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Speaker 4: Maybe you are now listening to True Murder The most
Speaker 4: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 4: have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK
Speaker 4: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 4: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 4: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. On a cold winter's night in early nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty three, mob enforcer Rocco Anthony Ballero and a pair
Speaker 5: of associates stormed a darkened apartment on the outskirts of
Speaker 5: Boston and engaged in a fierce gun battle with several assailants.
Speaker 5: Police officers had turned out waiting in ambush for the
Speaker 5: ex convict in recent prison escapee. In the aftermath, a
Speaker 5: young woman and her toddler's son lay dead. The story
Speaker 5: of Rocco Berlero, a petty criminal enforcer for New England
Speaker 5: crime boss Raymond Patriarca, played out in glaring headlines across
Speaker 5: the country. Following the shootout with the Boston police, had
Speaker 5: he heeded the commands of the cops to drop his
Speaker 5: weapon Rocco would not have spent the next fifty years
Speaker 5: behind bars, and his girlfriend and her son might still
Speaker 5: be alive today. Instead, he fired the gun, erupting death
Speaker 5: and mayhem in the apartment. In the aftermath of the shootings,
Speaker 5: all fingers pointed at Rocco, but he would maintain his
Speaker 5: innocence in the death of his girlfriend and her son
Speaker 5: for the rest of his life, though plague with lingering questions.
Speaker 5: Did he fire the deadly bullets or did they come
Speaker 5: from another source? Did he unlowingly kill the pair? Or
Speaker 5: was he simply guilty of an ill advised home invasion?
Speaker 5: What was the police's true involvement? Balero agreed to meet
Speaker 5: with the author. Over the span of a couple of years.
Speaker 5: Along with countless tales of criminal escapades, Balero handed over
Speaker 5: raims of documents, correspondence, and clippings related to his life
Speaker 5: and the alleged crime that put him behind bars, while
Speaker 5: Balero arranged for meetings with many of his family members
Speaker 5: and associates. This is Rocco's own story of his life,
Speaker 5: but more importantly, it is his version of the events
Speaker 5: from the night of February second, nineteen sixty three. In
Speaker 5: a Boston suburb and his profession of innocence and until
Speaker 5: his dying breath. The book they were featuring this evening
Speaker 5: is Shots in the Dark, The Saga of Rocco Balero,
Speaker 5: with my special guest author Zimmerman. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for agreeing to this program,
Speaker 5: Daniel Zimmern.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you for having me. Dan much appreciated. I
Speaker 6: spent quite a bit of time putting together this story,
Speaker 6: writing the story about Rocco Blero, and now I much
Speaker 6: appreciate any opportunity I can have such as this to
Speaker 6: share that story with others.
Speaker 5: Tell us how you came to be in a position
Speaker 5: or why this was important to you. Tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about your journalism background as a stringer for
Speaker 5: many years, and tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 5: you came to be in a position to be able
Speaker 5: to want for the.
Speaker 6: Last For the last two decades nineteen years, to be exact,
Speaker 6: I've been a stringer for an assortment of newspapers, mostly weekly,
Speaker 6: some dailies, and mostly in a sports capacity. And that's
Speaker 6: really where I cut my teeth with writing. I'm not
Speaker 6: a formal journalist. I did not go to college for
Speaker 6: this I'm self taught, and a lot of people find
Speaker 6: it had to believe that as they read some of
Speaker 6: my material. But again, through those years, I as I
Speaker 6: learned the trade, so to speak, I decided I wanted
Speaker 6: to write a story. And I had this story about
Speaker 6: Rocco Blero since very early years, very early age, because
Speaker 6: I grew up with it. The victims, the two victims,
Speaker 6: Toby Wagner and Mock Wagner, were my aunt and my cousin,
Speaker 6: and I grew up through the sixties and seventies fully
Speaker 6: aware of the story. My family shared it with me.
Speaker 6: But what they shared with me was a story of
Speaker 6: Rocco Balero, cold blooded killer, cold blooded murderer. And that's
Speaker 6: what That's what I believed, because that's what I was told.
Speaker 6: So when I decided to write this book, I went
Speaker 6: into the prison for the first visit with Rocco, and
Speaker 6: it didn't take very long for him to convince me
Speaker 6: that I was wrong, and so were my family members,
Speaker 6: that in fact, he hadn't killed my aunt and my cousin.
Speaker 6: They were killed by police bullets. Allegedly, Rocco was actually
Speaker 6: in love with my aunt. He wanted to make a
Speaker 6: family with her and her two children, Mark and Bernice.
Speaker 6: It was just one of those situations where he he
Speaker 6: was living with her. Uh. They had fallen in love
Speaker 6: over a span of seven months after they met. Her
Speaker 6: husband was in jail, she was married, her husband was
Speaker 6: in jail, and true, probably not the best set of circumstances. Uh,
Speaker 6: her seeing Rocco while her husband's locked away, and that
Speaker 6: came to light when her husband was due to be
Speaker 6: released on February first, nineteen sixty three. You know, obviously
Speaker 6: bad things were gonna happen as a result of that
Speaker 6: release from jail. But again I grew up with the
Speaker 6: story and I went into the prison. My first visit
Speaker 6: was Roco. After reaching out to him be a letter,
Speaker 6: he couldn't get me in there fast enough. He actually
Speaker 6: reached out to one of his relatives as sister and
Speaker 6: asked her to track me down so that he could
Speaker 6: he could arrange for that first that first meeting, that
Speaker 6: first visit to the prison, and once I was there,
Speaker 6: very interesting. I went through the processing, I walked into
Speaker 6: the visiting area, I sat down and waited. Obviously I
Speaker 6: knew what Ruckabullero looked like. I had photos I had,
Speaker 6: you know, seen photos throughout the years. He didn't know
Speaker 6: me or what I looked like, obviously, But when he
Speaker 6: came through the entryway and checked in, he's looking around
Speaker 6: the room and I stood up and kind of raised
Speaker 6: a hand, and he came over, and I expected I
Speaker 6: reached out to shake his hand, and he actually put
Speaker 6: his arms around me and embraced me, and then stepped
Speaker 6: back and he said, I can't believe it, standing in
Speaker 6: front of me, Toby's DNA. And it kind of struck
Speaker 6: me that fifty years later, fifty years after her death,
Speaker 6: this man I could sense that there was something not
Speaker 6: right about the story I've been told. I could sense
Speaker 6: that he truly loved my aunt Toby. And over the
Speaker 6: course of the next three weeks, three or four weeks,
Speaker 6: between communications with Rocco, between twice weekly visits and him
Speaker 6: providing a documentation, as I said in my intro or
Speaker 6: correspondence Affi David's testimony, Major Major Documents, that it was
Speaker 6: just a stack of material. Every day I'd get something
Speaker 6: in the mail from him, and I'd go through it,
Speaker 6: and then I'd take the time, obviously as a researcher
Speaker 6: of researching into this crime, I would corroborate a lot
Speaker 6: of the material that he gave me. I'd reach out
Speaker 6: to attorneys, I'd reach out to police officers, I'd gather
Speaker 6: other materials to ensure that what he was giving me
Speaker 6: was accurate. And one hundred percent of the time, anything
Speaker 6: that he told me, or gave me, or provided towards
Speaker 6: my research, it was accurate. I seldom found anything, and
Speaker 6: if anything was not accurate, it was only because of
Speaker 6: the passage of time. So many years had gone by
Speaker 6: that even the best memories stayed somewhat and I came
Speaker 6: to understand in a very short period of time that
Speaker 6: I had it all wrong. I wasn't about to write
Speaker 6: a book about a cold blooded murder Rocco Balro. I
Speaker 6: was about to write a book about an innocent man
Speaker 6: who was sent to prison for a crime he did
Speaker 6: not commit.
Speaker 5: As you'd write in the book, tell us how Rocco
Speaker 5: Ballero meets Toby.
