FBI nabs top N.E. mobsters

BOSTON — An FBI sweep through three states on Monday netted New England’s top organized crime boss, culminating a five-year probe in which investigators taped the Mafia’s solemn blood initiation rite, authorities said.

The 113-count indictments naming 21 alleged mobsters were especially significant for their extensive description of the induction ceremony, said U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

“It should lay to rest once and for all any doubts that the Cosa Nostra is a figment of law enforcement’s imagination,” Thornburgh told reporters.

“It establishes beyond doubt the existence of a secret, clandestine operation that takes itself very seriously.”

FBI agents fanned out Monday over Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut to arrest the alleged criminals on a range of charges including murder, racketeering, kidnapping, drug trafficking, gambling, obstruction of justice and witness intimidation. Fifteen of the 21 were in custody Monday afternoon.

“These three indictments represent an unprecedented assault on New England organized crime activity,” said Thornburgh, who was joined in Boston by the FBI Director William Sessions and U.S. attorneys for the three New England states.

Sessions said the dragnet and court-approved tapes of an induction ceremony in Medford in October shows the bureau’s “ability to invade the inner sanctums … with the intention to destroy them.”

Reputed boss Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, son of the region’s late reputed mob leader, was arrested about 6:30 a.m. Monday at his home in Lincoln, R.I.

Patriarca, 45, appeared handcuffed before a U.S. magistrate in Providence, who ordered him transferred to Boston for arraignment Tuesday at the earliest.

Attorney John F. Cicilline had argued his client should be given three days to determine whether he was medically fit to make the 50-mile trip. Cicilline said his client suffers from cancer and cataracts.

The 20 others named in the indictments were allegedly members of the Patriarca family, whose induction ceremony was detailed in the indictments secretly handed up last week and unsealed Monday.

According to the indictments, Patriarca and 17 other alleged family members attended a ceremony in which four alleged mob candidates “received instructions concerning the rules of La Cosa Nostra, agreed to kill any individual who posed a threat to the organization and its members.”

The indictment said the four took the following oath in Italian before drawing blood from their index fingers: “I … want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends. I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta.”

Omerta refers to the code of silence.

A holy card with the image of the saint of the Patriarca family was then burned as the following was repeated: “As burns this saint, so will burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead,” according to the indictments.

Authorities didn’t identify the saint.

Nicholas Bianco and Matthew Gugliemetti, respectively the alleged underboss and Mafia captain, also were among those arrested Monday in Providence.