Idaho Rancher Revealed as Gangster From Boston
Enrico M. Ponzo in a 1994 mug shot, and at left in the photograph at right, when he was known as Jeffrey John “Jay” Shaw to his neighbors in Marsing, Idaho.
Enrico Ponzo was never a proper mobster, a “made man” in the vernacular of the underworld. He was a renegade, prosecutors say, part of a violent faction intent on ousting the bosses of the powerful Patriarca crime family in Boston in the early 1990s.
When a wide-ranging indictment came up against him and 14 others in 1997, Mr. Ponzo was charged with crimes that included attempted murder and extortion. But he was also listed as the target of a contract killing planned by one of the other defendants.
While most everyone else in the case went to prison, Mr. Ponzo was not arrested — he had been missing since 1994.
Jeffrey John Shaw, known as Jay, was never a natural rancher. The accent from back East and his inexperience with cattle gave him away quickly as another newcomer reinventing himself in the West. “He wore bib overalls and straw hats,” said Brodie Clapier, a neighbor and a longtime rancher. “People did wear bib overalls here — in the 1930s.”
But no one pried. After all, Mr. Shaw was quick to help move your furniture or fix your computer. He was trusted to manage the irrigation system people depended on for water, and he was responsible with the money they paid him to do it. In time, as he began raising two children and 12 cows on his 12 acres, prosecutors say Jay earned a stature no mob boss could ever confer on Enrico.
He became a remade man.
After tracking him down in a manner they declined to describe, and watching him for more than a week, federal marshals arrested Mr. Ponzo on Feb. 7 as he drove down the rural road where he has lived for the past decade. Soon after, Jay Shaw’s friends were stunned to see him in court in Boise, his ever-present hat and goatee gone, admitting he was Mr. Ponzo, someone they had never heard of, someone living on the lam, living a lie, for nearly two decades.
Now he is being extradited to Massachusetts. “I don’t know whether he really was a fugitive,” said Norman S. Zalkind, a Boston lawyer who represented Mr. Ponzo two decades ago. “If you look at the indictment, he was also one of the victims.”
He has called friends in Marsing to say he is sorry — and to tell them which pipes in the irrigation system need fixing. He asked them feed his dogs and his cows.
“I asked him, ‘It must be a weight off your chest that you don’t have to hide this anymore,’ ” said Kelly Verceles, a friend from Idaho who recently visited Mr. Ponzo while he was behind bars there. “He said, ‘Dude, I might be going to jail forever.’ ”
Investigators have not said what finally led them to Mr. Ponzo, 42, but his new life had been fraying in the months before they found him. Cara Lyn Pace, his girlfriend since before he arrived in Marsing and the mother of his two children, left him last summer and later took the children, a boy, 7, and a girl, 6. The couple were locked in a custody dispute.
In court papers, Ms. Pace complained about his drinking and “aggression,” saying she was “fearful for my life.”
“Jeff has little respect for the rules of law,” Ms. Pace wrote.
It was Mr. Ponzo, acting as Mr. Shaw, who filed the custody suit. In perhaps his boldest act with his new identity, he demanded that the birth certificates of the children be amended “to reflect that Jeffrey John Shaw is the natural father of our children.”
Friends say only Ms. Pace’s name is listed on the children’s birth certificates. Mr. Ponzo was arrested before the case went to a hearing.
Ms. Pace, who is now living in Utah, did not respond to requests for comment. Did she turn him in? Did something happen during the custody fight that prompted law enforcement to take a closer look at him?
She has told friends that she did not report Mr. Ponzo, and that she will struggle explaining his past to their children.
Mr. Verceles, who sells construction equipment, said that he has made a point of not passing judgment on anyone involved, that he is determined to view Mr. Ponzo only as the person he knew in Marsing.
In recent weeks, Mr. Verceles has enjoyed talking on the phone with Mr. Ponzo’s family from back East. He has sent family members photographs and even a video clip of Mr. Ponzo dancing along with a video game on New Year’s Eve.
“They’re so interested in his life,” he said. “They thought he was dead.”
Mr. Ponzo has told friends he has a teenage son with a former girlfriend from Boston, but no one would confirm knowing them. Mr. Ponzo’s father was a postal service employee for 30 years and a longtime manager at Dom’s, an Italian restaurant in the North End of Boston. Both of his parents have died. A sister who has been involved in Girl Scouts said in Idaho court via telephone that she would welcome her brother back. A cousin is active in Republican politics in New Jersey. No one would comment for this article.
“I really don’t want my name out there,” one family member said.
The most high-profile crime Mr. Ponzo is accused of is the attempted murder of Francis Salemme, a k a Cadillac Frank, who eventually took charge of the fractured Patriarca crime family amid a power struggle. Mr. Salemme survived being shot by masked gunmen — prosecutors say Mr. Ponzo was one of them — outside an International House of Pancakes in Saugus, Mass., in 1989. He is now believed to be under federal witness protection.
Years later, prosecutors say, Mr. Ponzo became a target of another mobster after the mobster’s son was fatally shot shortly after Mr. Ponzo and another man left him to change a flat tire alone.
Here in Marsing, investigators say they found 38 guns, $15,000 in cash and a 100-ounce bar of silver in Mr. Ponzo’s modest house. They also found dozens of books about changing identities.
Mr. Verceles has since moved into the house.
“It’s not for sale,” he said. “He’s planning on coming back to Idaho. We sold his cows for him, but he told me to keep his fishing boat ready.
“He realizes that he wasn’t the best citizen back then, and he knows he’s got to do what he’s got to do,” he added. “But when he comes back, he’s going to be Enrico Ponzo the rancher, not Jay Shaw. He’s kind of excited about that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/us/11mobster.html?_r=1&hp
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