Speaker 6: Toby was a young woman. She was only twenty one
Speaker 6: at the time. Again, as I mentioned her, her husband
Speaker 6: was in prison, she had two young children, and she
Speaker 6: she just she liked this. She liked be out. She
Speaker 6: liked to go out and see friends. She liked to
Speaker 6: kind of hang out at lounges and socialize, and she
Speaker 6: was lonely, so one night in July of nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 6: she arranged for a babysitter and went to a place
Speaker 6: in Boston. It was called the Combat Zone. Locals around
Speaker 6: here would know exactly what that is, but it's a
Speaker 6: red it's the Red Lake District, and it's loaded with
Speaker 6: assorted peep shows, bookstores, but also many many lounges kind
Speaker 6: of dotted the landscape in the combat Zone, and most
Speaker 6: of them were run by mob figures, they were owned
Speaker 6: by most most of them are owned by the underworld,
Speaker 6: and she she frequented one called the New Yorker, where
Speaker 6: in the in the basement, the downstairs area, as Roco
Speaker 6: described it, it was kind of the movers and movers
Speaker 6: and shaker of the underworld. A lot of a lot
Speaker 6: of mob figures would would kind of apply their trade there.
Speaker 6: And she met Rocco there. She was with another out
Speaker 6: with another gentleman, but Rocco kind of worked his way
Speaker 6: into her graces, and before long they were sharing, sharing
Speaker 6: stories and drinks, and they they fell for each other,
Speaker 6: uh so quickly, in fact, that Rocco literally moved in
Speaker 6: with her into her apartment and they they basically were
Speaker 6: I guess you could call a family against you had
Speaker 6: two young children, a two year old boy and a
Speaker 6: six month old girl, and Rocco Rocco made them his family.
Speaker 6: He treated them as his family. He'd fill the refrigerator
Speaker 6: with groceries. He he'd buy her new things. She was
Speaker 6: kind of a little bit downtrodden financially because of her
Speaker 6: her husband being locked away, so she struggled to get
Speaker 6: by and and Rocco would help her with that in
Speaker 6: that respect, he would buy her things and and UH
Speaker 6: and it was a it was a good situation for him. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: Rocco also was a was a c was a criminal.
Speaker 6: I mean honestly, UH. He would admit. He would admit
Speaker 6: that every every time he talked his career. His work
Speaker 6: was to UH burgalarize UH local businesses, jewelry stores, anything
Speaker 6: that UH that he could that he could fence off
Speaker 6: to to more or less make a living. And that
Speaker 6: was all as UH. As part of the organization, he
Speaker 6: was an enforcer UH for the UH patriarchic family. His
Speaker 6: family was one level of U tiers of mafia involvement.
Speaker 6: In the in the Boston area, they uh the Ballero
Speaker 6: family worked directly for the Andulo family, and then turn
Speaker 6: the Angulo family work for the patriarchate family. So it
Speaker 6: was uh several levels away. But Rocco was still officially
Speaker 6: a uh uh. He could use the title mob enforcer,
Speaker 6: and he again committed crimes to to supplement his income.
Speaker 5: How was it that? Explain how it wasn't in this
Speaker 5: situation that they were in a they were mobsters, but
Speaker 5: he was able to go out with this person's girlfriend
Speaker 5: while he was in prison. Tell us how the brothers
Speaker 5: reacted to this, his own brothers reacted to this, and
Speaker 5: how you explained in the book how this is possible
Speaker 5: even though people might think this weren't possible in the
Speaker 5: confines of the mafia.
Speaker 6: Well, at the time, Boston's got a very sordid history
Speaker 6: of mob activities, and at the time the Italian Mob ruled,
Speaker 6: They ruled the city. The Angela family was very powerful.
Speaker 6: They you didn't you didn't sneeze in the organization without
Speaker 6: the permission. Her husband, Barney Wagner, was a distant, distant
Speaker 6: member of the Irish faction, the Irish Mob, who at
Speaker 6: the time didn't have much much power, much sway in
Speaker 6: the city, and Rocco basically he was you know, he
Speaker 6: felt that he could do pretty much anything he wanted,
Speaker 6: and his brothers really didn't stand in his way. They
Speaker 6: would they would give him advice, but he was twenty
Speaker 6: sixth at the time, and he'd uh, he'd already been
Speaker 6: in prison a couple of times for different crimes, and
Speaker 6: they felt that, you know, he had the right and
Speaker 6: the maturity to make his own decisions about what he
Speaker 6: would do. And there really is nobody to stand in
Speaker 6: his way as far as getting into a relationship with
Speaker 6: with Toby, and that he did, and that persisted for
Speaker 6: about seven months until the till February of sixty three.
Speaker 6: Of the stories in the book, I'm sorry, sure, yah.
Speaker 5: That's why I was going to get to some of
Speaker 5: the some of the fascinating stories that you have here
Speaker 5: that really demonstrate that he's I guess, much different than
Speaker 5: anybody we've read before. Tell us a couple of stories
Speaker 5: that you include that illustrate sort of his unique character.
Speaker 6: Well, one of the things that was during the editing
Speaker 6: phase of this book, one of my editors I had
Speaker 6: used a description of Rocco as a having a heart
Speaker 6: of gold. And she reached back to me and kind
Speaker 6: of questioned that that terminology, that description of Rocco, that
Speaker 6: how could a criminal of this nature have a heart
Speaker 6: of gold? And I explained to her that other than
Speaker 6: first responders and maybe a physician in an emergency room,
Speaker 6: there are very few people that walk this planet that
Speaker 6: can claim to have saved three lives, and Rocco was
Speaker 6: one who could. During the course of his life, he
Speaker 6: saved three people, and there are families there that exist
Speaker 6: today because of his actions. For instance, he during during
Speaker 6: one of his stays in prison, there was an uprising,
Speaker 6: a riot and m m c. I. Wallpole, it's one
Speaker 6: of the most notorious prisons in on the East Coast,
Speaker 6: and there was a riot in nineteen sixty seven where
Speaker 6: Rocco risked his own life to step in front of
Speaker 6: a guard and hold off some of the rampaging inmates
Speaker 6: who wanted a piece of that guard, and that guard
Speaker 6: managed to survive. He got he got away as a
Speaker 6: result of Rocco's delaying, delaying the the attack. And later
Speaker 6: on in his life when he was on he had
Speaker 6: he had made one of his several escapes. As you
Speaker 6: as you read, he was pretty good at escaping from prisons.
Speaker 6: Several times he he managed to find his way out.
Speaker 6: But during one of his escapes, he was living in
Speaker 6: San Francisco with a former associate and they were at
Speaker 6: the uh San Francisco Pier was on July fourth, nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty and the associate had a two year old daughter
Speaker 6: who they lost track of her for a few seconds.
Speaker 6: She stumbled and fell into the San Francisco Bay and
Speaker 6: most people just froze. According to the description in the newspaper,
Speaker 6: people froze. No nobody reacted except for Rocco. He didn't hesitate.
Speaker 6: He dove into the water, he fished her out, he
Speaker 6: rescued her. And you know, it was just one of
Speaker 6: those things where yes he was a criminal. Yes he
Speaker 6: robbed stores, Yes he broke into businesses in the in
Speaker 6: the dark of night. But he also, as I described,
Speaker 6: had a heart of gold. He would he would risk
Speaker 6: his own life to save others.
Speaker 5: Right, you you include some of these the these hijinks
Speaker 5: where you have incredible access and you take us right
Speaker 5: into the vehicles as they're escaping from these robberies. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about the fur coat robbery because
Speaker 5: it's an important story.
