FBI Files - The Patriarca Papers - Entry 9, Was Governor Notte Bribed?

Monday, October 05, 2015
GoLocalWorcester News Team

The FBI files on Raymond Patriarca unveil that the FBI was investigating that Rhode Island Governor John Notte took a series of bribes in exchange for firing the head of the RI State Police, Walter Stone, allowing gambling and specifically to allow a high rollers craps game to be played at the Cliff Manor in Newport (now the Chandler Hotel). 

What may be most surprising and may have never been reported before is who tipped the FBI off about the $25,000 to Notte in exchange of Stone’s firing was then US Attorney Raymond Pettine. Five years later, Pettine was named to the Federal Court by President Lyndon Johnson. During his tenure on the federal bench, he made a number of landmark decision relating to Rhode Island's courts, allowing a gay student at Cumberland High School to attend the prom with another male student and banning a nativity scene to be installed on public land in Pawtucket.

In the early 1960s, the FBI planted a bug in "The Office" and over three years, agents recorded hundreds of conversations between Patriarca and other mobsters. Some of the most damaging recordings involved a $25,000 bribe paid to the late Gov. John A. Notte Jr.

http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/2009/02/patriarca-coinomatic-office-becomes-mr-pocket-sandwich-shop.html

$10,000 Bribe to Allow Gambling

According to Col. Stone, a Pawtucket bookie “put $10,000 into Notte’s campaign with the expectation of making it back, when Stone was out and the pressure was taken off by the new administration (Notte).

Craps at Cliff Manor

Stone also reported to the FBI that sources “informed him that $20,000 was put up by Raymond Patriarca; that the money came from racket men in Rhode Island and that one of the major purposes of this contribution was to insure open operation of crap games planned to be run at Cliff Manor, Newport."

Governor John Notte

Del Sesto Also Received $80,000

Notte may not have been the only RI Governor to receive substantial payments from organized crime. Stone was advised in 1958 by an informant “that he had learned that a group of hoodlums had contributed $80,000 to the campaign of newly elected Governor Christopher Del Sesto of Rhode Island and that in this group was Raymond Patriarca who reported contributed $40,000."