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don’t want you to say anything to me. I just want you to listen. It’s a matter of life and death, specifically yours. You don’t have to believe me just hear me out.” After Quinn informed him of what was about to go down, LaFreniere hung up the telephone and raced to the parking lot to meet with Quinn.
    When he arrived at the lot at about 2:00 a.m., he exited his vehicle and clambered into the backseat of Quinn’s car. After LaFreniere received the details of his possible execution, he informed the agents that he had been called by the Angiulos already and had a meeting set up with them in the morning. LaFreniere then promised to call Quinn the next morning, but he never did. Instead, he reached out to his father-in-law, who put him in touch with Danny Angiulo, who sent him to the family’s attorney, William Cintolo. He informed LaFreniere not to talk and relayed all questions from the grand jury to Angiulo. Cintolo was later convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice.
    By 4:00 p.m. on March 20, Angiulo had been briefed on Gambale’s aborted attempt to meet up with LaFreniere and kill him. He reassessed the situation and decided to tell LaFreniere to shut his mouth and do eighteen months for contempt. In early April, Cintolo attempted to represent both Angiulo and LaFreniere. However, Strike Force attorney Wendy Collins argued successfully that it was a conflict of interest since LaFreniere was supposed to have been killed to save Jason Angiulo. Angiulo had a high regard for Venios, who had been paying the Angiulos juice for years. Every Saturday, Venios would get in his green Lincoln sedan and drive to the North End from his Combat Zone business. Although he was highly regarded as a standup guy, when he was behind on debts that carried 200 percent interest, he got no sympathy. When Venios was critically ill on oxygen in the hospital, Angiulo sent his brother Mike to go and inform him that it was in his best interest to be sure that he paid the money to Angiulo as soon as he left the hospital. Angiulo tried and tried to figure out how the government knew his every move, but he couldn’t figure it out. He assumed that the FBI had bugged Gambale’s car. He eventually found out through his network of eyes in the North End that the FBI was videotaping his office. He never had a clue about the wiretaps in his headquarters. Near the end, when the FBI was kicking in doors in the North End and grabbing evidence of gambling to go with the tape recordings, Angiulo would bring it all back to LaFreniere. Angiulo said, “Soon as that kid got a fucking summons, that was the beginning. We all fell asleep…It was like, it was like God sending us a fucking message, and we couldn’t read it.” He went on to say, “Why should I go to jail in this fucking thing, you know how many fucking things I did worse than this?”
    Unwittingly, Angiulo gave the government what he was determined they would never have—evidence of his direct participation in criminal conspiracies. In many ways, the carefully considered decision to call in the enforcer Richie Gambale was a needless risk that cost Angiulo his empire. He would lose everything over a strip joint bartender who never posed any real danger to him. Nevertheless, decades of secrecy and stealth had led to a kind of paranoia that turned a mild threat into a fatal obsession.
    The FBI eventually compiled enough evidence to bring charges forth. Prosecutor Diane Kottmyer compared Angiulo and his co-defendants to a highly sophisticated and structured Fortune 500 company. The audiotapes had Angiulo bragging about his illegitimate profits and his unlimited power to be able to bribe any official. During his trial, Angiulo mumbled under his breath, “Splice, splice,” to his lawyer, while the prosecution was playing the wiretap tapes.
    Jerry Angiulo was being held in the outdated Charles Street Jail in Boston while on trial because he was