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Posted by: kwflatbed

Saturday, April 12, 2008


By W. Zachary Malinowski

Journal Staff Writer


Frank L. “Bobo” Marrapese Jr., above, was a major player in the mob, according to state police officials, before being imprisoned. Top, arrest photos from 1972.

> COURTESY ACI


Bobo.

The mere mention of the mobster’s nickname once conjured up images of hijackings, cracked skulls, bloodshed and bodies stuffed into the trunks of Cadillacs. Many didn’t even know that his real name was Frank L. Marrapese Jr., but everyone in the New England underworld and beyond knew about Bobo and his fearsome reputation.
“Just the word, ‘Bobo,’ would instill fear,” said retired state police Capt. Brian Andrews, former commander of the detective division and intelligence unit. “He was a major player as far as we were concerned, and he was into everything.”
On Wednesday, Marrapese, now 65, will leave prison free of handcuffs and leg shackles for the first time in 25 years. The convicted killer will spend the morning getting processed and fitted for an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle. Around midday, he will leave the Pinel Building, on the grounds of the Adult Correctional Institutions prison complex in Cranston, and rejoin society.
State police Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell, a longtime mob investigator, is well aware of Marrapese’s return.
“Hopefully, he’s seen the error of his ways and he will lead a productive life,” he said.
But O’Donnell, as well as federal and local law-enforcement officials, plan to keep a watchful eye on him after he moves back to his home at 104 Elwyn St., in Cranston, and at his job at Anthony’s Restaurant on Killingly Street, in Johnston.
They want to be sure he doesn’t return to his old ways and reunite with mob pals, such as Billy “Blackjack” DelSanto and Albert “Chippy” Scivola Jr., former felons who continue to spend time on Federal Hill.
Marrapese and DelSanto grew up on America Street in Providence and ran the narrow streets and alleys off Atwells Avenue.
According to the terms of his parole, Marrapese cannot associate with DelSanto, Scivola or other known felons without the consent of his parole officer. He will be required to wear the electronic bracelet for at least a year and will remain on parole for the rest of his life, said Tracy Z. Poole, ACI spokeswoman.
In the ’60s and ’70s, during the heyday of the Patriarca crime family, Marrapese was a one-man crime wave. His name constantly appeared on the Providence police blotter for charges that included threatening to kill his in-laws, possession of a machine gun, bank robbery and beating a man in the Peter Pan Diner on Elmwood Avenue.
More times than not, witnesses or victims had memory problems or recanted their testimony and the charges were dropped.
In March 1969, just a few weeks before his 26th birthday, Marrapese spent the night in the ACI on a robbery charge. It marked the first of thousands of nights that the mobster would spend behind the walls of state and federal prisons.
Over the years, Marrapese’s various releases from prison were punctuated by increasingly brutal acts of violence. In the ’70s, he ran the Acorn Social Club, just off Atwells Avenue in the heart of Federal Hill. The club, which was basically a barroom, was a key meeting spot for Marrapese and other mobsters from across New England.
On March 15, 1975, mobster Richard A. “Dickie” Callei spent the last hours of his life at the bar in the social club. His bullet-ridden body was discovered later that day near a golf course in Rehoboth. The murder remained unsolved for almost a decade.
Marrapese was a prime suspect, but the investigation didn’t seem to faze him. He continued to be a top earner and rising star in the Patriarca crime family.
THE EARLY ’80s marked the demise of Marrapese’s career as a vicious kingpin on Federal Hill.
In October 1981, Marrapese and Scivola were arrested for receiving and possessing a truckload of La-Z-Boy lounge chairs. The authorities said that a trailer carrying 109 loungers worth $21,000 was stolen from a truck terminal in Alexandria, Va. The chairs were en route from Tennessee to three stores in Connecticut. The thieves brought the hot chairs to Providence, where they sold them for $5,000 to Marrapese and Scivola. The government seized two of the recliners from the homes of the mobsters.
Marrapese was charged with two murders –– the 1982 gangland slaying of Anthony “The Moron” Mirabella at Fidas Restaurant on Valley Street and the baseball-bat beating of Ronald McElroy, of East Providence.
The McElroy murder might have been the birth of road rage in Rhode Island.
Shortly after midnight on Aug. 23, 1982, McElroy, 20, was driving a Volkswagen and inadvertently cut in front of Marrapese’s Ford Mustang. Marrapese was drag racing down Broadway against fellow mobster William “Billy” Ferle in his red pickup truck.
The two mobsters chased McElroy, confronting him with baseball bats in the parking lot of a gas station on Westminster Street.
The prosecution contended that Marrapese leveled the swing that killed McElroy. The defense argued that it was Ferle, not Marrapese.
