses.

The only clear giveaway of his legendary criminal past were the handcuffs and leg chains.

But though age has caught up with Marrapese, he believes that time hasn’t lessened his feared reputation on the street.
Special Assistant Attorney James Baum told the court that Marrapese was captured on a court-authorized wiretap in February 2011 chatting with Thomas “Red Ball” Hartley, a longtime organized crime associate.

“People know about me. What I’m about,” Marrapese said on the recording. “People [soil] their pants when they hear my name.”
The aging mobster was in court to plead guilty to seven counts from the 2011 arrest — racketeering conspiracy, five counts of extortion conspiracy and criminal usury, known as lending money at exorbitant interest rates. .

Baum argued that Marrapese’s record and the nature of the charges should prohibit him from earning credit for time served. He has been jailed since May 6, 2011, in the prison’s maximum-security unit.

Carnes disagreed, saying that Marrapese should get credit for spending the past 21/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his parole.

In April 2008, Marrapese, then 65, walked out of the Adult Correctional Institutions for the first time in 25 years — the sentence for the murder of Richard A. “Dickie” Callei — though Marrapese remained on parole. On March 15, 1975, Callei, a mob associate, spent the last hours of his life in the Acorn Social Club in the heart of Federal Hill.

Marrapese’s father owned the club.

Callei’s bullet-riddled body was discovered later that day near a golf course in Rehoboth, Mass. The murder remained unresolved for a decade, but Marrapese, a top earner for the Patriarca crime family, was always a prime suspect. He was finally convicted of the murder in September 1987.

The ’80s were a busy time for Marrapese. He was under indictment in 1984 for the Callei murder and for stealing asphalt from the city and using it to pave driveways and parking lots. His partner in crime in the asphalt case was Edward F. “Buckles” Melise, a city worker.

Marrapese, in a secretly recorded conversation that was played in court in June 1984 during a perjury conspiracy trial in which mob figure Alfred “Chippy” Scivola Jr was a defendant, knew his world was falling apart.

“How do you think I feel?” he said on the tape. “I got three houses, five businesses, five kids, two girlfriends and a wife, and now I’m right there. I’m almost at the top, where I’m set for life.”

That same decade, Marrapese was charged in two other murders: the May 1982 gangland slaying of Anthony “The Moron” Mirabella in Fidas Restaurant on Valley Street, and the August 1982 murder of Ronald McElroy, 20, of East Providence, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat after he inadvertently cut off Marrapese and a mob associate on Broadway in Providence. Marrapese was found not guilty in both murders.

It didn’t take Marrapese long to return to his criminal ways after his release from prison five years ago.

By fall 2010, Marrapese and several other high-profile mob figures, including Edward C. Lato and Scivola, were allegedly running a large-scale sports gambling ring that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The state police set out to break the criminal enterprise they say was run by Vincent R. “Tootsie” Tallo, of Johnston, and they obtained court-authorized wiretaps to record their conversations.

In May 2011, Marrapese, Lato, Scivola, Tallo and 21 others were arrested on racketeering, extortion, conspiracy and gambling charges. It was the charges from that arrest that led to Marrapese’s sentencing Monday.

Last year, Lato and Scivola pleaded guilty to federal crimes stemming from a lengthy investigation into New England mobsters shaking down Providence strip clubs for more than $1 million in extortion payments.

Lato, 66, is in a federal prison in Estill, S.C., until July 2019, while Scivola, 72, is in the federal medical center at Fort Devens, Mass., until January 2015.

In seeking credit for time served, Marrapese’s lawyer, John B. Harwood, said Monday that his client has had time to reflect in prison and he realizes that “the world has changed.”
Based on his advanced age and medical condition, Harwood said that Marrapese “should be given the benefit of the doubt.” Afterward, he shuffled out of the courtroom with two sheriffs serving as escorts. They took him to the lockup, where he remained until he was bused back to the ACI in Cranston.

On Twitter: @billmalinowski

http://www.providencejournal.com/breakin...g-extortion.ece

This guy will do another 9 standing on his head...he's fearless.

Yeah, he's the real deal. Tough as nails.

For all the people that say they are down to 10-15 guys, I never seen Vincent R. “Tootsie” Tallo name thrown around before

Is the Providence faction on it's last legs?

