Former FBI agent convicted in mob-related murder
MIAMI — Former FBI agent John Connolly was convicted Thursday of second- degree murder for leaking information to Boston mobsters that led to the 1982 shooting death of a gambling executive who also had ties to gangsters.
The jury acquitted Connolly of first-degree murder conspiracy. He faces a maximum of life in prison when sentenced Dec. 4.
Testimony indicated that former World Jai-Alai president John Callahan was killed after Connolly warned gangsters that Callahan might implicate them in other slayings. Boston mob kingpins James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi were FBI informants handled by Connolly.
Connolly, 68, denied involvement in Callahan’s killing.
Connolly was convicted in 2002 of racketeering because of his corrupt relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, including a 1995 tip that enabled Bulger to escape arrest and begin a life on the run. Bulger is one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” fugitives, with a $2 million bounty for his capture.
The story that unfolded over the past two months in a Miami courtroom spanned more than two decades of Boston’s underworld, a tale of the notorious Winter Hill Gang that has already spawned several books and was the basis for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film “The Departed.” Matt Damon played a crooked Connolly-like law enforcement officer and Jack Nicholson was the Bulger- esque Irish-American mobster.
Connolly, who retired from the FBI in 1990, was paid $235,000 in cash delivered in envelopes over the years by Bulger and Flemmi and even took vacations with Bulger, according to trial testimony.
Connolly attorney Manuel Casabielle said there will be an appeal.
Connolly, who is already serving a 10- year federal prison sentence in the corruption case, was indicted in 2005 in Miami in the killing of Callahan, 45, whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport in August 1982. He had been shot at least twice.
Confessed mob hit man John Martorano testified that he shot Callahan — at one time a good friend — based on Connolly’s warning that the gangsters would probably all go to prison if Callahan talked to the FBI about an Oklahoma businessman’s killing a year earlier.
Callahan was killed, according to testimony, because Connolly told the gangsters the FBI was about to apply pressure on Callahan to provide information about the 1981 killing of World Jai-Alai owner Roger Wheeler in the parking lot of a country club in Tulsa, Okla.
