Big Dig Contractor Murdered By David Caruso Lookalike

When concrete company president and Big Dig contractor Michael Zammitti was murdered in Wakefield, Mass. in March 2006, many assumed it was a mob hit. The Big Dig, once the largest construction project on planet Earth, was notoriously corrupt. Plus there was that Italian connection. Plus yet again, there was the sheer cold-bloodedness of the murder, which also took the life of a witness, Zammitti's part-time employee, Chester Roberts, who was shot in the back while apparently attempting to escape.

Further investigation revealed that the Mafia was not involved at all. The murder instead demonstrated one of the unexpected hazards of owning a vacation home. Michael Zammitti and his family had a sumptuous getaway in Freedom, New Hampshire, near the shores of Ossipee Lake. One of his neighbors was the affable handyman, Sean Fitzpatrick. The whole family got to know him during those leisurely summer days, the Zammitti kids even calling him "Uncle Sean". Zammitti's wife liked him, too. Fitzpatrick, who by all accounts considered himself quite the swordsman, befriended Mrs. Zammitti and eventually romanced the lady. If Fitzpatrick had remained the detached Don Juan, the romance would have run its course and nobody would have been the wiser. But the fool fell in love. When Mrs. Zammitti refused to leave her husband, Fitzpatrick behaved almost exactly like a woman scorned. Or at least like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. He drove 100 miles down to Wakefield with a 16-gauge shotgun, entered Zammitti's place of business and shot him in the head while he sat at his desk. Poor Chester Roberts was mere collateral damage.

Fitzpatrick's trial made national news, as love-triangle-related murders occasionally do (re: the Oxygen channel's Snapped). Fitzpatrick got life, twice over. Here's an object lesson for all you would-be alpha males out there. If you can't keep it in your pants, at least keep your heart buttoned up.

(Odd factoid: One of the witnesses for the prosecution was a retired political cartoonist.)

N.H. man convicted of murder in Wakefield love triangle case (Boston Globe)
Guilty Verdict in Massachusetts Double Homicide Trial (Boston Criminal Attorney Blog)
Trial To Begin in Love Triangle Double Murder (ABC News)
Family Business (MSNBC)
Neighbor recalls conversation with murder suspect (The Conway Daily Sun)

I Was A Teenaged Courtroom Monitor

Back when I was in college, I spent my winter break as a courtroom monitor for the American Friends Service Committee. This was when I wanted to become a lawyer, before I realized I was too much of a Silent Bob type ever to banter with the best of them in a law school class like those dudes in Paper Chase. A guy I knew from the Debate Club (where my silence was most conspicuous) and I signed up to monitor courtrooms for the Quakers to make sure that no legal rights were being violated. This was not to say we would have recognized such violations if we saw them. The American Friends dude who handled us – a glib, bespectacled and scruffy little guy who reminded me of the seventies-era comedian Buck Henry, and who was clearly Jewish, not a Quaker – just told us to keep notes. He would review the notes later, he assured us, and he would know if anything went wrong.

So my buddy and I did our little tour of Greater Boston courtrooms over the next few weeks. He drove. I paid for lunch. We came from the same hometown. As a matter of fact, he was my sister’s arch enemy back in high school, due to his playfully sarcastic demeanor. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed hanging out with my sister’s arch enemy.

I remember only four courtrooms. There was one in Somerville, just off McGrath Highway, which had a red brick façade with plain white columns like a pretentious funeral home or one of those forbiddingly formal restaurants that do most of their business as function rooms for wedding receptions and whatnot. The likeness fit, as appearing in court seemed just about as momentous as getting married or dying. It was even a rite of passage for some of us. The judge there was some old Irish dude whose eyes seemed to twinkle as the bailiff went, “Oyez! Oyez!” Of the few cases on the docket that morning, more than half were no-shows.

Then there was the wood-paneled courtroom in Brookline, with its short-haired lady judge. The courtroom was nearly as well-accoutered as a law office, and the cases discussed therein were just about as dull. Civil stuff, mostly. Rich guys quibbling over easements and an angry divorcee who apparently wanted to divorce herself from her own divorce lawyer. You get the picture.