Speaker 6: Yes, it was an important robbery. Him and his partner
Speaker 6: Gianni Seroni went to a first store in the town
Speaker 6: just outside of Boston Colprook line, and they robbed the
Speaker 6: store of pretty much all their fur coats. In nineteen
Speaker 6: sixty two dollars, it was seventy five thousand, but nowadays
Speaker 6: that would be quite quite a bit more. And the
Speaker 6: purpose of that was to give them his gifts to
Speaker 6: some of his some of the mob associates, some of
Speaker 6: the higher ups in the organization, as well as fencing
Speaker 6: some of them for income. So they robbed the store,
Speaker 6: and then they got a hold of a panel truck
Speaker 6: and set it all up and hung the coats there,
Speaker 6: so that it was actually a store on wheels, as
Speaker 6: he described it, where people would come and look at
Speaker 6: the coat, and they take one for their wives and girlfriends,
Speaker 6: and and then then came the time to uh to
Speaker 6: transport them to Providence to hand them off to the
Speaker 6: patriarchate family. And that night turned turned out to be
Speaker 6: very pivotal in Rocco's life. During the the transportation phase,
Speaker 6: they were pulled over by a police cruiser with a
Speaker 6: number of officers in the in the in the cruiser,
Speaker 6: and they were subsequently UH subsequently arrested, and Rocco soon
Speaker 6: landed in a uh in jail, the UH the best
Speaker 6: house of corrections, and he knew with his with his
Speaker 6: history he had, he had been released from prison for
Speaker 6: other crimes not too in the not too distant pass,
Speaker 6: and he understood that he was facing a long stretch
Speaker 6: as a result. So like like Rocco ballero Is, he
Speaker 6: decided he wanted to escape and he enlisted. He enlisted
Speaker 6: my aunt Toby UH to assist him in that. He
Speaker 6: he figured out at this prison was in excess of
Speaker 6: one hundred years years old. The UH cast iron bars
Speaker 6: that fronted the cells were very porous, very UH basically
Speaker 6: easy to cut if he could get his hands on
Speaker 6: a cutting tool. And that's exactly where Toby came in.
Speaker 6: She ended up smuggling in hacks all blades and getting
Speaker 6: them to to Rocco. Prisons were different in those days.
Speaker 6: They didn't have metal detectors, the guards, the the officers
Speaker 6: were less apt to pat down a woman. It was
Speaker 6: just a whole different time. And she managed to get
Speaker 6: the hacksaw blades and it took Rocco forty days to
Speaker 6: cut through these bars, but he managed to do so
Speaker 6: and escape. He went out a window and managed to
Speaker 6: get back to Boston and his family and Toby. They
Speaker 6: they got together soon after the escape. He he was
Speaker 6: pretty adept at using an axe all blade, let me
Speaker 6: just put it that way. He did it a couple
Speaker 6: of times in a very short span of time.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit more about your aunt, Toby
Speaker 5: and Mark and the daughter named Bernice, but oddly they
Speaker 5: called her Wendy. Tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 5: their life that they had even though he was on
Speaker 5: the run. Tell us the state of affairs with this
Speaker 5: couple and the children.
Speaker 6: Well, we're Toby. I was two at the time. My
Speaker 6: mother and Toby were schoolmates. They both went to Brookline
Speaker 6: High School, and that's how they got to know each other,
Speaker 6: and that's how my mother eventually met my father through Toby.
Speaker 6: They lived kind of a tough existence. Toby was into
Speaker 6: some things that she probably shouldn't have been. Her husband, Barney,
Speaker 6: wasn't the best character. They kind of ran with a
Speaker 6: gang of people who just were on the lived on
Speaker 6: the wrong side of the fence, so to speak, and
Speaker 6: they eventually got married, had had the two kids. Toby
Speaker 6: absolutely adored Mark. My mother would describe it. I believe
Speaker 6: I used it in the book that he was attached
Speaker 6: to her hip. Wherever she was, Mark was. But for
Speaker 6: some reason, Bernice wasn't quite the love child that that
Speaker 6: Mark was. And oddly enough, after as I was doing
Speaker 6: my research, I didn't have to talk to Bernice. It
Speaker 6: wasn't necessary because she was a six month old infant
Speaker 6: and I had the story as it was given to
Speaker 6: me and written. But curiosity, obviously, and most authors are
Speaker 6: curious about characters and people they're writing about, so I
Speaker 6: sought her out and she had ended up being adopted
Speaker 6: by a family very close to where I lived at
Speaker 6: the It was one of those strange coincidences where I
Speaker 6: discovered where she grew up after adoption. She was literally
Speaker 6: just four miles away from where I lived the entire time.
Speaker 6: And this is a blood cousin, first cousin. She she's
Speaker 6: she's got a good life for herself now she's runs
Speaker 6: a business on Cape Cod and she's doing very well.
Speaker 6: My memories of Mark are basically triggered by photos that
Speaker 6: I have that were provided to me by by relatives
Speaker 6: of us together. There were oftentimes my mother and Toby
Speaker 6: would go out on shopping missions and take the two
Speaker 6: of us in the same carriage and kind of kind
Speaker 6: of push us along. And those are those are my
Speaker 6: my association with Mark. We were the same age, and
Speaker 6: had this incident not happened, we would have grown up
Speaker 6: again first cousins, and because we were close in age,
Speaker 6: we like would have been close as relatives and uh
Speaker 6: over over time. My mother I I used it in
Speaker 6: the book. My mother would often tell me a story
Speaker 6: that when she was married to my father and and
Speaker 6: Toby was married to Wagner. Uh, there wasn't a lot
Speaker 6: of money yet on hand, and so one night they
Speaker 6: suggested to Toby and my mother that they go to
Speaker 6: the nearby market and see if they can get a
Speaker 6: couple of good steaks, uh free of charge, so to speak.
Speaker 6: And they actually uh put them under the mattresses of
Speaker 6: the the the baby carriage that Mark and I sat
Speaker 6: in and strolled on out of the supermarket. And uh
Speaker 6: when I told when I told Rocco the story, as
Speaker 6: we went through some of the things of uh my memory,
Speaker 6: my recall, he uh he he kind of gave it
Speaker 6: a laugh and he said, we have a room for
Speaker 6: you here at the prison. So you know, there was
Speaker 6: little snippets like that. But I was testing the memory
Speaker 6: of my mother and she was in her late sixties
Speaker 6: at the time when I was doing my research, and
Speaker 6: she had some good stories and some good recall, but again,
Speaker 6: as a two year old, I don't recall very much myself.
Speaker 5: What was the relationship characterized by that Toby had been
Speaker 5: in with Barney Wagner.
Speaker 6: Well, Bunnie Wagner was He drank, he used drugs, he
Speaker 6: was often intoxicated, and he really didn't treat her as
Speaker 6: well as he should have. Obviously it basically I found
Speaker 6: that information out by way of a family member who
Speaker 6: provided me with her diary he had had that after
Speaker 6: she was killed. The family managed to get a box
Speaker 6: of materials, a yearbook from high school, a diary, some
Speaker 6: other letters, and and I went through those and I
Speaker 6: found some entries in the diary by my aunt Toby
Speaker 6: about Barney that weren't very They weren't very nice. She
Speaker 6: basically described him in a in a poor way, and
Speaker 6: Rocco backed that up because obviously Rocco spent seven months
Speaker 6: with her and discussions would lead to him at times,
Speaker 6: and he realized that Toby was being mistreated by this man,
Speaker 6: and he wanted he wanted to correct that. He wanted
Speaker 6: to treat her like she deserved to be treated, and
Speaker 6: that was his goal. Obviously, he was an escapee from
Speaker 6: prison and escape x Kahn on the run in Boston
Speaker 6: after he managed to escape the first time and get back.
