Monday, January 19, 2004
Boston Herald 2004 01 18:H. Paul Rico, the retired Boston FBI agent who created Stephen "The Rifleman'' Flemmi's double life as an informant in 1965, died yesterday at a Tulsa Hospital while awaiting trial on charges he conspired with his ex-informants to commit murder.
Tulsa police said no cause of death has been determined . . .
Police launched an investigation into Rico's death and were forced to retrieve his body from a funeral home yesterday. His body should have gone directly to the medical examiner's office. . .
A judge on Friday had put the case on hold until Rico faced a competency evaluation . . .
Rico was accused of conspiring with Flemmi and James ``Whitey'' Bulger to kill World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler in 1981 in a bid to take over Wheeler's gambling fronts . . .
"I'm about to join the grassy knoll club myself here,'' said Frank Libby, attorney for the Wheeler family, yesterday.
Said retired FBI agent Mike McPheters of Moses Lake, Wash., . . . "He had to die for something that no one knows he ever did.''
[...]
Rico's death cancels a raft of subpoenas for testimony that could have shed more light on the Boston FBI's use of murderous informants and Rico's bond with Flemmi and Bulger after his 1975 retirement from the FBI. .....---
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