Under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy the government got active in going after organized crime in the early 1960s. Records from illegal FBI bugs placed in Patriarca�s office from 1962 to 1965 indicate many political payoffs to the governor�s office, legislators and judges in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Patriarca was overheard on one bug telling an associate, �in this thing of ours, your love for your mother and father is one thing, your love for The Family is a different kind of love.�
With the 1960s came increased scrutiny of Patriarca and his operations. Patriarca was not a hard man to keep track of. He lived modestly in the Federal Hill neighborhood he grew up in and commuted daily to his Atwells Avenue office. It was said that during warmer weather Patriarca would stand outside his vending machine business and puff on a cigar while looking for any signs of police or government surveillance. The Boston Globe reported that, �He scowled at strangers and those out of his favor, and he cursed newspapers, the FBI and the late Robert F. Kennedy. Publicly he denied that he was part of organized crime.�
In Deadly Alliance, a 2001 release by award-winning journalist Ralph Ranalli, who has written for both the Boston Globe and the Herald, the author reveals:
�The Kennedy�s hated the Mafia, particularly their hometown mob boss, Raymond L. S. Patriarca, who had taunted the brothers during the McClellan committee hearings, saying: �You two don�t have the brains of your retarded sister.� Bobby Kennedy told a friend that he and Jack were �going after that pig on the hill,� referring to the mob boss�s Federal Hill stronghold in Providence.�
Meanwhile, the FBI turned gang members and associates into government witnesses and by the mid-1960s Patriarca found himself indicted for several crimes. In March 1969 Patriarca began a prison term for his involvement in the murder of Willie Marfeo, who was shotgunned to death in the telephone booth of a Federal Hill restaurant in 1966. While serving this sentence, in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, he received a 10-year term from Rhode Island for conspiring to kill Marfeo�s brother, Rudolph, and Anthony Melei. Both were shot gunned to death on April 20, 1968, in a Providence grocery store. Patriarca completed his federal sentence in April 1973 and was transferred to a Rhode Island prison where he remained until paroled on January 9, 1975. During the six years Patriarca was behind bars he continued to run his crime family from inside prison.
Legal problems plagued Patriarca for the rest of his life. In 1978, Vincent Teresa testified that he was present in 1960 when the CIA gave the mob a $4 million dollar contract to murder Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Teresa stated that Patriarca helped select Maurice (Pro) Werner, a Brookline, Massachusetts, convict, to kill Castro but the plot was never carried out. In December 1983, Patriarca was charged with ordering the 1965 murder of Raymond �Baby� Curcio. The murder was in response to Curcio and Teresa burglarizing the home of Patriarca�s brother Joseph. Finally on March 13, 1984, Patriarca was arrested, while in the hospital, for ordering the 1968 murder of bank robber Robert Candos. Patriarca believed Candos was going to testify against him.
On July 11, 1984, at about 11:30 in the morning the North Providence Fire Department Rescue Squad received an emergency call from a Douglas Avenue address. It was later revealed that this was the home of a girlfriend. (Patriarca�s first wife died in 1965. He married a former nightclub hostess and was living with her in Johnson, Rhode Island at the time of his death.) When emergency workers arrived they found Patriarca in full arrest. Rushed to Rhode Island Hospital, doctors kept up intense efforts to revive him including electrical shock and the implanting of a cardiac pacemaker. At 1:00 Patriarca was pronounced dead of a massive heart attack at the age of 76.
A Boston Globe article stated, �In a business where violent death is often inevitable, Patriarca died relatively peacefully, unable to outwit failing health caused by a heart condition and diabetes that led to amputation of a gangrenous toe.� At the time of his death Patriarca was under indictment for two murders.
In the wake of the infamous Apalachin summit in November 1957, the FBI began its pursuit of organized crime in earnest. When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 he named younger brother Bobby attorney general. Directing the FBI to step up pursuit of organized crime, Kennedy launched an aggressive program to place listening devices in as many �mob-meeting� places as possible. Agents also worked on developing informants within the ranks of organized crime.
One of the criminals they eventually turned was New England Family associate Joseph Barboza. Nicknamed �The Animal,� Barboza was born in 1932 to Portuguese parents in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A cold-blooded killer, who claimed to have murdered 26 men, Barboza would become the Joe Valachi of the New England Family.
In trouble since the age of 12, he was in and out of reformatories and prisons before hooking up with the Mafia in 1958. By 1966 Barboza had worn out his welcome with the New England family. In October he was arrested in Boston�s notorious �Combat Zone� on a concealed weapons charge and bond was set at $100,000. Barboza grew concerned when Patriarca and Angiulo didn�t furnish his bail.Five weeks later Barboza was still languishing in jail as two friends tried to scrape together money to get him released. Arthur �Tash� Bratsos and Thomas J. DePrisco Jr. had collected $59,000. In November they visited the �Nite Lite Caf�,� managed by �Ralphie Chang� Lamattina, to do a little fund raising. Both men were shot to death and dumped in South Boston to make it look like a rival Irish gang murdered them. Not only were Barboza�s two pals dead, but the $59,000 was missing too.