Accused mobster bets the farm
An alleged gangster hunted for 14 years by the FBI for the attempted murders of former New England Mafia godfather Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme and 13 others wants to summer with family in a toney Swampscott neighborhood while awaiting trial.
Enrico “Henry” Ponzo, 42, is so certain he can make a go of it as John Q. Public in the seaside hamlet where he grew up that he’s willing to bet the ranch. He’s offering to put up as security the $160,000 Marsing, Idaho, ranch where he was captured in February, living as cattle rancher Jeffrey John Shaw. The feds say they also seized dozens of firearms from the farm.
Ponzo, whose trial date hasn’t been set, is being held without bail in maximum security at MCI Cedar Junction in Walpole. He filed papers last week in U.S. District Court stating that if a federal judge consents to release him to the custody of his older sister, he’ll also wear a GPS bracelet and post her $489,300 home — as well as the $118,000 in cash and $70,000 in gold coins seized from him in Idaho — as guarantees of good behavior.
“We’re going to see if he can get out. We’ll see what happens,” said Alexandria Divadkar, 45, a married mother of three pursuing a master’s degree in teaching at Boston College, about her brother yesterday when approached by a reporter at her door.
Some of Divadkar’s concerned neighbors, whose lovingly cared-for properties nearby offer spectacular views of the Atlantic, don’t want it to get that far.
“You can’t pick your relatives, huh?” said one, who called Divadkar “a nice woman.”
“Obviously, it’s a safe neighborhood, and I want to keep it that way,” the neighbor said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But Ponzo’s attorney David Duncan argued to the Herald, “He had neighbors he lived around (in Idaho) for many years, and they came to his support. He was a good neighbor.”
Ponzo is facing life in prison if convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, racketeering, extortion and sundry weapon and drug charges to which he pleaded not guilty in March.
The reputed hired gun is perhaps best known in underworld circles for allegedly trying to whack Salemme on June 16, 1989, at an International House of Pancakes in Saugus, in a failed coup of La Cosa Nostra’s Patriarca Family.
Ponzo fathered two children in Idaho, ages 8 and 6, who now live in Utah with their mother. It was a child custody battle in court between the common-law couple that led to his arrest.
The man of mystery, whose Idaho neighbors affectionately called “Mr. Mom,” is aware “that flight from these charges would result in the end of his relationship with those children, and make it impossible for him to ever see them again,” Ponzo’s motion states. “Mr. Ponzo’s children are the most important thing in his life, and he will not take any action that jeopardizes his relationship with them.”
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0620accused_mobster_bets_the_farm_wants_judge_to_let_him_summer_in_swampscott_before_trial_starts/
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