Speaker 6: But they had plans. He and Toby were going to
Speaker 6: take the kids. They were going to run off to
Speaker 6: the West Coast, make a life life for themselves and
Speaker 6: change obviously, change names and and and just live as
Speaker 6: a family. That was his that was his plan. That
Speaker 6: was his goal, and she was on board. But unfortunately,
Speaker 6: February one, nineteen sixty three year olled around and bad
Speaker 6: things started to happen as a result.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about February first, nineteen sixty three, and
Speaker 5: she's Toby is hesitant to talk to Rocco about this,
Speaker 5: but finally she does, And so what does she tell
Speaker 5: him and how does she tell him about what's going
Speaker 5: to happen revolving.
Speaker 6: Well, Roccos are obviously, yeah, obviously Rocco was keyed into
Speaker 6: some of the ongoings in the in the area of
Speaker 6: crime and punishment so to speak. You know, it's there's
Speaker 6: a network and everybody seems to know everything that's going on.
Speaker 6: They share information. And he knew that her husband was
Speaker 6: getting out on that day, but he waited. He gave
Speaker 6: her the opportunity to tell him. He wanted Toby to
Speaker 6: tell him herself and not devolves that he already knew.
Speaker 6: So at a breakfast UH one morning, she after some hesitation,
Speaker 6: she came out with it. She said, my husband's getting out,
Speaker 6: and his reaction was to not disclosed that he already knew,
Speaker 6: and and basically ask her what she planned to do?
Speaker 6: What was what was her thoughts? And her plan was
Speaker 6: that she was going to gather the kids, UH go
Speaker 6: out to to see Barney and ask him for a divorce.
Speaker 6: And once that was done and she and Ronco could
Speaker 6: could uh run off, make them make their escape, so
Speaker 6: to speak. But time went by. She left the apartment
Speaker 6: they UH they were hiding out in in uh Chelsea,
Speaker 6: which is the suburb of uh north of Boston. She
Speaker 6: didn't return and for some time, UH there were no
Speaker 6: phone calls, there was no communication from her, and Rocco
Speaker 6: grew concerned UH that something that had happened to her
Speaker 6: that her husband uh was maybe angry because of her
Speaker 6: request for a divorce, and he thought maybe some harm
Speaker 6: had come to her. So he'd gotten his car and
Speaker 6: he took a drive to where he thought she might be,
Speaker 6: and he encountered Barney with a couple of a couple
Speaker 6: of his friends, including a hired hand in the Irish mafia.
Speaker 6: They had an altercation that included h shots being fired.
Speaker 6: Nobody was hit at the time, but once Rocco had
Speaker 6: separated himself from that he returned to his apartment. He
Speaker 6: gathered more weapons and a couple of friends, a brother
Speaker 6: and a third hand, and together they went back to
Speaker 6: the location where they thought Toby was being held against
Speaker 6: her will by Barney and his friends. It was a
Speaker 6: small apartment in Roxbury, which is just on the outskirts
Speaker 6: of Boston. And after some time they stormed this apartment
Speaker 6: which was pitch black. Uh you, it was so dark
Speaker 6: you just couldn't see the hand in front of your face.
Speaker 6: And in that apartment Rocco surmised that Barney was there
Speaker 6: holding Toby against her will, when in fact the people
Speaker 6: waiting in the apartment in the darkness were Boston police. Officers.
Speaker 6: They had gotten word that Rocco was on potentially on
Speaker 6: his way there, and they staked out the apartment. They
Speaker 6: plunged it into darkness, and they waited for him, and
Speaker 6: he did in fact show up and there was a
Speaker 6: huge gun battle. Rocco went his two associates and three
Speaker 6: police officers that had exchanged fire in the darker apartment.
Speaker 6: One of the descriptions in the UH police report and
Speaker 6: the follow up was that it was so dark that
Speaker 6: they weren't shooting at people, They were shooting at gun flashes.
Speaker 4: UH.
Speaker 6: That's that was a description by one of the UH
Speaker 6: one of the police officers that was in the apartment
Speaker 6: at the time. What happened next is after Rocco and
Speaker 6: his associates UH fled and they're running on the sidewalk, UH,
Speaker 6: trying to get to a to the getaway car, more
Speaker 6: shots came from the apartment and Rocco, I obviously and
Speaker 6: understandably was confused. He UH the thought was who who
Speaker 6: is he shooting at? Who were they shooting at? Were
Speaker 6: not there anymore? And he later told me, he said,
Speaker 6: you know, if had I known there were police officers
Speaker 6: in that apartment, I woulded to have gone within a
Speaker 6: hundred miles of that place. I I I'm not uh,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm not crazy to the point where I'm
Speaker 6: going to assault an apartment and and go into a
Speaker 6: situation like that where their police are there. I I
Speaker 6: would've turned tail and and and just waited out Toby
Speaker 6: at that point. But he thought he was rescuing her
Speaker 6: the entire time that he planned and staged this, this
Speaker 6: uh invasion, this assault in this apartment. He thought he
Speaker 6: was rescuing Toby from the clutches of her, her unhappy
Speaker 6: husband and his friends. And that wasn't the fact.
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Speaker 5: think we need to go a little bit words in
Speaker 5: terms of what happened in that apartment and the altercation
Speaker 5: that you spoke of with which is very important with
Speaker 5: the muscle for Barney Wagner, and an initial altercation when
Speaker 5: they came out of their vehicles and Clifford came and
Speaker 5: interrupted the conversation that Rocco was having with Toby's ex husband.
Speaker 5: Tell us about that exchange, what he had said to Wagner,
Speaker 5: what Wagner had said to him, which is important to
Speaker 5: what led to this tragedy.
Speaker 6: Well, it started with Rocco actually reaching the apartment. The
Speaker 6: first time he had approached the door again, it was
Speaker 6: the same darkness, the same apartment, looking unoccupied. It looked
Speaker 6: like it was unoccupied. But as he approached the door,
Speaker 6: he could hear a baby crying inside and decided to
Speaker 6: make his way in. He broke to a glass panel,
Speaker 6: and in there he found Toby's daughter, Bernice, on the floor.
Speaker 6: She had fallen off a bed, it seemed, and she
Speaker 6: was lying on the floor and she was crying. There
Speaker 6: was also four other babies in that apartment. Three, I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: three other babies in that apartment. Those were the children
Speaker 6: of a woman named Mary Adams, who owned the apartment
Speaker 6: and was friends with Toby. So Rocco, you know suit
Speaker 6: the baby, cleaned her up a little bit, put her
Speaker 6: back on the bed, and as he ventured back outside,
Speaker 6: wondering where the mothers were in the entire time, he
Speaker 6: saw a car just ahead. And then that car there
Speaker 6: were three figures, and one of them was Barney Wagner.
Speaker 6: And so what Rocco did is he summoned mister Wagner
Speaker 6: over to his car, and after some hesitation, Wagner agreed
Speaker 6: to get in the car and have a discussion with Rocco,
Speaker 6: and it was a heated discussion.
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Speaker 6: But Rocco was just trying to kind of settle things
Speaker 6: down and come into a an understanding of what what
Speaker 6: was gonna take place. Wagner was actually I he was
Speaker 6: okay with the discussion. There was a moment where he
Speaker 6: was nervous, He was uptight Rocco Blero obviously had a
Speaker 6: reputation in the city and Wagner was aware of that. Uh.
Speaker 6: But Rocco took the step he actually handed or tried
Speaker 6: to hand Barney Wagner his his gun and in a uh,
Speaker 6: in a gesture of peace. What what fractured this discussion
Speaker 6: that was was going well. It also uh well, let
Speaker 6: me back up a little bit. The discussion between them
Speaker 6: included that Barney Wagner just wanted his son. He wanted
Speaker 6: Mark only he he didn't want Toby any longer. He
Speaker 6: wanted he He would be willing to accept that divorce request,
Speaker 6: but he just wanted his son. And obviously he couldn't
Speaker 6: take uh, take Mark away from from Toby. That wasn't
Speaker 6: gonna happen. Uh Toby, when it let it happen, Mark,
Speaker 6: when it let it, I mean, I'm Brocco, wouldn't let
Speaker 6: it happen. So the discussion was going along, and next
Speaker 6: thing you know, there's a knock on the window and
Speaker 6: it's uh, it's Freeman. And he basically his nickname was
Speaker 6: Punchy Punchy Freeman. He basically was Barney's arm strong arm.
