The Art of the Heist

Twenty-Four

I can truthfully say that there aren’t many things in this world that scare me. Having survived near drowning, multiple shootings, the horrors of the Norfolk prison hospital, and the Walpole riots, I have become familiar enough with death to have lost my fear of it. At one point or another I have been denied almost everything I value-family, friends, privacy, freedom, even control over my own body. As a result, the common phobias that plague most people seem petty to me.

Yet there is one thing of which I am terrified, and that’s a good liar. I have the utmost respect for someone who can tell a lie, not out of admiration, but because I know all too well the consequences of a well-crafted falsehood, the malignant power even the smallest untruth can have.

I had witnessed that power firsthand during my rape trial, had seen just what a fragile thing the truth was and how easily it could be distorted to coincide with what people wanted to believe. My accuser in that case had been little more than a pawn, a scared child who’d been manipulated by men she had known and trusted-and perhaps even feared-into saying what they wanted her to. But I was about to confront a different kind of liar, one who knew exactly what she was doing.

The discovery of the bodies of Karen Spinney and Susan Webster was big news in Boston. When the women were found camera crews were on the scene to record all the gruesome details, including pictures of the soiled sleeping bag and bent kitchen knife that had been recovered along with the bodies. Watching the drama unfold on her television and taking a keen interest in the details of the discovery was a woman named Doreen Weeks.

I knew Weeks from the Beachcomber, where she sometimes worked as a waitress. At every rock-and-roll club there are people who are desperate to get in with the band and will do whatever it takes to secure a place with the in-crowd. Weeks was such a person. A skilled manipulator, she had learned to use her sex to remarkable advantage. At one time or another she had slept with almost every member of my band.

This fact alone made me wary of Weeks. Band politics are notoriously tricky. Keeping four or five guys happily together is never an easy task. Throw a woman into the mix and things can get dicey fast. I wasn’t shy about voicing my misgivings about Weeks to my crew. Neither was Al Dotoli, who eventually had her barred from our shows. As a result, she disliked us as much as we disliked her.

Though no one knew it at the time, Doreen Weeks had good reason to be interested in the recovery of the bodies of Karen Spinney and Susan Webster. In the winter of 1975 Weeks and my sound man, Tommy Maher, had shared a basement apartment in Quincy. It was in this apartment that the women had been killed. Weeks herself was one of the last people to have seen them alive. Watching the news that night, she immediately recognized the green sleeping bag and kitchen knife as her own.

Seeing the items freshly pulled from the earth, she had to have realized that the authorities would soon link her to the case. Ever the opportunist, she also must have understood the unique bargaining position her connection to the killings could afford her. At the time, her brother was doing time in the state prison system. Looking to strike a deal for him, Weeks went to see District Attorney Delahunt.

Not having been privy to their meeting, I can only imagine what exactly they talked about. But it’s easy to understand why Delahunt would not have been receptive to whatever Weeks had to offer. With the discovery of the bodies the Norfolk County DA’s office had a nearly airtight case against Sperrazza. If anything, bringing a witness like Doreen Weeks on board would have served only to weaken Delahunt’s case. To have made a deal with her-even one that involved merely promising not to charge her as an accessory-would have been not just unnecessary but stupid. At the end of their brief meeting Delahunt sent Weeks on her way.

Nine months later his decision to do so must have been confirmed for him when a jury found Tommy Sperrazza guilty of the murders of Karen Spinney and Susan Webster.

But unfortunately for Delahunt-and, it would turn out, even more unfortunately for me-he hadn’t heard the last of Doreen Weeks.

At the end of January 1978 I was once again paroled from Walpole. Mindful, as always, of my music career, Al Dotoli immediately set to work putting together a serious working band for me. The Rebels, as we were eventually christened, consisted of Paul “PJ” Justice on bass, Joe “Ivory” Micharielli on keyboards, Tim “Stingray” Sweeney on drums, and Jim “Diamond” Baker on saxophone. Our musical director and special guest vocalist was Scott “the Cat” Anderson. The Rebels were a rock-and-roll band of the old school variety, and Al conceived a brilliant road show that highlighted our musical style. Known as Myles Connor’s 1950s Rock-and-Roll Review, we were soon getting steady work all over the Northeast. In the summer we played at clubs on the Cape. In the winter we moved inland, gigging at colleges and ski resorts.