I found this information to be somewhat "enlightening" to the general public who is interested in the state of affairs in Providence:

THE GRAYING OF RHODE ISLAND’S MAFIOSOS
As mobster Anthony DiNunzio was sentenced to federal prison on Wednesday, the ranks of the mob continue to grow older, thinner
By W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
PROVIDENCE — What’s left?
On Wednesday, Anthony L. DiNunzio, the boss of the New England mob, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for his role in collecting thousands of dollars in protection money from the Satin Doll, Cadillac Lounge and Foxy Lady strip clubs.
DiNunzio, 53, of East Boston, is the eighth member or associate of La Cosa Nostra to plead guilty to a felony charge in the past two years and get sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Most of them have been sent to prisons along the Eastern Seaboard.
“It’s a great day for Rhode Island and a good day for New England,” said U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha, on the steps outside U.S. District Court.
Judge William E. Smith, acting on a recommendation from the prosecution, gave DiNunzio the highest end of the federal sentencing guideline range for being the mob boss. The minimum sentence was 5 years, 3 months.
“You’re the person at the top,” Smith said. “When you’re at the top, you have to take the most responsibility.”
DiNunzio and Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, of Providence, who preceded DiNunzio as mob boss, are the two highest-ranking mobsters snared in the federal, state and local investigation that was launched several years ago.
Manocchio, 85, who is serving a 5 1/2-year sentence in North Carolina, is the last head of the New England mob from Rhode Island. After he stepped down in 2009, the power base of organized crime in the region shifted from Providence to Boston.
Providence had been the headquarters for more than 50 years, dating to the days of Raymond L.S. Patriarca, the powerful boss who ran the criminal rackets across New England from the Coin-o-Matic storefront on Atwells Avenue.
“The made guys as we know it in Rhode Island are decimated,” said Col. Steven G. O’Donnell, head of the Rhode Island State Police and a longtime mob investigator. “There’s a huge void.”
The list of remaining made members, or formally inducted members of the mob in the Rhode Island area, has grown thin and old. Those remaining are: William “Billy Black” or “Blackjack” Del-Santo, of Narragansett; Joseph Achille, who lives in the North End of Providence; Vito DeLuca, of Seekonk; Pasquale “Pat” Galea, of Providence, and Joseph Ruggiero, a successful businessman with a home in the upscale Nayatt Point section of Barrington.
O’Donnell said Ruggiero has “zero authority,” because underworld figures have told him that Ruggiero paid the mob a “large amount of money” to be inducted into La Cosa Nostra. He was frequently in the company of Manocchio and traveled to Italy with him in July 2009.
Law enforcement officials say DelSanto suffered a stroke several years ago and Achille has had health problems.
All of them, except Ruggiero, are over 65.
O’Donnell said the five remaining mobsters may dabble in loan-sharking and gambling, but their activities are limited. “They have all had the ‘made guy’ status for years, but the world has changed,” he said.
Robert P. DeLuca Sr., a longtime capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, disappeared from his house in North Providence with his wife and two small children in the summer of 2011. It’s widely believed that he has been cooperating with law enforcement authorities.
Richard DesLauriers, who heads the FBI office in Boston, said the conviction of DiNunzio and eight others has been a serious blow to the Rhode Island mob, but organized crime remains in Boston and elsewhere in the region.
“I would be hesitant to say that it’s been completely eradicated throughout New England,” he said.
On Wednesday afternoon, DiNunzio, who was handcuffed and wore leg chains, was led into court in a khaki prison-issued smock and matching pajama-type pants. The heavy-set mob boss was grayer and appeared as though he had lost weight since his first appearance in court last spring.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William J. Ferland sought the maximum sentence of 6 1/2 years, citing DiNunzio’s “arrogance ” and “disdain for the law.” He said that in May 2011 the mob boss accepted a cash payment from Edward C. Lato, a ranking Rhode Island mobster, on a street in Boston’s North End.
Lato was one of the mobsters nailed in the racketeering investigation and is serving a lengthy sentence in a federal prison in South Carolina.
At the time, Ferland said, DiNunzio knew that the authorities were deep into their investigation and had already nabbed Manocchio for accepting a strip club protection payment in Providence. Nonetheless, DiNunzio continued on with his criminal ways.
Investigators, armed with a warrant, seized the money from DiNunzio.
Afterward, Ferland said, DiNunzio met with a mobster in the Gambino crime family of New York at My Cousin Vinny’s, a restaurant outside of Boston. He told the New Yorker that he was hell bent on finding out “who the rats were.”
Ferland said DiNunzio strongly suggested that it was Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, former boss of the New England mob.
“He wants to find this cooperator to put an end to his cooperation,” Ferland said. “Violence is the way this organization carries out its business.”
DiNunzio’s lawyer, Robert Sheketoff, of Boston, argued for a lesser sentence. He cited his client’s poor health — diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure and back pain. He also said DiNunzio’s former wife said that he has been a “loving and devoted father” to their two children, now young adults.
Sheketoff’s plea didn’t seem to faze Smith, the sentencing judge.
In addition to the maximum prison sentence, he ordered DiNunzio to complete three years of supervised probation once he’s released. Smith had doubts that the mob boss would change his ways.
“I’m not going to give you a lecture about rehabilitation,” he said.

5 made guys left, jesus their done.

Wow that guy is legit, took 9 years like it was candy!

Bobo was on the straight path for a little while a few years back. He even had a job as a laborer with a friend of mine Peter Kasabien. Police in unmarked cars would follow him to work sit and watch him and follow him home. When Peter asked if he thought they'd ever leave him alone he said "fuck them"