Speaker 6: He was a boxer, he was he was an Irish tough.
Speaker 6: He worked for the Irish Gang and he was there
Speaker 6: basically to give Barney a little extra muscle in this
Speaker 6: situation with Roco Bolero, and he broke up the conversation.
Speaker 6: He actually suggested that they ended, and Barney agreed. He
Speaker 6: got out of the car and they left and there
Speaker 6: was a minor car chase. Brocco followed them. He wasn't
Speaker 6: gonna let it rest at that point, and ultimately Punchy
Speaker 6: lost control of his car on some roads and slammed
Speaker 6: into a snowbank, and Rocco took the opportunity to fire
Speaker 6: his weapon at the car. It didn't hint anybody the
Speaker 6: slogan embedded in the car seat in the front, but
Speaker 6: it set some new situations, set a situation in motion
Speaker 6: that Rocco has now fired as gun, and it escalated
Speaker 6: the altercation at that point, and that's when he decided
Speaker 6: to return to his apartment in Chelsea and gather some
Speaker 6: more people and weapons in return, return in search of Toby.
Speaker 6: He still hadn't seen her.
Speaker 5: So he has a plan to go and rescue her.
Speaker 5: He thinks that the mobsters are going to be holed
Speaker 5: up in the place because he has been at this
Speaker 5: place before. He goes back with his brothers. Is it
Speaker 5: Is it not a risky plan to go into a
Speaker 5: building that's dark. What tell us what his thought process
Speaker 5: was along with his partners.
Speaker 6: Well, they they were a little bit hot headed at
Speaker 6: the time, and he admitted that. He says he should
Speaker 6: have he should have thought it out more carefully. Running
Speaker 6: into that apartment again, he thought he was fac squaring
Speaker 6: off against three Irish gangsters, including vonniey Wagner. He'd he'd
Speaker 6: never fathomed that there would be police there, That just
Speaker 6: didn't even cross his mind. But he was just so
Speaker 6: in love with Toby that he was willing to risk
Speaker 6: life and limb to to rescue her, to get her
Speaker 6: out of that situation. He had told me, in hindsight,
Speaker 6: he wished he just never let her go to see him,
Speaker 6: uh and ask for that divorce. And his brother, his brother, Salvatore,
Speaker 6: was just loyal. I mean that the man was loyal
Speaker 6: to him. They were, they would They were inseparable, most
Speaker 6: of the Bolero brothers were. There were six of them,
Speaker 6: and these men were just inseparable. And they they'd run
Speaker 6: into a burning building or a building filled with potential
Speaker 6: assailants with guns to do what they had to do.
Speaker 6: And the third guy as well. It's just all about loyalty.
Speaker 6: Whether whether Rocco's decision to run into that apartment was
Speaker 6: the right or the wrong one, they were going with him.
Speaker 6: There was no tooth, there was no two ways about it.
Speaker 5: Was he not tell us of the conversation he has
Speaker 5: with her, the last couple conversations. What is it contained
Speaker 5: in what she says to him? Put this in perspective
Speaker 5: as well, what was he told by her?
Speaker 6: Well, she was what it turned out. The reason he
Speaker 6: thought she was in that apartment is because he actually
Speaker 6: called the apartment during his visit there. Earlier. He had
Speaker 6: acquired an address and phone number book when he was
Speaker 6: at restcon tending to Bernice, and so he took that
Speaker 6: phone book and when he was back in his apartment,
Speaker 6: he called and he actually first spoke with Mary Adams,
Speaker 6: who was upset. Mary Adams was Barney's sister, and she
Speaker 6: was upset that number one Rocco had broken into her apartment,
Speaker 6: never saying that she had left her children behind in
Speaker 6: the apartment, but also that she that Rocco had shot
Speaker 6: at her brother. She became aware of that, he has
Speaker 6: to speak to Toby. Meanwhile, the police are already there.
Speaker 6: They're standing there observing these conversations as they're taking place,
Speaker 6: and Toby takes the phone and her last words with
Speaker 6: Rocco basically she's telling him not to come to the apartment.
Speaker 6: They're waiting for you and what he took as they're
Speaker 6: waiting for you, wasn't. She never said the word police
Speaker 6: or cops. She just said they're waiting for you. And
Speaker 6: his first assumption was it was Barney and his men,
Speaker 6: and that's what That's what registered with him, and that's
Speaker 6: where the plan started taking ape once he heard that,
Speaker 6: And those are the last words they spoke.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about them escaping. We can talk about
Speaker 5: the car accident and separation, but let's fast forward to
Speaker 5: his decision once he realizes, well, pardon me, maybe i'm
Speaker 5: fast tracking. What happens with Toby and Mark. Their rushed
Speaker 5: to the hospital. They're in grave condition. What happens to them?
Speaker 6: The conjecture is that when Rocco left the apartment with
Speaker 6: his associates, they were running for a getaway car, they
Speaker 6: were actually being pursued because there were two more people
Speaker 6: further up the street, more police officers as it turned out,
Speaker 6: and they actually exchanged gunfire and those police officers once
Speaker 6: the Rock Owners' associates shot at them again, thinking they're
Speaker 6: friends of Barney Wagner's, they ran back to their car
Speaker 6: and a police chase ensued. Earlier, when Rocco was running
Speaker 6: on the sidewalk to get to his brother's car and
Speaker 6: get out of that area. He heard those shots in
Speaker 6: the apartment, more shooting after a pause, and the conjecture
Speaker 6: was that Toby and Mark and Mary Adams and her
Speaker 6: kids were hidden in the apartment. They were in the
Speaker 6: back of the apartment. It was kind of a rectangular building,
Speaker 6: and the police had pushed them into the back of
Speaker 6: the building and hit them in spare rooms. So the
Speaker 6: conjecture was that in the darkness, the police thought that
Speaker 6: Rocco and his associates were still there excuse me, and
Speaker 6: they reloaded their weapons and started firing again, and what
Speaker 6: they were doing was actually firing at each other. Rocco
Speaker 6: was long gone, and in the midst of this, during
Speaker 6: the lull in the shooting, that Toby had picked up
Speaker 6: Mark and made her way to the front of the apartment,
Speaker 6: thinking the shooting's over, here's a chance to get out,
Speaker 6: when in fact, as she reached the front of the
Speaker 6: apartment and the cops began firing again, that's when she
Speaker 6: was she took a bullet, and as well as Mark,
Speaker 6: both of them were hit. She was hitting the head,
Speaker 6: Mark was hitting this and the stomach, and they were
Speaker 6: both fatal wounds. As it turned out, so that you know,
Speaker 6: in the meantime Rocco's escaping, there's a car chase between
Speaker 6: him and the two police that were staked out further
Speaker 6: up the street. The Rocco's car he escapes. He jumps
Speaker 6: out of the car at an opportunity and escapes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 6: his brother in the third the third hand, crashed into
Speaker 6: a taxi cab and they're Eventually his brother escapes, the
Speaker 6: third hand is arrested, but eventually everybody. Roco and his
Speaker 6: brother Salvatore, they both turned themselves in to face the
Speaker 6: legal consequences. After a couple of days, they decided to
Speaker 6: turn themselves in.
Speaker 5: Now what happens as a result of that turning in?
Speaker 5: What does he find out about the things that he's
Speaker 5: charged with that he may not have known before, and
Speaker 5: then what is his decision afterwards?
Speaker 6: Well, Rocco decided as a result of this, he knew
Speaker 6: that he was going to be guilty before presumed innocent.
Speaker 6: He was guilty because of his association with the organization,
Speaker 6: because of what he did for a living, his history is.