True to our name and my reputation, our shows were rowdy trips back in time and always opened with the same announcement by Arnie Ginsburg of Night Train fame: “Good evening and welcome to Myles Connor’s 1950s Rock-and-Roll Review, starring the President of Rock and Roll, Myles Connor.” The Rebels always played first. Eventually Scott would join them. When they were ready to bring me out they’d play the first few bars of “Pretty Woman.” This was the crew’s signal to start the smoke machine. As the stage clouded over, I’d take my place at the microphone. At last, when the moment was exactly right, Al would turn on a special fan he’d rigged, and I’d be revealed to the crowd.

The Rebels were all extremely talented musicians, and the Rock-and-Roll Review was without a doubt the best concert tour I played in. Unfortunately, it would also be the last.

My release from prison and subsequent success with the band only served to further antagonize the Suffolk County district attorney’s office and the local FBI. That I was a free man again after only two years in Walpole was especially galling to them.

We’ve all heard the phrase “innocent until proven guilty.” Most law-abiding citizens have faith in the impartiality of our country’s legal system. But the truth is that justice is rarely blind. Even the most well-meaning investigator or prosecutor brings his or her preconceptions to a case. More often than not the investigation process involves confirming already well-developed suspicions rather than searching for an unknown suspect. In many cases, prejudice against a specific suspect is an insidious thing. Those involved may not even realize it exists.

But in my case, the push to convict me was clear. By the time of my release from Walpole, state and federal prosecutors had long since accepted as fact my guilt in the Brown shooting (wrong) and the Norfolk County Trust robbery (right) and were working to prove themselves correct.

Evidence of my involvement in the bank robbery was based almost entirely on conversations with Bobby Fitzgerald, whom the FBI had connected with the cemetery stash. The feds offered Fitzgerald immunity from prosecution along with relocation in the witness protection program for himself and his wife in return for his testimony in the bank robbery case. It was an offer a rat like Fitzgerald couldn’t refuse. Bobby started talking immediately, and he was telling the FBI exactly what they wanted to hear. He claimed, among other things, to have heard me planning the Norfolk County Trust robbery, and to have stored some of the cash proceeds in his house for me. He also fingered Sperrazza for the crime.

By that time Sperrazza was also a prime suspect in the Brown shooting. Knowing this, and realizing that Fitzgerald, through his connections with both Sperrazza and me, might be of use in prosecuting that case, the FBI brought Fitzgerald to the attention of the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, which was prosecuting the Brown case. Assistant district attorney Phil Beauchesne immediately offered Fitzgerald total immunity from prosecution for any role he had played in the Brown shooting in exchange for any information he had to give regarding my involvement in the crime. Once again, Fitzgerald proved to be a highly cooperative source. Yet this time, having no real information to give investigators, he fabricated from scratch, telling Beauchesne that I had masterminded the Purity Supreme holdup and provided the gun that eventually killed Donald Brown.

Both were outright lies, but that didn’t matter to Beauchesne. Fitzgerald’s claims were the first lead the ADA had managed to unearth against me in the Brown shooting and he milked it for all it was worth.

Fitzgerald’s story wasn’t enough to convict me, let alone secure an indictment against me in either case. More determined than ever, investigators on both sides began kicking over rocks, hoping to find someone else willing to corroborate Fitzgerald’s testimony. Leading the effort were Phil Beauchesne and several field agents from the Boston FBI office, most notable John Connolly and his colleague, John Clougherty.

It wouldn’t be long before the men found what they were looking for.

By the end of 1977 Doreen Weeks, who had moved out of the Quincy apartment not long after the murders of Spinney and Webster, was shacked up with John Stokes’s brother, Jimmy, in Dorchester. Jimmy was on the run at the time, wanted for his role in the shooting death of a security guard at a Hyde Park supermarket. Early in 1978, around the same time I was released from Walpole, Jimmy was finally apprehended and sent to the state prison at Norfolk.

Also at Norfolk was Joe Santo. Santo had just begun serving a lengthy sentence when Jimmy Stokes arrived at the prison. Thanks to the less than subtle efforts of investigators, both Stokes and Santo knew full well that the FBI and the Suffolk County DA’s office were looking to put me away. In fact, Bobby Fitzgerald had already fingered Santo for his involvement in the Norfolk County Trust heist. The feds had been to see him about a possible deal, but Santo, a stand-up guy by nature, refused to tell them anything. Jimmy Stokes, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up.

In February 1978 Doreen Weeks went to the Boston FBI offices on Stokes’s behalf. In the first of several conversations she would have with federal agents over the course of the next year and a half, Weeks offered Stokes’s full cooperation in the Brown shooting and the Norfolk Trust case in return for a commutation of Stokes’s life sentence.

