Former Connolly Boss Urges Maximum Sentence

BOSTON -- A high-ranking agent who worked at the FBI's Boston bureau wants former colleague and convict John Connolly to serve the maximum time in prison.

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NewsCenter 5's David Boeri reported that one of Connolly's former supervisors, Robert Fitzpatrick, wrote a letter to the court asking that Connolly be sentenced to the maximum for his conviction on charges that he illegally helped Boston mobsters.

Fitzpatrick said that he had recommended that the bureau rid itself of informant and mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. Instead, the bureau listened to Connolly, who, 20 years later, was convicted of racketeering.

"At the time, he was applauded for what he was doing by headquarters and allowed to do it," Fitzpatrick said.

Connolly was accused of tipping off Bulger and hit man Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi that indictments were about to be handed down against them. The two fled before they could be arrested, although Flemmi was eventually found and prosecuted.

In a letter to the U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro, who will sentence Connolly in September, Fitzpatrick, once the No. 2 man in the Boston bureau, writes that "Connolly was not a rogue agent ... [B]y any common measure, there were missing persons at the defendant's table."

"He could redeem himself by telling the truth, by naming names, by furnishing information," Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick says that other agents, including some of Connolly's superiors, should have been codefendants in the case.

In the 1980s, Fitzpatrick reported the No. 1 man in the Boston bureau, Special Agent in Charge James Greenleaf, to headquarters after Greenleaf was reported by an agent for leaking the identity of an informant who had implicated Bulger and Flemmi in a major drug cartel.

"I was more or less told to shut up," Fitzpatrick said.

At Connolly's trial, a government witness identified FBI agent Dennis O'Callaghan as the source of the leak to Connolly that Bulger was about to be indicted.

Fitzpatrick said Connolly knows fellow agents and superiors who may have taken bribes, engaged in leaks and otherwise protected Bulger.

"If there's no remorse, then you're not sorry about what you did. That's like a Whitey Bulger. He shows no remorse. He's a psychopath," Fitzpatrick said. "But most of all, he has to cooperate."

Under federal guidelines, Connolly could get anywhere from eight to 20 years when he is sentenced by Tauro, scheduled for Sept. 16.