The Fence - Dick Lehr [130]
“Kenny was no longer this decent guy with tons of potential,” she said. “He was found guilty and had to put his affairs in order to go to prison. It was mind-blowing.”
One veteran police officer afterward called the verdict a “lose-lose” situation. “Everybody feels sorry for Cox,” he said. “But Conley is just a pawn being played.”
Three months later, on September 29, Kenny was sentenced to serve thirty-four months in a federal prison and fined $6,000. Kenny stood to speak. “I have felt bad for Michael Cox,” he told the judge. “If I could help him I would have—if I knew who did it.”
Merritt had won the case, but the victory proved pyrrhic. He kept after Kenny to change his story, but he would not—could not. Kenny instead began fighting for his name, appealing the conviction and gaining supporters. It was all part of the gross miscalculation on Merritt’s part—to devote a year or more in the pursuit of Kenny Conley in the mistaken belief that he was the witness who could break open the Cox beating. Merritt’s criminal investigation, though still ongoing, became stymied and stuck in the morass of the fallout over Conley’s conviction. Instead of opening doors, the Conley matter became a bitter and paralyzing distraction.
Three years had passed since the night Mike was attacked and abandoned on Woodruff Way, and none of the investigations had gotten to the truth. First the police department’s Internal Affairs Division came up short. Then Bob Peabody’s Suffolk County grand jury investigation faltered. Finally, Merritt and his team of federal investigators not only failed, they’d undermined justice with the wrongful conviction of Kenny Conley. It was the investigatory equivalent of three strikes.
Mike Cox was left to find his own justice. His was the last case standing.
CHAPTER 17
On His Own
Three days after Kenny Conley was sentenced to prison, Jimmy Burgio, burly and barrel-chested, was working a paid detail at Nancy Whiskey’s, one of Southie’s more rough-and-tumble bars. He was stationed at the door in his Boston police uniform.
It was Friday, October 2, a cool night in early autumn. Burgio had a regular gig at Nancy Whiskey’s. He liked the extra money, of course, but he also liked the body contact. The bar drew a hard-drinking crowd; on occasion, a melee would erupt, like a bench-clearing brawl in ice hockey, the sport Burgio was fanatical about.
Burgio’s life had been spinning out of control. He was the target of Ted Merritt’s federal criminal investigation into the Mike Cox beating. He was facing trial in December when Cox’s own civil rights case against him, Dave Williams, Ian Daley, and Kenny Conley was scheduled to begin in federal court. And just the past June, he had been accused again of police brutality. It had happened at Nancy Whiskey’s after the two o’clock closing, when a firm hand was often needed to clear out the barflies. Burgio had gone inside to assist two bouncers remove a recalcitrant patron. The guy agreed to leave, but said in a minute. Moving with hurricane force, Burgio grabbed him by the arms, twisted them behind his back, and pushed him out the front door.
To Burgio, the moment itself was unremarkable. But a letter followed and, with it, the reason that the incident had stayed with him. The man’s lawyer wrote Police Commissioner Paul Evans to say they were going to sue Burgio, the police department, and the city. The patron alleged Burgio slammed his head into the door, punched him until he was bloodied and unconscious, and then threw him outside onto the sidewalk. “It is my client’s position that Officer James Burgio used excessive force,” the letter said, “and that the Boston Police Department and Mayor Menino was negligent in the supervision, discipline, control and training of its officers.”
Like Jimmy Burgio needed another headache. The city eventually paid the man $86,250 to settle