To sweeten the pot, Weeks offered her own testimony as well. She told the agents I had used the Quincy apartment she shared with Tommy Maher to store large quantities of cocaine and heroin for distribution to Walpole inmates. She also claimed that I had “hot-shotted” my friend Ozzy DePriest, deliberately and maliciously injecting him with an overdose of heroin, then stabbing him to death in Weeks’s bed while she watched. In addition, she accused me of having set fire to John Stokes’s girlfriend and two-year-old child, killing them both. These were acts of pure evil. I had never been accused of anything like this before-and it was stupid of her to have made this up now. All these supposed murder victims were alive and well.

But worse than her accusations against me were those she made against Martha Ferrante. In her interviews with federal agents Doreen Weeks claimed that Martha had driven a getaway car during the Norfolk Trust robbery and that Martha and I had stopped by the Quincy apartment afterward to brag about our haul.

Thirty years after the fact, it’s still a mystery to me why Weeks told investigators what she did. The Norfolk County Trust charges-of which I was, in fact, guilty-had the potential to send me away for a long time. There was no need for Weeks to lie. Not only were her claims outlandish, but most were easily disproved.

No doubt much of the insanity surrounding Weeks’s testimony can be attributed to her state of mind at the time. Transcripts of her conversations with authorities show a woman who was often incoherent and almost certainly suffering from the effects of heavy drug use. In a brief October 1978 conversation with ATF agents, the record lists Weeks’s answer as “unintelligible” some twenty times. At one point the interviewer remarks on the fact that Weeks is shaking uncontrollably.

Throughout 1978 and early 1979 Weeks pleaded her case, and that of Jimmy Stokes, to anyone who would listen. At the October meeting she told ATF agents, “You know, you could have murders, robberies, guns, anything you-you know.” Then, bringing Santo into the mix, she added, “Joe will testify. But I’m gonna tell you right now that [he’s] gonna ask for something in return.”

That fall she visited Joe Santo at the Norfolk prison and told him she and Stokes were working out a deal with authorities to implicate me in the Brown shooting and the bank robbery. She wanted Santo’s help. Again he refused to get involved. Undaunted, Weeks went to the Walpole police, trying to convince them of her version of events, hoping they could help her secure Stokes’s release.

By the end of 1978 her efforts began to pay off. Though no one was willing to offer Stokes a deal, the feds suggested that Weeks might be eligible for the witness protection program. The offer of a new life no doubt sounded like a good deal to Weeks, who had made such a mess of her current one.

In the early spring of 1979 the FBI and federal prosecutors put all their energy into winning an indictment against me in the Norfolk County Trust case. At the end of March Doreen Weeks, their star witness, made her first appearance before the federal grand jury. Among those whom she claimed had played a direct role in the bank robbery were Joe Santo, Jimmy Stokes, Martha Ferrante, Al Dotoli, Tommy Maher, and me. She also implicated Barbara Drew, the teller who’d helped us plan the heist. Weeks testified that I had come to her apartment on the morning of the robbery asking to borrow her car, and that Martha and I had returned together immediately following the heist to show off our haul. Weeks’s description of this incident was especially colorful: she told the grand jury that we’d had the bank bags in my car with us and that Martha was gleefully throwing the money up into the air. Additionally, she told the jurors that I’d been to visit her on several occasions since my release from Walpole and that I had threatened her with physical violence.

Weeks’s testimony alone was not enough for an indictment against me in the case, but it helped federal prosecutors to get the ball rolling. As a reward for her cooperation, she was given a new name and a place in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Over the course of the next year she would also go on to receive over $16,000 in cash and benefits from the government.

While the feds were busy cozying up to Doreen Weeks, Ralph Petrozziello and I were focused on coming up with a plan to spring Tommy Sperrazza from Walpole. Tommy’s original idea, that we break him out while he was in transit, was a good one. In fact, it was the only feasible plan. Even I knew better than to waltz into Walpole with an armed crew. The only problem was waiting for an opportunity to arise. It wasn’t like Walpole was giving daily joyrides to inmates. When the three of us had discussed the idea on the inside, we’d agreed to try to grab Sperrazza during his upcoming bank robbery trial. But after nearly a year and a half of waiting, Tommy was getting impatient.

In early June of 1979, Ralph got word from Sperrazza that he was planning to speed the process along. Hoping to win a trip to the hospital, Sperrazza had stolen a pair of pliers from the shop and was going to rip one of his teeth out. It was a novel, if somewhat painful, solution to the problem.

