Harold Paul Rico was an FBI agent. In 2003, at age 78, he was charged with the 1981 murder of Tulsa businessman Roger Wheeler. Rico died while in custody before there was a preliminary hearing or a trial. Rico was born in 1925 in Boston. He served as a gunner on a B-24 in Italy during WWII and later graduated from Boston College with a bachelor's degree in history. Rico joined the FBI in 1951 at the age of 26 and worked in the Boston area. In 1956 he recognized a disguised James "Whitey" Bulger in a Revere bar and arrested him for a series of bank robberies. He operated Stevie Flemmi, Bulger’s partner and a member of the Winter Hill Gang, as an informant. In 1966, Rico recruited Joseph Barboza, Jr. aka, Joe "The Animal" Barboza, as a government witness. Barboza testified for the government in the trials of several members of the New England LCN and became the first person to enter the Witness Security Program.
Deegan murder
In 1965, Rico learned from Barboza that gangster Edward "Teddy" Deegan was killed by members of the New England La Cosa Nostra and the Winter Hill Gang, specifically Vincent James Flemmi. Rico provided Joe Barboza, as a cooperating witness who had participated in the murder, to the Suffolk County, MA, District Attorney, who was the prosecutor. Suffolk County detectives and prosecutors interviewed Barboza and prepared him for his testimony in court against six men including: Peter Limone, Henry Tameleo, Joe Salvati, Ronald Cassesso, Wilfred Roy French and Louis Greco. Tameleo died in 1985 in prison and Greco died in 1995 in prison, too; Salvati was released in 1997, and Limone in 2001. During U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearings in October 2003 looking into the Deegan killing, Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays, Republican, repeatedly demanded that Rico respond to his allegation that he knowingly sent an innocent man to prison. Shays demanded, "What is it like?" and "How Do You feel?" Rico first responded that he had faith in the jury system and he thought the jury should decide innocence. When Shays said, "You don't seem to give a shit. Excuse me. You don't seem to care," Rico asked, "What do you want, tears?" The two survivors and the estates of the deceased were awarded $101.7 million by U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston on July 26, 2007.
Patriarca family murder trial
Rico was in charge of cooperative witness John "Red" Kelley, an Irish American mobster and sometime associate of the Patriarca crime family, during a murder trial of family boss Raymond Patriarca and four members of the family, Maurice Lerner, Robert Fairbrothers, John Rossi, and Rudolph Sciarra. The five were tried in 1970 for murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 1968 shotgun murders of Rudolph "Rudy" Marfeo and Anthony Melei. Kelley testified he had been contracted by Lerner to kill Marfeo and Melei, whom Kelley and Lerner allegedly murdered. After the trial, Kelley went into the federal witness protection program. Patriarca and his associates were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Lerner also was convicted of two counts of murder for which he was sentenced to two life terms in addition to the ten years for conspiracy, all of the sentences to be served consecutively. The jury was unable to reach a verdict for the other four defendants. Lerner's conviction subsequently was quashed by the Rhode Island Supreme Court in 1988. It had been established that Kelley had perjured himself at the trial, as had Rico, who had corroborated Kelley's testimony. The Court vacated his conviction and ordered a new trial.
Murder indictment and death
On October 9, 2003, Rico was indicted for murder in Oklahoma for helping Bulger and Stephen Flemmi plan the assassination of the millionaire Roger Wheeler on May 27, 1981. Rico died on January 16, 2004 in a Tulsa hospital where he was moved to from jail, still under indictment for the 1981 murder. He was 78.
