His decades-long reign over South Boston's criminal underworld was made possible not just by violence, but by a calculated arrangement with the FBI that shielded the Winter Hill Gang from federal scrutiny while rivals were dismantled around them. The corruption that sustained him ran deep enough to embarrass multiple government agencies when it finally unraveled. He spent sixteen years as a fugitive before his 2011 capture, by which point his case had become as much a story about institutional failure as about organized crime.