Speaker 6: He just knew that it didn't matter whether he could
Speaker 6: find a way to come out of this innocent. It
Speaker 6: just wasn't gonna happen for him. He was going to
Speaker 6: be guilty anyway. He looked at it because of his association,
Speaker 6: But you know, still he didn't want to plead guilty
Speaker 6: to the crime. You you plead guilty to a first
Speaker 6: green murder, you're signing and sailing your death warrant. At
Speaker 6: the time, Boston actually had the death penalty for first
Speaker 6: screen murder was available. Over time, they overturned that, but
Speaker 6: it was still going to be a life in prison sentence.
Speaker 6: So he decided he wanted to fight the charges, do
Speaker 6: what he had to do to try to either reduce
Speaker 6: his sentence or or go free one or the other.
Speaker 6: He always admitted during our discussions whenever it came around
Speaker 6: to the fact that he stormed that apartment like he did,
Speaker 6: he always admitted that that was wrong. It was a crime.
Speaker 6: He understood that he should do time for that. He said,
Speaker 6: fifteen twenty years. It was a bid he could do
Speaker 6: without too much trouble. He was only twenty six. He'd
Speaker 6: be out in his forties. But then, unfortunately, one of
Speaker 6: the attorneys who happened to be his cousin came along
Speaker 6: and came up with a plan to get his brother
Speaker 6: in the third hand, get them released on an earlier sentence,
Speaker 6: a manslaughter charge, so they would do just ten years.
Speaker 6: But to make that work, Rocco had to agree to
Speaker 6: plead guilty to the first degree murder charge, which was
Speaker 6: a mistake. Every attorney I talked to while I was
Speaker 6: researching this book agreed that that was a huge mistake
Speaker 6: because it was basically admitting guilt when he was claiming
Speaker 6: that he wasn't he was innocent, and that triggered a
Speaker 6: very long prison term. And then as he went through
Speaker 6: his career, unfortunately, he was actually getting close to a
Speaker 6: potential parole in the eighties when he decided to walk
Speaker 6: away from a farm detail and more or less just
Speaker 6: escape from prison a third time, and that reset the clock.
Speaker 6: Once they got him back. That reset the clock in
Speaker 6: Rocco was a was in it for the long run.
Speaker 5: When did you get to speak to him? In what
Speaker 5: year and where was he residing at the time?
Speaker 6: It was I just turned I just turned fifty. It
Speaker 6: was twenty ten. I had researched for the book for
Speaker 6: about a year, gathering materials, doing interviews with people, So
Speaker 6: in twenty ten run around the time, like I said,
Speaker 6: I turned fifty, I decided it was time to try
Speaker 6: to meet him, so I sent them a letter requesting
Speaker 6: permission to come to the prison, and my first visit
Speaker 6: with him I described, and that started a long, two
Speaker 6: plush year string of visits. Twice a week, typically every
Speaker 6: Tuesday night I would go, and every Saturday morning I
Speaker 6: would go and spend a couple hours with Rocco. One
Speaker 6: of the difficulties I encountered was I really didn't have
Speaker 6: any connections with the prison folks. I tried. I made
Speaker 6: an effort, but they wouldn't allow me to bring anything
Speaker 6: into the prison such as a notebook or a pen
Speaker 6: or a tape recorder. Anything of that nature was not allowed,
Speaker 6: So all of our discussions over the two years were
Speaker 6: done by memory. What I would typically do is I'd
Speaker 6: sit and talk and I'd ask questions, and then I
Speaker 6: would race back to my car after the visit was
Speaker 6: over and scribble down as much as I could remember
Speaker 6: in a notebook. Eventually we had correspondents where I would
Speaker 6: write them a letter with a series of questions and
Speaker 6: he would he would write back with answers and detailed answers,
Speaker 6: and I have a stack of letters of this nature
Speaker 6: that we used to to gather the information I would
Speaker 6: need to write the book. There was a a on
Speaker 6: a side note, this is a story I like to
Speaker 6: tell my wife Mary. She at the time, she's she
Speaker 6: had a huge fear of prisons. She would watch those
Speaker 6: television shows on TV and and see some of the
Speaker 6: conditions inside prisons, and it would just make her wide eyed.
Speaker 6: And so as time went on, we actually got permission
Speaker 6: for Rocco to call me call at my home where
Speaker 6: he would have a ten or fifteen minute allowance, and
Speaker 6: he would call me and we'd have conversations. But a
Speaker 6: lot of times I was I was working nights at
Speaker 6: the time, and he never knew when I would be home.
Speaker 6: It was tough to s He couldn't schedule the calls.
Speaker 6: It was kind of a random thing. And he would call.
Speaker 6: My wife would answer, and they they He befriended her,
Speaker 6: They became very close friends. She would send him greeting cards,
Speaker 6: uh sending sending materials to the prison magazines, whatever it
Speaker 6: may be. And uh So one Saturday morning, I was
Speaker 6: getting ready to go for my weekly visit, and she
Speaker 6: looked at me, and she said I'm going with you,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, I'm going to the prison. She suggest
Speaker 6: I know, I want to meet him, and she came
Speaker 6: and it was difficult for her, but she processed through
Speaker 6: and met Rocco Ballero and they became the best of friends,
Speaker 6: and she was the one that was holding his hand
Speaker 6: bedside when he passed away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you were asked to speak at his eulogy as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah. The family approached me and they asked me. Over
Speaker 6: the course of time. Once I got to know Rocco
Speaker 6: very well, he actually introduced me to a lot of
Speaker 6: his family members, particularly his brother, older brother Billy, who
Speaker 6: was also part of the organization. I met him at
Speaker 6: his club and we became very close to the point
Speaker 6: where once a month he and his wife and myself
Speaker 6: and my wife would go out and have dinners and
Speaker 6: he would give me so it was great. He had
Speaker 6: so much information to share with me and he was
Speaker 6: willing to do that, and he actually during the course
Speaker 6: of this this research, he actually introduced me. We had
Speaker 6: dinner with at the time the head of Lakoss for
Speaker 6: the head of the mafia in New England, a gentleman
Speaker 6: named Peter Lamont. And that was pretty exciting. A lot
Speaker 6: of people would would kind of look at that sideways
Speaker 6: and say, you're sitting down at the table with the
Speaker 6: head of the mafia, how can you enjoy that? And
Speaker 6: believe me, it was. It was very exciting, very uh.
Speaker 6: I appreciated the allot the ability to meet this man,
Speaker 6: and he too, he had spent time with Rocah and prison.
Speaker 6: He too was able to share some snippets that that
Speaker 6: reached the book with his permission.
Speaker 5: You include a story about Rocco on the run with
Speaker 5: his brother and where do they stop? Where does he
Speaker 5: want to stop by before he knowing that she's passed away,
Speaker 5: Where does he want to stop with his brother?
Speaker 6: Well, the key stop that he wanted to make before
Speaker 6: he left the city and went on the run was
Speaker 6: the cemetery where Toby was buried in a little town
Speaker 6: on the north shore of Boston called Everett. And he
Speaker 6: described the shirt actually repeatedly. I believe he told me
Speaker 6: three or four times he had a shirt that Toby
Speaker 6: had bought him. It was a white shirt with some
Speaker 6: thin pin stripes. As a matter of fact, if you
Speaker 6: the cover of the book where soon after he was
Speaker 6: apprehended by the police. The shirt that he's the shirt
Speaker 6: that he's wearing in that photo is an identical shirt
Speaker 6: to the one he had the night he went to
Speaker 6: the cemetery. He went up and he managed to get
Speaker 6: another shirt just like it because he loved it so much.
Speaker 6: But the one that Toby had given him he was
Speaker 6: wearing the night at the cemetery, and he decided to
Speaker 6: scratch a little bit of the soil on her grave site.