In preparation for just such an opportunity, Ralph and I had already recruited a crew to take part in the breakout. Several days before the planned dental work, we gathered everyone together at Ralph’s car wash to go over the details of the breakout. Ralph’s brother Sal was there, along with a couple of relative newcomers to the crew: a kid named Billy Oikle, with whom I’d become tight during my stay at Walpole, and another kid named Mikey Donahue, who was a friend of Billy Oikle’s.

At that time, anyone at Walpole in need of serious medical treatment was taken to Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, where they had a special ward for state inmates. It was a half-hour drive from the prison to the hospital, straight up Route 1 through Norwood and Dedham. We couldn’t have asked for a better setting. The busy highway provided numerous locations in which we could conceal ourselves. Ralph and I had already decided that the majority of the crew would wait in the parking lot of J. C. Hillary’s, a popular restaurant in Dedham. A spotter on a motorcycle would park a mile or so south along Route 1 to watch for the transport car. This was before the days of cell phones, so someone would also have to wait at the pay phone at Hillary’s for the spotter’s call to come through. I appointed Mikey Donahue to this position.

We’d need three vehicles for the actual grab: one to pull up in front of the prison car and cut it off, one to trap the car from behind, and a third to pull up beside the car and take Sperrazza. As usual, Ralph graciously volunteered to provide the vehicles for the job. At the time, the Crown Victoria was our car of choice for most operations. Their V-8 engines gave them plenty of power and a fair amount of speed, making them ideal pursuit vehicles. For this same reason, they were being widely used by law enforcement. With this is mind, Ralph had managed to score a number of blue dash lights. In a pinch, we could slap these in place and pretend to be cops.

On the morning of June 13 Ralph called to tell me that he’d just gotten word from Walpole: if everything went as planned Sperrazza would be heading to Shattuck early that afternoon. Ralph and I quickly spread the news to the rest of our crew. By lunchtime we began to assemble in the J. C. Hillary’s parking lot. Ralph and I arrived first, in our stolen Crown Vic, and parked next to the highway, facing traffic. Sal and Mikey Donahue pulled in not long after us.

“Where the fuck is Oikle?” Ralph wondered when Billy Oikle failed to show right away.

“He’ll be here,” I assured him. “He flew up from Miami last night on the champagne flight.”

“He better be,” Ralph remarked. “He’s in charge of the weapons, isn’t he?”

I nodded. We were all carrying our own pieces, but I’d asked Oikle to bring some extra firepower.

We both watched Mikey Donahue get out of the car he was sitting in and make his way toward the pay phone outside J. C. Hillary’s. Moments later, Billy Oikle arrived. He parked at the far end of the parking lot and climbed out of his car, holding a large paper grocery bag, then started in Mikey’s direction.

“See?” I said to Ralph. “I told you he’d show. And he’s got the guns too.”

“Where the fuck does he think he is?” Ralph quipped. “Palm Beach?”

Oikle, who evidently hadn’t had a chance to change since he’d gotten off the plane, was wearing a bright shirt, a tropical-weight suit, and white loafers. He looked jarringly out of place among the Dedham lunch crowd.

“Hold up,” Ralph said suddenly. “Who the hell is that?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, watching Mikey Donahue move away from the pay phone to meet Oikle. “It’s Mikey.”

“No,” Ralph insisted. “In the Rambler!”

I followed his gaze to a beat-up ’62 Rambler that had just pulled off Route 1 and was driving slowly in Oikle’s direction. Through the windshield I could see two blond surfer types in the front seat.

“It’s a fucking holdup!” Ralph said, moving to get out of the car.

It wasn’t an entirely illogical conclusion-Oikle had a thriving drug business at the time, making him an excellent target-but I was pretty sure Ralph had it wrong. The two guys in the car looked more like federal agents to me, DEA or ATF. If this was the case, there was nothing we could do but watch the situation unfold and hope Oikle didn’t give us away. “They’re feds,” I warned Ralph, putting my hand on his arm to stop him.

Hearing the car behind him, Billy Oikle glanced over his shoulder. It took him about five seconds to assess the situation and come to the same conclusion we’d reached: something was seriously wrong. Thinking on his feet, he handed Mikey the paper bag and shoved him toward the restaurant. Then he picked up his pace, walking quickly in our direction.