The courtrooms in Boston were much grittier and more indelible. The downtown Boston courtroom had the light-colored interior of a colonial church and its docket veritably twitched with an assortment of hookers and other losers. The judge was a youngish guy who resembled Kelsey Grammer, except with gold-framed glasses and without the tooty-fruity baritone. The most memorable case that day was a probable cause hearing for a murder trial. A black inner-city dude was accused of shooting some white guy when the two crossed paths in a Boston park. The black dude claimed self-defense, even though the white dude had not been armed. He claimed, in fact, that the white dude had attacked him with his bare hands, and the black dude had no choice but to shoot him. In retrospect, this was not so long past the Boston busing crisis when black people were persona non grata in certain parts of the city, so maybe the black dude’s case would've had some merit had the white dude not been just some guy in an overcoat on his way home from work.

The freakiest courtroom of all was the one in South Boston. This supposed palace of justice was a dimly lit, puke-green-painted attic on the top floor of a hundred-year-old building on Broadway, and the case du jour was another probable cause hearing. A dapper-looking dark-haired guy – as natty as a mid-century London spiv with his blond wife sitting next to him - had allegedly murdered his boyfriend, a transvestite with undescended testicles. I did not make that up. That detail actually was mentioned, although pursuant to what I do not know.

I was not impressed with the sausage machine of the legal process during those few dreary weeks. When it was not boring, it was depressing, and when it was not depressing, it was simply inaudible. The professionalism of the attorneys and the judges was a subtle and persistent thing, like a squirrel gnawing on an acorn. Being in a courtroom ultimately reminded me of being in a hospital. In both places there is always something dramatic happening for somebody, but watching that drama unfold was, at least for this disinterested observer, like watching a tree grow.

The Case Of The Meth-Addled Spine Surgeon

Fast on the heels of Dr. Richard Sharpe comes the equally strange case of Dr. David Arndt. Although Dr. Arndt has not yet murdered anyone, he may be even scarier than Dr. Sharpe. For one thing, he is (or was) a surgeon - a profession bound to bring out the willies in the best of us. Think of the Jeremy Irons character (or characters, actually, since they were twins) in Dead Ringers. Ee-uuuwww... Not to mention all those horrifying healers of B movie infamy, always re-attaching severed heads to the wrong bodies or keeping them alive all by their lonesome. Frankenstein, too, don't forget. Ditto The Reanimators.

In the summer of 2002, Dr. Arndt made news by skipping out on a patient in the middle of an operation - a spine operation, mind you - to cash a check. He returned 35 minutes later, and eventually finished the operation, but the damage to both the patient and his reputation had been done. He was quickly suspended from Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. Shortly afterward, his medical license was suspended and the tale of his surgical siesta went viral. Law suits followed. To be fair, spine operations can often take 8 to 10 hours to perform, even as long as 18 hours in some cases. Such work must require incredible stamina, both mental and physical, but surely there are limits. Surgeons are known to excuse themselves to go to the bathroom, for instance - and no one gets upset about that. To cash a check though... That almost makes the dude seem like a caricature of the greedy medico.

And that's not all. Less than a month after the check-cashing incident, Arndt was charged "with four counts of statutory child rape and one count each of indecent assault and battery, drugging a person for sexual intercourse, contributing to the delinquency of a child, and possession of the drugs ketamine hydrochloride ('Special K') and methamphetamine." It turns out he had picked up a couple of teenaged boys - aged 14 and 15 - in Cambridge's Central Square and held a kind of drugs-and-sex party in his car. He later gave the kids his cell phone number, which gave the coppers the tool they needed to entrap the perv.

And that's not all either. A year later, Arndt "was arrested on August 8 [2003] and charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute." Apparently, he had rented a room in a South End hotel and had ordered a package sent to him there under the alias "Frank Castro" via Federal Express. Unfortunately for him, the postal authorities found the package "suspicious" and obtained a warrant to open it. It contained "a large, pink penis-shaped pinata" which itself contained two pounds of meth.

