Feds betray Bennett family once again

By Peter Gelzinis

July 6, 2000 Web posted at: 3:09 PM EDT (1909 GMT)

BOSTON, Massachusetts (The Boston Herald) -- Any illusions Bill Bennett Jr. had about life being fair evaporated in 1967.

His two uncles, Edward ``Wimpy,'' and Walter Bennett ran a gambling and loan sharking enterprise out of a bar called Walter's Lounge on Dudley Street, near Uphams Corner. They also served as mentors to an ambitious young Roxbury thug known as Stevie ``The Rifleman'' Flemmi.

In January of `67, Edward ``Wimpy'' Bennett disappeared. His brother Walter vanished three months later in April. Bill Jr. was a 17-year-old student at Dorchester High, old enough to remember how desperately his father, a bartender, wanted to avenge what had happened to his uncles.

Seven months later, William Bennett's crumpled body would be pulled off a snowbank, a bullet through his brain. The memory of watching his mother return from the morgue after identifying his father's body two days before Christmas, is one that's never dimmed in 33 years.

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``She hadn't even taken off her coat when the phone starts to ring,'' the son recalls. ``The voice on the other end tells her not to say a word about anything, or she'd be killed along with her whole family.''

But this is far from the only scene carved into Bill Bennett's heart and soul. What he will forever carry with him is the memory of eavesdropping on a pair of FBI agents who paid his doomed father a chilling visit shortly before his death.

What the son says he heard was two agents of the government pressuring his father to surrender ``the books'' for the family operation.

In a prior interview two years ago, Bennett remembered the agents saying: `` `If you don't want the same thing happening to you that happened to your brothers, you'd better give us the books.' They weren't asking.''

Yesterday, without a trace of doubt or hesitation, Bill Bennett Jr. identified one of those rancid G-Men as H. Paul Rico. A full two years before the Bennett brothers were wiped off the face of the earth, H. Paul Rico turned Stevie Flemmi into his No. 1 rat.

``(Paul) Rico was pushing my Dad pretty hard for the books,'' Bill Bennett said, yesterday afternoon, when contacted by phone.``I know, because I heard him. There's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Paul Rico gave my Dad up to Stevie Flemmi . . .''

Consequently, there was more resignation than outrage in Bennett's voice yesterday when he learned that the government would not be charging Stevie Flemmi with the murders of his father and uncles. The official excuse handed down by a federal judge was improper use of a grand jury.

For Billy Bennett's son - it's about the government of the United States trying to save what little face it has left in its shameful alliance with the Boston underworld.

``No matter what they say, I believe the government is still trying hard to protect a guy like Rico,'' Billy Bennett said. ``I know that some of the rocks will probably be pulled back on guys like Rico. Still, I don't think the government wants to see the whole mess come out. It goes too deep. And it gets too ugly.

``I don't believe our family will ever know any satisfaction,'' Bill Bennett said. ``As for closure, I don't even think about it anymore. I'm a steelworker by trade, but I also love history. So often, I find myself wishing for the kind of satisfaction they knew back in the days when two men faced each other in a duel. At least they had a sense of honor.''

Bill Bennett Jr. has never harbored any illusions about what his family was . . . and what it wasn't. Though he may never know what ultimately happened to his uncles, or if there are any remains left to be unearthed . . . he certainly knows how they exited this vale of tears.

The Bennett brothers were delivered by the forces of truth and justice into the hands of darkness. ``In the end, what it comes down to,'' Bill Bennett said, `` is that some people are more important than others.'' The ambitious, duplicitous thug will always be more important to the ambitious, duplicitous FBI.

``Maybe the only truth,'' the son said, ``is that you can always kill some people and get away with it.''

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