Suddenly the Rambler pulled to a stop. The guy in the passenger seat jumped out, running after Oikle, while the driver swerved forward, trying to cut Billy off. Realizing he was leading the pair directly to us, Oikle changed course, sprinting for an embankment on the far side of the parking lot with Blondie hot on his heels. As they neared the embankment I saw Oikle reach into his pocket and pull out something-a gun, I thought-and toss it into the bushes. The action gave his pursuer a split-second advantage. It was all the man needed. He reached out and clocked Oikle with his pistol.

Billy went down hard, but despite having been hit in the head, he had the presence of mind to put on a show. “Help!” he yelled as the man tackled him. “I’m being robbed! Somebody help!”

The Rambler skidded to a stop and the driver leaped out, brandishing handcuffs.

By now, Billy’s protests had succeeded in attracting attention to his cause. Most of the customers inside J. C. Hillary’s had lost interest in their lunch and were watching the scene in the parking lot. A small group of men had gathered outside the front door. Initially, they’d appeared ready to help Billy, but now they just looked confused.

I turned to Ralph. “Let’s get out of here.” I hated to leave my friend like that, but by now it was clear that I’d been correct in my assessment of the situation. The two guys in the Rambler were obviously cops of some kind. There was no way we could go through with our plan to grab Sperrazza now.

Ralph cautiously pulled forward and out of the lot. “What the fuck just happened?” he asked as we started down Route 1.

I glanced in the mirror to make sure no one was following us and saw two Dedham police cruisers pulling into the parking lot. “I honestly have no idea.”

“You think someone dropped a dime on us?”

“Maybe,” I said. “You tell anyone about Sperrazza?”

Ralph shook his head.

“Could be they were just looking for Oikle,” I said. I truly hoped this was the case, but I had a bad feeling in my gut.

At the end of the summer, Sperrazza finally went to trial on the bank robbery charges, giving us the opportunity we’d been waiting for since the aborted breakout attempt in Dedham. Determined to succeed this time, we were meticulous in our preparations. I spent several weeks casing the courthouse in Lawrence where the trial was to take place, coming up with what I hoped would be a foolproof plan for springing Sperrazza.

As in Dedham, we planned to use three stolen cars from Ralph’s stable to surround the transport vehicle, which at the time was usually a simple station wagon manned by two armed prison guards. As before, there would be a spotter situated somewhere along the route to alert us to the arrival of the car. With the exception of Billy Oikle, who’d been sent back to Walpole on a parole violation after his arrest at J. C. Hillary’s, everyone from the Dedham attempt had signed on for the Lawrence job. Billy Irish had agreed to fill in for Oikle. Billy Hogan had volunteered to be the spotter. His position was close enough to the courthouse that we could all use walkie-talkies to communicate.

If anything, the Lawrence grab was shaping up to be easier than the Dedham attempt. After surveilling the courthouse, I’d come to the conclusion that the best course of action would be to surround the transport vehicle when it pulled up to the side door to deliver Sperrazza. There were never extra guards at the entrance, and I figured taking Sperrazza then would be far less dangerous than trying to force the moving transport vehicle off the road.

Early on the morning of Sperrazza’s first scheduled court appearance, Ralph, Sal, Mikey, Billy Irish, Billy Hogan, and I met at Ralph’s car wash. The day before had been unusually hot and humid, and the forecast called for more of the same. The air was saturated, the city shrouded in a sticky soup of garbage stink and diesel fumes. Even with the windows wide open, the air in the small car wash office was stifling. As was their habit, Ralph and Sal had started an informal game of gin to pass the time. The slap of their cards provided a soothing soundtrack to our last-minute preparations. Billy Irish, who was in charge of communications, handed out walkie-talkies to everyone.

Just before dawn I gathered the crew together to go over everyone’s roles one last time and divvy up the three vehicles Ralph had supplied. “You’re in the lead in the Impala,” I told Billy Irish as I handed out black ski masks. “Mikey, you take the Lincoln. You’ll be bringing up the rear. Sal, Ralph and I will be riding with you in the middle in the Crown Vic. We’ll grab Sperrazza. Hogan, you take the bike. Everyone have a weapon?”

There was a collective nod; a few of the guys flashed their pistols.

“Good,” I said, “Ralph and I will have the heavy ordnance.” I’d brought a tommy gun for myself and an M-2 carbine rifle for Ralph. Both were already in the Crown Vic.

“Everyone feeling sharp?” I asked. Normally, I didn’t like to interfere with what the guys on my crew did during their off time, but I was a stickler about sobriety on the job. I always made it clear that I expected everyone to lay off their juice of choice before any big hit.