As the Boston Globe says, these are stressful times for physicans, they often feel compelled to work way too hard, often turning to drugs and alcohol as a result, even - in many cases - using drugs like meth (or "speed") to help them work all those long hours. Dr. Arndt just had the misfortune of derailing himself far more luridly than the average addict with an M.D.

One thing Arndt had in common with Dr. Sharpe was an unconventional and rather flamboyant sexuality. While Dr. Sharpe was a cross-dresser, Dr. Arndt was a clearly out-of-control homosexual. In addition to picking up underaged boys for sex, he had also made unwelcome passes at male orderlies and nurses, and had even committed assault on one of his boyfriends. Had he been heterosexual, his behavior could have been equally bad, but it would not have contributed quite as much to his notoriety.

Dr. Arndt definitely falls in that category of Boston area bad guys whose criminality represents the flip side of brilliance. The son of a prominent Harvard Medical School professor and extremely bright in his own right, Arndt was almost hard-wired to follow a medical career. In fact, he came to medicine relatively late and via a winding path. Born in 1960, he graduated high school during the still hippy-dippy 1970's and made his way west to San Francisco, where he attended a now-defunct "alternative college", counseled the homeless and discovered his sexuality. Eventually his medical destiny drew him back to Boston, but not after he had evolved into a full-blown non-conformist. This extreme non-conformity, coupled with his intellectual arrogance, made a serious conflict with society's norms almost inevitable.

As of February 2010, Arndt was still in federal prison, serving out a 10 year sentence. He claims to have found God (but not Jesus), as "Arndt is now an ultra-Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher, wears a beard, keeps his head covered, works to follow hundreds of commandments governing all aspects of life, and spends the bulk of the day in prayer or studying ancient Jewish texts." Well, whatever it takes to keep him out of trouble.

What Went Wrong? (Boston Globe)
For a fallen surgeon, a higher power (Boston Globe)

A Rash Of Hit-and-Run Incidents Plagues The Bay State

You've heard of the legend of the Boston driver, haven't you? Motorists from our neck of the woods are notorious for their driving, which is, by turns, too aggressive, too irrational, too heedless of the laws and way too often downright crazy. Some (like my dear departed Ma) attribute Boston driving to the, quote-unquote, "Irish scofflaw" influence, whereby motorists of Irish descent supposedly flout the laws established by Anglo-Saxon grandees. Even beyond its status as a vile, anti-Irish canard, this theory makes no sense when you consider that a lot more law-makers (not to mention law-enforcers) in the Bay State are Irish than Anglo-Saxon. Then there is the theory that Boston drivers are screwy because the roads themselves are screwy, having once been meandering cow paths and all that. Maybe so, but I've seen as much crazy driving on I-95 and I-93 as anywhere else - and those were built during the Cold War 1950's to transport nuclear weapons and provide escape routes for evacuees and their design is about as disorderly as a geometry lesson. Another theory holds that the high concentration of both college-age kids and liquor-serving establishments in the Boston area enable a "perfect storm" of vehicular mayhem. Still another theory contends that Massachusetts, being the liberal state that it is, doesn't punish its serial traffic offenders enough, allowing them to stay on the road when they ought to be stuck on the sidewalk. Or maybe the best theory is one that accommodates all the half-truths that engender every other theory.

Whatever the reason, Boston traffic still sucks, and always has. It almost killed me once, as a matter of fact. During a long slog home from a bar in the wee hours of my misspent youth, I was stumbling across the Alewife Brook Parkway when a sedan stuffed to the sun-roof with young folks whizzed by, just missing my ass by inches. Some others I know of have not been so lucky. A girl I went to grammar school with, just six months married, was killed by a hit-and-run driver when she opened her car door to haul out Christmas presents. I could go on, but I won't.

There's been a rash of hit-and-run incidents in the Greater Boston area in the last month or so. It could be one of those random clusters of events that spuriously suggest a trend - or it could really be a sign of something changing for the worse. Here are a few cases plucked out from Google News:

1) 55-year old Paul Baran of Taunton struck and killed 17-year old Nicholas Silva-Thomas while the latter was riding his skateboard in the middle of the street. Baran fled the scene, but later turned himself in. Although Baran was not apparently intoxicated during this incident, he had a rap sheet that went back longer than Silva-Thomas had been alive, including "more than 30 misdemeanor charges — ranging from speeding, driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in property damage — as well as a score of hearings, some involving Baran’s status as a habitual traffic offender." When he was hauled into court this August, the event marked the 16th time Baran's license had been revoked or suspended since 1989. Yet, until recently, he was still driving. Even if he is found guilty of "leaving the scene of an accident resulting in a death", Baran could serve as little as two years - or less. And that's not counting parole.

