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A man once convicted in a 1996 mob slaying in Revere was arrested Saturday after he allegedly crashed his car into the side of a Stoneham liquor store and treated himself to a beer, cigar, and bag of chips before striking a police officer, officials said.
John Bacigalupo, 54, of Revere, drove a sedan into the front doors of Rapid Liquors on Main Street around 1 a.m., Alia Spring, a spokeswoman for the Stoneham Police Department, said in a phone interview Saturday.
Store owner Doug Shahian said Bacigalupo hopped over the hood of the car and picked up a loose cinder block after the crash, which he then used to smash two of the store’s windows.
“It was surreal,” Shahian said. “I didn’t really believe my eyes when I turned on the cameras overnight and saw the gentleman shopping for beer and smoking a cigar down at the store.”
Bagicgalupo sipped from a Budweiser and opened a bottle of bourbon while inside, and was standing at the front of the store when police arrived, Shahian said.
A struggle ensued between Bacigalupo and the officers, who had to use a Taser on him three times, Spring said. He also allegedly broke more of the store’s merchandise when he hit an officer in the face, Spring said.
Bacigalupo refused medical treatment once he was arrested, she said.
He was charged with assault and battery on a police officer, breaking and entering in the nighttime, larceny under $1,200, malicious destruction of property under $1,200, malicious destruction of property over $1,200, and resisting arrest, Spring said.
He was held on $100,000 bail and is expected to be arraigned Monday in Woburn District Court, police said in a statement.
Shahian said the store’s front doors and vestibule sustained substantial damage from the crash, but that the shop was still able to open by 9:30 a.m.
Rapid Liquors has been owned by Shahian’s family since 1973. Besides a “fair share of thefts,” he said there hadn’t been any major incidents at the shop until Saturday morning.
“We’re all safe and that’s all that really matters,” Shahian said.
Baciagalupo’s arrest comes more than a dozen years after his conviction for the Revere murder was overturned by the state’s highest court.
Bacigalupo was convicted in 2001 of murdering Robert Nogueira, a reputed mob enforcer, in a Saugus hotel parking lot and attempting to kill Vincent “Gigi” Portalla and Charles McConnell outside a Revere nightclub in November 1996.
The Supreme Judicial Court overturned Bacigalupo’s conviction in 2009, saying his constitutional rights were violated when a witness testified at the trial that Bacigalupo’s codefendant, Gary Carter, admitted to his and Bacigalupo’s roles in the attacks.
The trial judge had told the jury that Carter’s statements could not be used against Bacigalupo, but the SJC ruled that those instructions were insufficient. The SJC tossed out the conviction, citing a US Supreme Court decision that held that a non-testifying codefendant’s confession implicating the defendant violated the defendant’s right to face the witnesses against him,
Back story from Allen May ,
https://allanrmay.com/mob-war-in-beantown
Vincent Michael Marino, who went by the name “Gigi” Portalla, used this opportunity to try to take over the leadership of the New England mob. An imposing figure at six-foot, 220 pounds, Marino just thirty-five years old, threatened to kill Jackie Salemme. However, it would take more than just killing the acting boss to make Marino the leader of the New England Mafia. He would also need the blessing of the New York families, which he was unlikely to receive due to his well-known heavy drug use. Law enforcement officials acknowledged that Marino and most of his followers were heroin users, as were the young turks that were part of the Salemme faction. One source stated, “All those guys on heroin, making trouble and trying to take over what’s left of nothing. It’s a mess. With all the drugs involved, it will be no shock if they are all found dead.”
Marino had been arrested twelve hours after the 1989 shooting of Frank Salemme. Stopped with three associates in Revere, Marino was found in possession of a 9mm semi-automatic. He was convicted and spent thirty months in jail before being released in 1994. Since then, Marino had focused his efforts on shaking down local restaurant owners for protection money. Nearly two years after the rash of shootings in late 1994, Marino’s activities were about to bring retaliation from the Salemme loyalists.
In October 1996, Frank Imprescia, a Marino associate, was wounded in the back as he sat at his desk in a law firm where he worked. The gunman fired through a front window. During the early morning hours of November 24, Salemme gunmen struck again. Marino and his driver, Charles J. McConnel, a heavy drug user who had overdosed the previous week in a Chelsea motel, arrived at the Caravan Club in Revere around 1:00 a.m. The two had been followed there and when Marino got out of the automobile, would be killers blasted away at the pair, shattering glass windows and scaring the 150 patrons inside the dance club. Marino scrambled inside, collapsing on the dance floor, bleeding heavily from a bullet wound in the buttocks.
McConnel was wounded in the back and arm, but managed to drive a short distance to the Wonderland Ballroom where he was met by police whom he directed back to the Caravan Club to attend to Marino. Both wounded men were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Just fifteen minutes after this shooting, another Marino driver and enforcer, Robert Nogueira, was shot ten times in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn hotel in Saugus, where he was staying. He was killed instantly.
Less than three weeks after this shooting, Marino and McConnel were arrested at Logan Airport by Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Charged with cocaine trafficking, Marino was flabbergasted that they had been caught. He was told by one of the agents that they had put a tracking device in his rear end. At his arraignment, Marino told a U. S. magistrate judge that federal agents had “implanted a microphone” in his butt during recent surgery. He then instructed family members to contact a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
The day following the shooting at the Caravan Club, Jackie Salemme was in federal court answering an eight-count indictment for running a football betting gambling ring in 1993 in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.