Once again, all heads nodded.

“Okay,” I announced. “Let’s rock and roll.”

It was light by the time we finally set out from Brockton, the day already coming to a boil. It took us a good forty-five minutes to reach Lawrence. As we got off the highway I glanced back and saw Billy Hogan veer out of sight, swinging his motorcycle into position beside the off-ramp.

The rest of us continued north, up Route 28 and across the Merrimack River, into the hulking shadows of Lawrence’s failed textile mills. The courthouse itself, a modest brick building, was located just off the town common, sandwiched between two one-way streets, eastbound Common and westbound Essex. Having watched similar transports come and go, I knew the car carrying Sperrazza would come in on Common, turn south down a side alley, and park there to let him off. We would swoop in on the transport there, then hightail it back across the river.

We were all in line as we turned onto Common Street. Billy Irish, in the lead, pulled his Impala into a free spot just in front of the entrance to the alley. Sal was about to pull the Crown Vic over when I glanced up toward the roof of the courthouse and saw something move. “Keep going!” I told him, then turned to Ralph. “Look up on the roof.”

Ralph peered out the window as we cruised past the courthouse. “You seeing things again?” he jibed. Then, suddenly, his expression grew serious. “Jesus,” he muttered, seeing what I had seen. “It’s a fucking sniper.”

“Swing around the park,” I told Sal.

We cruised north, then back along the far side of the town common. The northern side of the park afforded us a slightly better view. I could now see at least a dozen figures lining the rooftop, each accented by the slender silhouette of a rifle. “Radio Billy,” I told Ralph. “Tell him to get the fuck out of there.” I picked up my own walkie-talkie to call Mikey and heard the crackle of Billy Hogan’s voice.

“Something’s wrong, Myles,” Hogan reported.

“What do you see?” I called back to him.

“There’s a fucking caravan out here. They’ve got Sperrazza in an armored car with cruisers on all sides.”

“Okay,” I told him. “Get out of there now. Everyone, get the fuck out of here. Now!”

Sal gunned the engine, heading back to Route 28, turning south toward the river. As we started across the bridge, Ralph suddenly pointed out the front window. “There they are!”

I looked up to see a line of a vehicles coming toward us. At first glance, it looked like a cop’s funeral. There were at least a dozen cruisers, all with their roof lights on. In the middle of the pack was an armored van.

There was no turning around, I thought, clutching the tommy gun, preparing to defend myself. Our best hope was to stay cool and drive right past the caravan.

“What do I do?” Sal asked.

“Keep going,” I told him evenly.

As the first cruiser sped past us on its way into Lawrence, I peered through the window and was relieved to see the driver paying us no attention, his stare fixed resolutely on the road ahead. The second cruiser whipped by in similar fashion, followed by the third. Then, suddenly, the van loomed toward us.

As we passed on the bridge, I glanced over at the van, trying to see through the narrow slit windows in the back. Raising myself up in my seat, I caught a glimpse of Sperrazza. His wan face had a greenish cast to it. His dark eyes were hollow and haunted. He looked up, and for a split second our eyes met. I nodded at him, wanting him to know we were there, that we’d given it our best shot.

Given the circumstances, I wasn’t expecting a pageant wave. Still, I was taken aback by Sperrazza’s reaction. The look on his face when he saw me was of utter hostility. It was almost as if he knew what I had planned for him.

“Someone dropped a dime on us,” I said to Sal and Ralph as Sperrazza disappeared from view. There could be no doubt this time that someone had notified the authorities about the breakout.

“Don’t look at me,” Ralph said. “The only person I told was Deborah.”

“Sperrazza’s wife? Are you fucking crazy?”

“What?” Ralph asked defensively. “She’s not gonna say anything.”

“Everybody knows she’s banging that drug dealer over in Dorchester,” I told him, certain now that Deborah had ratted us out. “Sperrazza would kill them both if he found out. The last thing she wants is for us to spring him.”

“Don’t worry,” Ralph said, looking pleased with himself for having anticipated this. “I told her you were gonna whack him.”

My gut dropped. Yes, I thought, recalling the look Sperrazza had just flashed me. He knew. What I couldn’t understand was why Deborah would have told him about my intentions in the first place. Unfortunately, her reasons would soon become clear.