2) 47-year old Jon Ravida of East Boston struck and killed 22-year old Sothay Pen as the young woman was crossing Route 1A in Revere. She died of severe head trauma at the scene. The Boston Globe reported that Ravida "has an extensive driving record dating to 1987, according to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. His license has been suspended four times, and he was ruled at fault in two accidents." Mr. Ravida did not turn himself in, but was in fact identified by witnesses who noticed the damage to his SUV (of course, an asshole like this would have an SUV) and his suspicious behavior when he stopped at a gas station near the scene.

3) 34-year old illegal immigrant Nicolas Gauman struck 23-year old Matthew Denice while the latter was riding his motorcycle, and dragged the young man's body behind his pickup truck for a quarter of a mile. Denice had just been graduated from Framingham State College with a degree in Computer Science. Gauman was not only driving while intoxicated, he was also driving with an open container of liquor in his vehicle.

It could be that economic stress is ramping up both the distracted mindset and the substance abuse that is causing these incidents - as well as the fear of oblivion that encourages a man to flee from his own crimes - but that is no excuse. I say, let's get tough on irresponsible drivers - and then maybe later on we can get tough on bankers and hedge-fund managers and CEO's.

Lengthy driving rap sheet for alleged hit-and-run Taunton driver frustrates family, friends of dead teen (Enterprise News)
DA accuses hit-run suspect of a coverup (Boston Globe)
Illegal Immigrant Charged in Hit-and-Run Death of 23-Year-Old Massachusetts Man (Fox News)

Recession Causes Violent Bay State Inmates To Get Paroled Too Early

Below is a link to an article suggesting that Massachusetts state budget problems - and, by extension, budget problems everywhere else - are encouraging maximum security prisons to grant parole to violent criminals prematurely. The author cites the case of Domenic Cennelli, the recently paroled career criminal who shot a policeman to death at a Woburn mall last Christmas. If that case weren't horrific enough, there is always the not-so-comic relief of some nut-bag named Raymond Wallace who was barely out of jail 18 months before he went all gonzo. A "heavily armed" Wallace, disguised like the armored car robbers in The Town (does that mean he was dressed like a nun?) robbed, of all things, a Salem pet supply store last St. Patrick's Day. Outside of the fact that this dude was clearly (and quite pathetically) aiming to be Top Irish Criminal of The Month, he very likely should never have been released to be begin with. As for statistics, it definitely seems that early releases for violent offenders have escalated in direct proportion to the worsening of the economy. While in 2007 only 27 were let out onto the streets before they served their full sentences, 49 were released early in 2008, 48 in 2009, and 51 in 2010. What this means is that, at a time when more and more people are unemployed or underemployed and possibly becoming desperate enough to commit crimes, more of those who have already been convicted of such crimes are flowing back onto the streets. One can imagine the more experienced criminals crowding out the newcomers and taking up all the, ahem, robbery "opportunities" for themselves. Even "breaking bad" won't catch you a break these days, I guess. When you have a burgeoning labor surplus even in the world of crime, that will only make the desperate more desperate and it really will be time to watch your back - and your bank account, if you still have one.

I-Team: More Violent Criminals Getting Parole (CBS Boston)

Ex-D.A. Type Now Prosecutes Imaginary Criminals

Raffi Yesseyan, a 1991 U.Mass. Boston alumnus, worked as the District Attorney's office of Suffolk County from 1995 to 2006. He consorted with detectives, visited crime scenes and interrogated innumerable Boston miscreants. He used to come home from work every day with vivid stories to tell. One day his wife told him that he should start writing it all down. And his wife wasn't his only inspiration. It appears that the Boston law enforcement community was infused with a particular literary sensibility - "As a young assistant district attorney, I was in court one day talking with another ADA and a Boston cop. The two of them were carrying on about a certain author who they thought was the best 'serial killer' writer. The conversation piqued my curiosity, so I borrowed a book by this author from one of them and read it. As I read the novel I kept telling my wife that I could write a book like this. Being a writer herself, my wife encouraged me to do it."

