Thread by @Techno_Fog

“Trust the FBI.”

Let me tell you about that time the FBI - from the Director down to the agents - framed four innocent men for murdering a small-time gangster.

1964: “Teddy” Deegan (pictured) was a hood in the northeast who owed money to the brother of FBI informant (and fellow gangster) Jimmy Flemmi.

1964-65: FBI wires showed that the murder of Deegan was imminent. Two days before the murder, an FBI informant reported that one of the heads of organized crime in New England gave the “OK” to murder Deegan.

The FBI knew the plan and knew who would be doing the killing.

It did nothing to warn the victim and it didn’t stop its informants from killing Deegan on the evening of March 12, 1965.

Now the FBI was in a bind. Its informants, who had been giving up info on the Italian mob, had killed a guy. So the FBI set out to frame four innocent men.

One of them was WW2 vet Louis Greco, who had been awarded two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart.

FBI superiors – including FBI Director Hoover – knew of and approved this plan. They knew who the real killer was.

Every piece of evidence possessed by the FBI showed that their informants were the killers. The FBI never gave this evidence to the defendants as required by law.

The FBI went all-in and helped their witness suborn perjury, prepared him for cross-examination and found witnesses who would lie to corroborate his false story.

The four innocent men were convicted. Three sentenced to the death penalty (eventually changed to life) and one to life in prison.

The FBI congratulated the agents for a job well done.

After these convictions, it was brought to the FBI’s attention that their star witness (who lied at the FBI’s request) wanted to recant his testimony.

Over the next 30 years FBI had countless opportunities to disclose what happened. It never did.

Eventually, investigations took place after it was discovered that Whitey Bulger was also an FBI informant.

Over thirty years had passed since the men were convicted. Two of them had already died in jail. The other two were freed.

A civil suit followed.

When the case went to trial, the Federal Gov’t refused to take responsibility for knowingly sending innocent men to prison and instead hid behind questionable legal theories and tried to blame others. It didn’t work.

The Judge awarded the victims and their families $101 million dollars. But for the families and the victims it was too little, too late.

Families were destroyed, kids grew up without parents. Lives were ruined.

But remember: you can't question the integrity of the FBI.

Finally, thru the 1980s, Robert Mueller was writing letters to keep these innocent men in jail.

https://twitter.com/pauldobbie2/status/975875460906278913

@SaraCarterDC next time you could at least give a RT

https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC/status/975887414580391938

More on this:

Who were these innocent men, and what did this do to their families? It’s absolutely heartbreaking…

Peter Limone was married with 4 young children when he was arrested. After conviction, he lived under the threat of the death penalty for 5 years (until it was abolished). He was in his cell for 23.5 hours/day.

Limone missed every important family event in during his 33 year incarceration. His boys were “tormented at school by children calling their father a murderer.”

His young son had nightmares of his father’s electrocution. His daughter felt the pain of being the only child without a father during the holidays.

Joseph Salvati was 34 when he was wrongly convicted. He was released 29 years later in 1997. His father died while he was in jail and his mom developed Alzheimer’s.

Salvati’s four young children were tormented by neighborhood kids and prison visits. His young daughter, on her first visit to the prison to see her father, “was so scared that she vomited and cried.”

Henry Tameleo, the oldest of the innocent men, died in prison in 1985. His wife passed in 1979. Six months before his death, his doctor plead for him to be released so he could get proper care.

Tameleo was never released and his died with his son by his side.

The saddest story is that of Louis Greco. This decorated WW2 vet, who suffered a serious leg injury during the war, had a young family when he was convicted.

The FBI destroyed those children.

After the conviction, Greco’s young son Eddie – at the mere age of 10 – became suicidal.

He later endured beatings from his mother, who became an alcoholic after her husband was imprisoned. Eddie eventually died of a drug overdose.

Greco, during his incarceration, begged for “just one day” of freedom. Appeals, motions for a new trial, a writ of habeas corpus were all denied. Mueller fought to keep the vet in prison.

Greco’s other son Louis Jr., at the age of 12, “completely dissolved after his father was incarcerated.”

Louis Jr. never recovered. He committed suicide by drinking a can of Drano in 1997, almost 2 years to the day of his father’s death.