Earlier that summer, while the FBI and federal prosecutors were making their case against me in the Norfolk County trust robbery, Suffolk County authorities had kicked their investigation of the Brown shooting into high gear. By then, Fitzgerald had readily confessed to disposing of the rifle used in the shooting. He’d also fingered Tommy Sperrazza, Ralph Petrozziello, and a man named Paul Cook as the three individuals who’d pulled off the Purity Supreme holdup. Cook was a friend of Sperrazza’s from Walpole. Big and slow-moving, with a Kewpie doll’s head and the body of the Pillsbury Doughboy, Cook was known on the inside for being a mindless killer. I personally knew of at least three murders he’d committed at Walpole.

On August 29 Suffolk County ADA Phil Beauchesne and a detective from the Boston Police Department had met with Cook at the Howard Johnson’s in Braintree. Their offer was simple: Turn on your associates and we will drop all charges against you in the Purity Supreme case. Even someone as stupid as Cook could see that it was a good deal. He agreed to testify against Sperrazza and Petrozziello. No mention was made of me at the August meeting.

But Fitzgerald was more than willing to connect me to the shooting. He had also implicated Sperrazza’s wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece with being accessories after the fact, saying Sperrazza had discussed the holdup-including the shooting of Brown-with the four women just hours after it went down, and that they had all agreed to keep their mouths shut. Seeing an opportunity to put the squeeze on Sperrazza through his family, the Suffolk County DA quickly moved to bring charges against the women. Prosecutors then told Deborah that she could avoid prosecution by getting Sperrazza to cooperate and testify against me. The strategy would soon have its desired effect.

Just days before the Lawrence breakout attempt, Deborah Sperrazza had visited Tommy in Walpole. Repeating exactly what had been told to her by the Suffolk County DA and the FBI, she pleaded with Sperrazza to implicate me in the Brown shooting. If he didn’t, she warned, she and her mother would both face charges and their baby daughter would be taken into state custody.

To his credit, Sperrazza initially refused, saying Ralph and I were working on breaking him out.

That was when Deborah had repeated what Ralph Petrozziello told her. “Myles is going to kill you the first chance he gets,” she’d warned her husband.

Not long after, Sperrazza flipped, telling Suffolk County authorities exactly what they wanted to hear: that I’d planned the Purity Supreme holdup and supplied the gun that had killed Donald Brown.

At the end of August, following the failed breakout attempt in Lawrence, I was picked up on a parole detainer, charged with associating with known felons, and taken first to the Charles Street Jail and then back to Walpole.

In October Bobby Fitzgerald appeared before the federal grand jury in the Norfolk County Trust case. Although less dramatic than Weeks’s testimony, his version of events was, for the most part, accurate. He claimed to have been present when Joe Santo, Ozzy DePriest, and I first discussed robbing the Norfolk County Trust, and told jurors that I had given him the bank bags the two boys had later discovered in the cemetery, along with a portion of the proceeds from the robbery. Like Weeks, he fingered Barbara Drew as our accomplice.

Days after Fitzgerald’s grand jury appearance, FBI agents John Clougherty and John Connolly visited Tommy Sperrazza at Walpole. Making it clear to him that they had influence over his wife’s position in the Brown case, they also offered to have him transferred from Walpole’s notorious Block Ten and into protective custody in a more comfortable federal facility in return for his testimony in the Norfolk County Trust case. Sperrazza readily agreed.

Less than three weeks later he made good on his end of the bargain, testifying that Joe Santo, Johnny Stokes, and I had been the main players in the bank heist. To be fair, Sperrazza’s testimony was the most accurate of the three. But he failed to mention one important fact: that he himself had been inside the bank that morning. Instead, he told the jurors he had declined to participate in the robbery.

In spite of this grave omission, Sperrazza’s testimony was enough to convince the grand jury that I had most likely been involved in the Norfolk County Trust heist. On November 20, 1979, they handed down their indictment in the case. Days later, Sperrazza made good on his promise to Deborah and the Suffolk County prosecutor, testifying before the grand jury in the Purity Supreme case. The next week I was indicted, along with Ralph Petrozziello, for armed robbery and the murder of Donald Brown.

Connolly and his colleagues in the Boston FBI office had finally struck back at me for cutting them out of the return of the Rembrandt. With the help of Doreen Weeks, they would soon get yet another shot at revenge.

In early 1980, while I was awaiting trial in the Norfolk County Trust robbery and the Brown shooting, Norfolk County authorities began investigating Doreen Weeks’s sister, whom they suspected of forging prescription drug slips and of being involved in an extensive fraud scheme involving American Express traveler’s checks. Not surprisingly, their inquiry led them to Doreen, who, police discovered, was mailing her sister the prescription slips as well as the traveler’s checks. By the time the Norfolk County DA’s office finally had enough evidence to charge the two women, the sisters had netted more than $22,000 in the check fraud scheme.