Speaker 6: After he and his brother found the gravesite, they searched
Speaker 6: the cemetery in the darkness, and they found it. He
Speaker 6: scratched the surface of the soil and took the shirt
Speaker 6: off and buried it with her. And he once told
Speaker 6: me during our conversations, he said, if you don't believe
Speaker 6: me about the shirt, he says, go there, he said,
Speaker 6: dig a little hole and you'll find probably shards of
Speaker 6: the shirt or buttons or something of that nature. And
Speaker 6: I basically said, no, recall, I'll take your word that
Speaker 6: the shirt's there. I'm not kind of go and dig
Speaker 6: a hole on my aunt's grave. So little little side
Speaker 6: note on that.
Speaker 5: What we didn't talk about the media's response to this,
Speaker 5: and also you include it at the same time, there
Speaker 5: was the Boston Strangler running around killing people. So the police,
Speaker 5: who you mentioned is the most inept police force of
Speaker 5: the era. Tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 5: police response and their criticism of the police in this case.
Speaker 6: Well, the media did criticize them quite heavily. Actually, it
Speaker 6: wasn't just the Boston area, it was nationwide. I managed
Speaker 6: to find newspapers and far flung places like Chicago in
Speaker 6: California that carried the story about the night of the shootings.
Speaker 6: And obviously the police were given a pretty hard time,
Speaker 6: including the three officers involved. It wasn't a sanctioned stakeout.
Speaker 6: They did it on their own. They managed to get
Speaker 6: word that Rocco was in the area and might come
Speaker 6: to this house, and did this on their own. They
Speaker 6: didn't grant and get permission for it. A little bit
Speaker 6: of a renegade operation, so to speak. So they took
Speaker 6: a lot of flak and at the time the police
Speaker 6: was getting the Boston Police Department was getting a pretty
Speaker 6: serious beat down by the media and for their failure
Speaker 6: to apprehend the Boston Strangler. When the shootings took place,
Speaker 6: the strangler was about halfway through his run of murders
Speaker 6: and the police didn't have a shred of evidence. The
Speaker 6: word and net I actually borrowed that word because when
Speaker 6: the movie came out about the Boston Strangler with Tony
Speaker 6: Curtis as a star, the movie posters actually used the
Speaker 6: word and that police force, and I thought it was
Speaker 6: the best word to describe the operations of the Boston
Speaker 6: police at the time. They actually never caught the Boston strangle.
Speaker 6: He was captured by a suburban police department, and so
Speaker 6: they couldn't take credit for his capture. But there the
Speaker 6: media approach to them was exactly that, how could you
Speaker 6: let something like this happen where an innocent twenty one
Speaker 6: year old woman and her two year old son killed
Speaker 6: in the midst of a city that's just totally up
Speaker 6: in arms over the inability of these police officers to
Speaker 6: capture this individual. It was just a bad time for
Speaker 6: the Boston police. A lot of bad press.
Speaker 5: Was the criticism of them luring because they knew what
Speaker 5: likely what Rocco would do or could do. And the
Speaker 5: other thought, a thing I thought was odd was that
Speaker 5: when you talk about the officers placing the people in
Speaker 5: separate rooms, there was two groups of people in two
Speaker 5: several rooms and did you talk about an officer of Kalnan.
Speaker 5: I believe that was in the room with them, is it.
Speaker 5: It wasn't totally clear. I don't know if it was
Speaker 5: clear to me if the police reasoning for how they
Speaker 5: got shot was any anyhow corroborated or proven.
Speaker 6: Basically, the luring just was a coincidence. They they struck
Speaker 6: upon an opportunity to capture, to apprehend Rocco Ballero. He
Speaker 6: was he was a prize, so they just they found
Speaker 6: out about the fact that he was potentially coming to
Speaker 6: this house, and they cashed in on the opportunity. The
Speaker 6: vision to keep them in the house was basically keep
Speaker 6: the women and children in the house was a really
Speaker 6: that was just a terrible mistake. But considering the hour,
Speaker 6: I can kind of climb into their heads and see
Speaker 6: where they were thinking. Although I don't agree with it.
Speaker 6: It's one in the morning, it's February in Boston, it's
Speaker 6: freezing cold outside, and you're talking two women and five children.
Speaker 6: Where do you put them? So they made the decision
Speaker 6: to keep them in the apartment, knowing all well that
Speaker 6: they they could be there could be violence taking place
Speaker 6: there at any time. So that was a pretty bad
Speaker 6: mistake on their part. Callan was in the room with him,
Speaker 6: but he did move up to the kitchen during the
Speaker 6: gunfight and engaged at the time, So all three cops
Speaker 6: were involved in it. What they did after the fact
Speaker 6: was Mary Adams, the owner of the apartment. She was
Speaker 6: twenty one as well with three kids, and they kept
Speaker 6: in custody for several months and they worked on her.
Speaker 6: They she they had some weapons, they had some ammunition,
Speaker 6: so to speak. Her husband was was also a criminal.
Speaker 6: He was one of the three men that was with Barney.
Speaker 6: His name was Bob Adams, and so they used the
Speaker 6: fact that there were charges pending against him to work
Speaker 6: with her to basically make her a witness. And in
Speaker 6: the newspapers she actually came out and claimed that she
Speaker 6: saw Rocco walk up to Toby and shoot her point
Speaker 6: blank in the head, and then he also fired it
Speaker 6: at Mark. But the attorneys, the attorneys basically made her
Speaker 6: look kind of I guess you could say they made
Speaker 6: her look kind of silly. In the courtroom, one of
Speaker 6: the questions was if the police couldn't see who they
Speaker 6: were shooting at, how could you see Rocco Bolero shoot
Speaker 6: these two victims, and her testimony fell apart as a result.
Speaker 6: But they tried, they tried some different things to make
Speaker 6: that case, but the case was really already made because
Speaker 6: Rocco Bolero was a gangster. He was part of an
Speaker 6: organization that committed crime. There was no question about that.
Speaker 6: And as I said before, he was guilty before even
Speaker 6: stepped inside of the courtroom.
Speaker 5: His character, and you demonstrate that through this book and
Speaker 5: illustrate it through all these stories like with the fur truck.
Speaker 5: His motto was that if he were to be arrested,
Speaker 5: his cohort was going to be arrested, he would go.
Speaker 5: He would not abandon that person. So in the case
Speaker 5: of this plea agreement to plead guilty to first degree
Speaker 5: murder so that these people will get a reduced, far
Speaker 5: reduced sentence of manslaughter. Did the authorities use that good natured,
Speaker 5: that sense of loyalty and duty in this case wrongfully?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 5: But is that what went on here?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I means the loyalty is obvious in the organization,
Speaker 6: especially back in those times, the loyalty to a fault.
Speaker 6: They they stuck with each other. They did whatever had
Speaker 6: to be done, whether it was potentially hazardous, to their
Speaker 6: health or or something of that nature. They whatever had
Speaker 6: to be done, they did it, even though they may
Speaker 6: have thought it was the wrong thing to do. And
Speaker 6: Rocco call it, call it a hap hazard approach to life.
Speaker 6: But he's in his early twenties and even today. I mean,
Speaker 6: you talk about kids at that age, they think they're invincible.
Speaker 6: And Rocco had kind of a mentality that he was invincible.