Raffi has published at least two well-received books - 8 In The Box and 2 In The Hat. (I know, some guys do colors, Erle Gardner in his Perry Mason series did alliterations - "The Case of The Vindictive Violinist" or whatever - but this guy apparently does numbers. Good luck to him when he gets to 13. Nonetheless, if serial killers are his thing, a scorecard fixation on numbers would reflect the mindset of his antagonists and would therefore be quite apt.)

He doesn't believe he'll ever run out of material. His acquaintance with the world of crime is deep and authentic. Moreover, Boston fascinates him. "'It’s hard not to want to make Boston a character,' he says. 'I don’t think you ever run out of things to write about in Boston. There’s just so much to tell about the city.'" We expect that he'll be contributing to Boston crime fiction for a long time to come.

As for the formula he's using, he cites his influences here: "Thomas Harris created the best depiction of a serial killer as well as the psychology of the killer. George V. Higgins influenced me with his ability to create 'real' dialogue. One trick in fiction is that dialogue has to approximate the way we speak. If dialogue were truly real, it would be boring and repetitive. James Patterson provided the structure and the use of third person multiple point of view."

I don't know about you, but it is difficult for me to imagine a synthesis of Thomas Harris and George V. Higgins. I mean, I can't picture Hannibal Lecter trying to stand still while some George V. Higgins character expounds profanely in his face for twenty pages of monologue. There would be Boston-accented body parts on the good doctor's supper plate by the day's end, I'll tell you. But that combination of influences could generate a potent hybrid. I look forward to reading him.

Criminal Minds (Boston Globe)
Mystery Writers of America (Raffi Yasseyan)
Author Interviews (Raffi Yasseyan)
On "2 in the Hat" and Raffi Yessayan... (Jungle Red Writers)

Irish Mob-opedia

I'm providing a link here to a Wikipedia article about the Irish Mob which is itself a reference hub, providing links to yet other sites. The article is comprehensive in an extremely skeletal kind of way, but it mentions Irish gangs that I've never heard of. Irish gangs in Canada (The West End Gang of Montreal), Australia, St. Louis (the colorfully named Egan's Rats), England (the clerkishly yclept Clerkenwell crime syndicate AKA The Adams Family AKA the A-Team), Birmingham, Alabama (some dude named "The General", though not the same as the Dublin one), Georgia (another dude called the Celtic Boss), Omaha, Minneapolis ("Dapper" Danny Hogan), Philadelphia (the K&A Gang) - and even a Boston bunch I'd never heard of, the Gustin Gang of the 1920's. These plus the usual suspects - the Winter Hill Gang, the Westies of Hell's Kitchen (I recall showing up to do some off-hours dirty work at a Twin Towers investment firm one Saturday circa 1990, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, and the boss said I looked like a Westie - which made me smile, which may not have been his intention), and the "Nucky" Johnson outfit in New Jersey on which Boardwalk Empire was based.

The site also lists the names of various movies and books that feature Irish gangs. Like Gangs of New York, the bizarre Daniel Day Lewis/Leo DiCaprio vehicle that completely whitewashed away the ugly racial overtones of the New York draft riots during the Civil War. Yes, indeed, Irish gangs go back that far. The article does not extend to the Old West, where many outlaws were of Irish descent - Billy the Kid himself was originally Billy McCarty from Brooklyn. Nor does it mention the Ned Kelly gang of 19th century Australia. No mention either of the granddaddy of all Irish mobs, the IRA. Ah, well. The plenitude of Irish and Scots-Irish criminality precludes full coverage, but this is nonetheless a worthy resource for the discerning crime buff. The Irish Mob page also includes a link to a "List of American mobsters of Irish descent". In my past life, I would have yearned to be included.

Irish Mob (Wikipedia)