PEABODY, Mass. -- Imprisoned Boston crime boss Gennaro Angiulo was found guilty by a state jury Thursday of ordering the murder of an underworld figure six years ago and was promptly handed a life sentence by the judge.
The 12-member Essex Superior Court jury, in its third day of deliberations, found Angiulo guilty of being an accessory before the fact of first-degree murder in the slaying of Angelo Patrizzi.
Judge John Ronan then sentenced Angiulo to life in prison, to begin following the completion of a 45-year federal prison sentence Angiulo is currently serving for racketeering.
Angiulo, 68, was charged in the 1981 killing of Patrizzi, whose body was found in the trunk of a car in Lynn about three months after he disappeared.
'He was found in the trunk of a car, wrapped in a sleeping bag,' Assistant District Attorney Robert Weiner said. 'He was hog-tied and found strangled in the sleeping bag.'
The trials of three other men charged in the case -- Ilario Zannino, Frederick Simone and Samuel Granito -- have been postponed.
Angiulo's attorney, Anthony Cardinale, could not immediately be reached for comment. He was expected to appeal to a higher court.
The jury, which had been sequestered until a verdict was reached, began deliberations Tuesday, meeting for 75 minutes after receiving the case at the conclusion of the three-week trial.
Jurors Tuesday asked for numerous transcripts of testimony, including that of Edward Quinn, an FBI agent who testified through much of the trial.
Ronan denied the jury's request, partly because of the difficulty of obtaining such lengthy written records.
The jury also asked for an explanation of who was speaking during parts of tape recordings made by the FBI in two apartments in Boston's North End. Ronan told the court stenographer to read back Quinn's testimony regarding the identity of the speakers.
The court earlier had barred prosecutors from supplying jurors with transcripts of the tape recordings.
'It was a very difficult task to listen to those tapes without the benefit of transcripts,' said Ernest DiNisco, a Justice Department prosecutor assigned to the case. 'The tape-recorded conversations caught the defendant in the act of planning and murder and the jury said so.'
Judge Peter Brady, who presided over the early stages of the trial before being forced to step down for health reasons, had barred both prosecuting and defense attorneys from using the term 'Mafia,' 'La Cosa Nostra,' or other references to the Angiulo crime family.
Brady said the terms would prejudice the jury and were not necessary to establish guilt or innocence in the Patrizzi killing.