Speaker 6: And as he went about some of these things that
Speaker 6: nothing could happen to him. He was going to be okay,
Speaker 6: he was going to come out of it okay. But
Speaker 6: I come back to the word loyalty, the sacrifices they
Speaker 6: made for each other. It was just he didn't see
Speaker 6: that in other places. You didn't. You didn't. Uh, you
Speaker 6: don't get that kind of loyalty in a lot of
Speaker 6: organizations and uh, even families. Rocco was upset. Actually, we
Speaker 6: talked to him about his brother who was in in
Speaker 6: on the shootings with him, and he was really upset
Speaker 6: that he had made that sacrifice, that he had pled
Speaker 6: guilty to first screen murder to give his brother an
Speaker 6: opportunity to get out of prison sooner. And the reason
Speaker 6: was that his brother had a young, young child. His
Speaker 6: wife had just had a baby right around the same
Speaker 6: time that he They ended up in jail, and so
Speaker 6: Rocco was upset that his brother didn't use the time
Speaker 6: to his benefit and to his family's benefit. He went
Speaker 6: back into the life. Uh, he got caught up in
Speaker 6: drugs and drinking again, and and just uh he died
Speaker 6: young as a result. And that really that bothered Rocco,
Speaker 6: that that he you know, he he did this for
Speaker 6: his brother, and his brother didn't reciprocate with uh doing
Speaker 6: the right thing.
Speaker 5: He spoke of, and I mean it's you see it
Speaker 5: in the movies where they talk about just being a
Speaker 5: regular stiff leaving leaving this life behind, seeming that he
Speaker 5: could do it. Did he contemplate that? Did he talk
Speaker 5: about that? Did they talk about that? Him and Toby?
Speaker 6: He did actually with facing a potential that having a
Speaker 6: kind of a ready made family in Toby and the
Speaker 6: two kids. Uh, he did, he did consider it. There
Speaker 6: were a couple of times he mentioned that he might
Speaker 6: just become a working stiff, you know, get on the
Speaker 6: get on the nine to five train and do the
Speaker 6: right thing. But he craved the excitement. He uh, the
Speaker 6: some of the criminal escapades that he took part in
Speaker 6: were were We're pretty exciting a lot of them. A
Speaker 6: lot of these guys that were doing this. It wasn't
Speaker 6: so much for the money. It was for the craving,
Speaker 6: the craving, the excitement, craving the life. And that's what
Speaker 6: he was going to have to separate from. He was
Speaker 6: going to have to find the means to to to
Speaker 6: and roy his life outside the criminal world. And that
Speaker 6: was a task. That was a tough task. When he
Speaker 6: when he would explain some of his some of his
Speaker 6: crimes to me and we'd kind of go over them, Uh,
Speaker 6: he got very animated. It was it was something like
Speaker 6: kind of a I used to compare it to an
Speaker 6: athletic endeavor, where an athlete would do something really exciting
Speaker 6: and succeed at his sport or and Rocca was the
Speaker 6: same way. He found a lot of success in some
Speaker 6: of his crimes.
Speaker 5: You talk about being animated, and you spoke to him
Speaker 5: at length. How animated was he when he spoke about
Speaker 5: your aunt and Mark especially and Bernice. But those times,
Speaker 5: how animated he.
Speaker 6: Would he would explain how much he loved my aunt.
Speaker 6: Every time he would come across a situation where her
Speaker 6: name would come up, he would he would get kind
Speaker 6: of upset a little bit that people just didn't believe
Speaker 6: that he loved my aunt, Toby and Mark. They were
Speaker 6: his family. He called them his family. In fact, during
Speaker 6: the discussions to with his attorney his cousin about, you know,
Speaker 6: pleading guilty to first Green murder so that his brother
Speaker 6: could go free earlier, his cousin actually used the term
Speaker 6: your family is gone. Your family's no longer here, so
Speaker 6: you really don't have a family, unlike your brother, he
Speaker 6: has a family. You know, your family's gone. Do this
Speaker 6: for his family. Rocco would would basically say, I loved Yourn.
Speaker 6: And funny thing is, every time I met one of
Speaker 6: his relatives. As Rocco would introduce me to some of
Speaker 6: his relatives and I would I would go to meet
Speaker 6: them and have discussions with him, they would say the
Speaker 6: same thing to a person you know. They would say, Dan,
Speaker 6: you know her, your brocle loved Giron, He had daugh her,
Speaker 6: he worshiped her, and it was believable. He actually told
Speaker 6: the police as he was being taken from one precinct
Speaker 6: to another and a cruiser, he actually asked the police
Speaker 6: if he could visit where her body rested and say
Speaker 6: his goodbyes, and they basically blew him off on that.
Speaker 6: But those are the kind of feelings he had. For obviously,
Speaker 6: as time went on during his life, he didn't meet
Speaker 6: other women. He married a woman while he was in prison,
Speaker 6: and then when he was when he escaped and fled
Speaker 6: to San Francisco, he met a woman there and they
Speaker 6: eventually got married. But it was always about Toby. It
Speaker 6: always circled back to her.
Speaker 5: What is this I mean? I guess it's I guess
Speaker 5: we do know from this interview, what does this book
Speaker 5: mean to you? Now that it's published and it's out
Speaker 5: there and people can read it. Was that meant to you?
Speaker 5: And as any anybody reacted to it that's been close
Speaker 5: to the story?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I do have some issues with some family members
Speaker 6: on both sides their minor and they're easy to to
Speaker 6: deal with from from where I stand. The whole purpose
Speaker 6: of the book when I first started out to write
Speaker 6: it again at at the time, it was to write
Speaker 6: the story about cold blooded murder of Rocco Ballero, and
Speaker 6: that was my family's benefit. But then it turned it
Speaker 6: became something altogether different, and it became telling the Rocco
Speaker 6: Blero story about a man who was wrongly accused of
Speaker 6: a double murder and spent the rest of his life
Speaker 6: in prison and died there. Just I wanted to tell
Speaker 6: that story to show how unfair it was. And I
Speaker 6: sacrificed a few things along the way, but again minor things,
Speaker 6: people who disagreed with some of my some of my beliefs,
Speaker 6: and some of my philosophies about the whole thing. I
Speaker 6: did turn some people, which I found great success in
Speaker 6: that with with relatives that had originally had different thoughts,
Speaker 6: and once they had an opportunity to read the book
Speaker 6: and listen to what I had to say, they they
Speaker 6: they were on board. Others know, others who are a
Speaker 6: little more stubborn about the approach, and they stuck with
Speaker 6: their they stuck with their beliefs that that he wasn't
Speaker 6: as quite quite as innocent as I claim he was.
Speaker 6: But for his sake, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, sorry, go ahead, for his sake.
Speaker 6: You know, it's obvious during the course of this interview
Speaker 6: you've heard me say a lot of things about Rocco Ballero,
Speaker 6: and it's obvious that I became a very close friend
Speaker 6: of his, My wife and I we we were involved
Speaker 6: in his eulogy, we were involved in we were there
Speaker 6: when he passed away, and we've become very close friends
Speaker 6: with his remaining family member us. It's obvious that I
Speaker 6: wrote this book because I wanted to make a friend,
Speaker 6: show his innocence, show the fact that his life was
Speaker 6: wasted as a result of some mistakes he made, but
Speaker 6: certainly not because of the crimes or the alleged crimes.
Speaker 5: Well, you've certainly set the record straight with this. I
Speaker 5: want to congratulate you on Shots in the Dark the
Speaker 5: sag of Rocco Ballero. Thank you very much, Daniel Zimmerman.
Speaker 5: This is a Wild Blue Press release. Do you have
Speaker 5: a Facebook page, website tell us how they might find
Speaker 5: out more about your work or this one.
Speaker 6: The web page is still in development. I don't have
Speaker 6: a Facebook site yet, but if prospective readers want to
Speaker 6: take a look at this book, they can find it
Speaker 6: on Amazon under obviously shots in the Dark, or they
Speaker 6: can Amazon my name Daniel Zimmerman, and it typically comes
Speaker 6: up as the first hit.
Speaker 5: Yes, and also a Wild Blue Press as well.
Speaker 6: And Wild Blue Press exactly.
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm gonna thank you very much Daniel Zimmerman, it's
Speaker 5: been a pleasure. Shots in the dark, the sag of
Speaker 5: Rocco Ballero. Thank you very much, Daniel, you have a
Speaker 5: great evening you too, Thank you, good night.