Weeks immediately turned to her friends at the Boston FBI office for protection. The FBI and federal prosecutor, who were not on friendly terms with the Norfolk County DA’s office to begin with, were outraged. They viewed the charges against Doreen Weeks as a blatant slap in the face, an attempt by District Attorney Delahunt, who had had an amicable relationship with me in the past, to discredit their star witness in the federal case against me.

A storm was brewing, and I was at the center of it.

Weeks, no idiot, recognized an opportunity to take advantage of the chilly relations between the FBI and Delahunt’s office. Recalling her initial visit to Delahunt’s office after the discovery of the bodies of Susan Webster and Karen Spinney, Weeks related Delahunt’s reluctance to make a deal with her to federal agents, reminding them of my prior relationship with the prosecutor.

At the mention of the Spinney-Webster case, the agents snapped to attention. That I’d had something, anything, to do with the murders was music to the men’s ears. Weeks, apparently aware of this and of what it could buy her, was more than happy to oblige. After months of fingering me for the Norfolk County Trust robbery, Weeks suddenly expanded her story, telling investigators that I had also been in her apartment the night Spinney and Webster were killed and that I had personally overseen the murders.

It was a horrible, vicious lie, but it quickly took on a life of its own.

That I had been involved in the Spinney-Webster killings was exactly the kind of thing John Connolly, John Clougherty, and the other agents at the Boston FBI office had been waiting to hear. But despite their glee at the thought of putting me away for the murders, their capacity to do so was severely limited by the fact that they lacked jurisdiction in the case.

The crimes had occurred in Norfolk County, Delahunt’s territory. The Norfolk County DA had already successfully prosecuted Sperrazza for the killings and officially closed the case. But the feds weren’t going to let that stop them. To the contrary, they immediately recognized an opportunity to even the score with Delahunt while at the same time indicting me for the murders.

Based on Doreen Weeks’s account of her original meeting with Delahunt and her claim that he had willfully disregarded her offer to give him information in the original Spinney-Webster case, the federal prosecutor, U.S. attorney Edward Harrington Jr., citing prosecutorial misconduct by Delahunt, announced that he was reopening the case. Because of the complicated question of jurisdiction and the misconduct claim, it was necessary to appoint a special prosecutor. The job of doing so fell, conveniently, to Harrington’s friend, Massachusetts Attorney General Francis Bellotti, who turned to his friend, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Paul Buckley.

The appointment of Buckley to the role of special assistant attorney general was a brilliant and carefully conceived move. By linking the Suffolk County DA’s office to the Spinney-Webster case, federal prosecutors were able to buy themselves a new and all-important witness: Tommy Sperrazza. Using the indictments against Sperrazza’s family in the Brown case as leverage, Suffolk County authorities approached Sperrazza with yet another deal. In return for his testimony against me in both the Brown shooting and the Spinney-Webster case, the Suffolk County DA would recommend non-incarcerated sentences for his wife and mother-in-law, while the feds would guarantee the two women slots in the witness protection program.

Suddenly, Sperrazza’s memories of the night of the double murders changed drastically to coincide with Doreen Weeks’s most recent version of events. Not only had I instructed him and John Stokes to kill the women, Sperrazza now claimed, but I had helped him bury the bodies as well.

In February 1980, the Spinney-Webster case was officially reopened and a grand jury empaneled. Four months later, on June 26, I was indicted for the kidnapping and murder of Karen Spinney and Susan Webster, and for being an accessory after the fact to the murder of Cirvinale and the shooting of DiVingo.

Neither of the two previous indictments, in the Norfolk County Trust robbery and the Brown shooting, had come as a surprise. I was guilty of the bank robbery, after all. That the feds would eventually make a case against me was not unexpected. Likewise, the Purity Supreme case had also taken on an air of inevitability. Phil Beauchesne had been trying to pin the Brown shooting on me for years.

But the Spinney-Webster charges took me completely off guard. That I would have been involved with such a hideous crime was utterly unthinkable to me. I felt the same anger and crushing despair I’d experienced all those years earlier at the Charles Street Jail when I’d first found out about the rape accusations. Only this time, understanding the system as I did, my expectations were far less hopeful.

Things, I feared, were about to get very dark.