BOSTON - Mob informant Stephen The Rifleman Flemmi pleaded guilty yesterday to racketeering charges to avoid the death penalty under a deal in which he accused his former FBI handler of helping to set up a murder.
Flemmi appeared in U.S. District Court and changed his plea to guilty on a federal indictment that charges him in connection with 10 murders. The plea deal calls for him to serve life in prison.
Earlier this month, Flemmi cut a deal with prosecutors in which he accused the man who recruited him to become an FBI informant in the 1960s, a law enforcement source speaking only on condition of anonymity said.
Flemmi backed up a story provided by a mob hitman who told investigators that former FBI Agent H. Paul Rico helped him and others set up the killing of Tulsa, Okla., businessman Roger Wheeler in 1981, the source said.
In exchange for Flemmi's cooperation in the Wheeler case, state prosecutors in Oklahoma agreed to drop their bid for the death penalty against Flemmi in Wheeler's killing. Florida prosecutors also agreed to remove the death penalty in another mob killing in which Flemmi was charged.
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