While facing the murder charges, Marrapese was accused of threatening to kill a government informant.
He was recorded telling the informant’s brother that if he got his hands on the turncoat, he would “chop him up and cook him and eat him and whatever … ”
BY 1984, Marrapese was indicted for the 1975 murder of Callei.
He was also under indictment, with Edward F. “Buckles” Melise, former Providence highway superintendent, for stealing asphalt from the city and using it to pave driveways and parking lots.
Marrapese, in a secretly recorded conversation that was played in court, knew his world was crumbling.
“How do you think I feel?” he said on the tape. “I got three houses, five businesses, five kids, two girlfriends and a wife, and now I’m right there. I’m almost at the top, where I’m set for life.”
Marrapese, a squat, beefy man at 5 feet, 8 inches tall and more than 200 pounds, spent the better part of the decade in trials in federal and state courts. As he sat at the defense table, his dark, thinning hair was neatly combed back, and he wore black, thick-framed glasses similar to those favored by Clark Kent in Superman.
He beat the Mirabella and McElroy murder charges, but prosecutors nailed him in the La-Z-Boy theft, which kept him in prison while he faced trial in the Callei murder.
Two of Marrapese’s mob underlings, Frank Martellucci and Ferle, who participated in the murder, cooperated with the state and testified against their former boss. They took the stand and said that Marrapese shot Callei five times in the back at the Acorn Social Club.
“Bang, bang, bang, bang. There were five or six shots and Callei fell to the floor shaking,” Ferle testified. “I picked up the stool. I was going to hit him [Callei] with it. Bobo said, ‘No, I’ll have enough of a mess to clean up around here.’  ”
Martellucci testified that they stuffed Callei’s body into the trunk of a burgundy Cadillac, and, for good measure, Marrapese buried a large knife into the mobster’s chest. They drove to Rehoboth and buried the body in a 5-foot-deep hole near the Pine Valley Golf Course.
Martellucci, a golfer, said he could see one of the greens from the road leading to where the body was buried.
“I could see the fourth hole, which was a par five, from the gravesite,” he testified.
AT HIS SENTENCING, a state prosecutor said that Marrapese had a “depraved heart.”
In September 1987, Marrapese was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. At the time, he was serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison for the stolen La-Z-Boys. He bounced around federal prisons in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Missouri. In February 1997, he was returned to Rhode Island to serve out his term for Callei’s murder. He had gained about 50 pounds, was pretty much bald and what little hair remained had turned snow white.
Marrapese, who worked at the ACI as a porter, emptying trash and performing other menial tasks, was hardly a model inmate. Prison records show that he was disciplined 35 times between October 1997 and December 2005 for infractions such as refusing to obey orders, refusing to work and violating security procedures. He spent time in high security and segregation, otherwise known as the hole.
The only time he left the prison grounds was for medical appointments and, in July 2006, he was escorted in handcuffs and leg shackles to a funeral home in Cranston for the private viewing of the body of his father, Frank L. Marrapese.
Prison officials made two additional trips to the funeral home — taking Marrapese’s son and another relative who were also ACI inmates. For security reasons, each of them had to be brought separately.
The building housing the Acorn Social Club was razed a few weeks ago, and there’s talk that an upscale restaurant or a trendy coffee shop might replace the former gangland hangout.
A few years ago, state police detectives were summoned to the prison’s maximum-security unit to investigate the murder of an inmate. A detective stopped by Marrapese’s cell, which was close to the murder scene. He figured maybe the mobster saw or knew something.
“Don’t even [expletive] bother,” said Marrapese before a question was posed.
“Thanks, Bobo,” the detective said.
“It’s Frank,” Marrapese shot back.
THREE MURDERS
Frank L. “Bobo” Marrapese Jr. was charged with three murders and convicted of one:
March 15, 1975: Richard A. “Dickie” Callei is shot five times in the back at the Acorn Social Club on Federal Hill and buried in Rehoboth. Marrapese was charged in 1983, convicted in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison.
May 15, 1982: Anthony “The Moron” Mirabella is fatally shot in Fidas Restaurant on Valley Street in Providence. His body is found 11 months later buried near the Pawtuxet River in Warwick. In 1984, a jury acquits Marrapese and two others of murder.
Aug. 23, 1982: Ronald McElroy, 20, of East Providence, is beaten to death with a baseball bat after he inadvertently cuts off Marrapese and a mob associate as they were drag-racing on Broadway in Providence. Marrapese was charged in 1984 and acquitted in 1988.

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