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To his neighbours in a small country town he was Jeffrey Shaw, a greenhorn farmer with 12 cows and a US East Coast accent, who fixed their computers.
There were clues something was different. He knew how to handle a gun, which they admired, and he paid for everything in cash, which they appreciated
But Marsing, Idaho, with a population of 890, this week found out that to the FBI he was a New England mobster who vanished in 1994 after a botched attempt to whack his boss. On Monday night the US Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force arrested him.
And on Wednesday, the 42-year-old dark-haired man, dressed in a yellow jumpsuit and his hands cuffed behind his back, strolled into a courtroom in Boise, sat down at a table and spoke calmly to a judge.
“My name is Enrico M. Ponzo,” he said.
After the judge read a long list of charges against him, Ponzo replied: “Not guilty, your honour.”
Ponzo appeared relaxed during his 40-minute court appearance, at times smiling at a handful of friends nearby and exchanging laughs with his attorney. He told the judge he is originally from Boston.
To the people who knew him in Marsing, a farming and ranching town southwest of Boise, the news about the man they called by his nickname “Jay” for the past decade pushed them to dig deep into their memories for signs of an elaborate hoax.
“It was probably all just fiction,” said neighbour Bodie Clapier (52).
Authorities said Ponzo had been living in Marsing under the name Jeffrey Shaw, but they declined to say how the FBI discovered him. During his arrest on Monday, agents seized 38 firearms, US$15 000 and a 100-ounce bar of either gold or silver.
Ponzo faces charges from a 1997 indictment accusing him and 14 others of racketeering, attempted murder and conspiracy to kill rivals. According to the FBI, many of these charges stem from Ponzo’s alleged involvement in the New England La Cosa Nostra in the late 1980s.
As a member of one of the two main factions, Ponzo allegedly participated in the conspiracy to murder and attempted murder of rival faction members, as well as in extortion and drug-related activities in the Boston, Massachusetts, area.
When “Cadillac” Frank Salemme was named boss of the Patriarca Family, Ponzo and others formed a rogue faction that sought to wrest control of the family and appoint themselves as its under-bosses.
Members of this group were charged with killing and plotting to kill those who stood in their way, offering US$5 000 per hit with a bonus of US$15 000 to the killer who took out Salemme, according to the indictment.
Ponzo was one of three would-be capos who tried to kill Salemme in a botched 1989 Saugus hit, where the bungling hit men shot at the boss but failed to kill him, according to authorities. That was one of several attempted murders that the FBI alleges Ponzo tried to carry out.
Ponzo, a fugitive since 1994 moved into the community at the base of the Owyhee Mountains about a decade ago. He and his girlfriend lived in a two-story house on a hill.
Neighbours knew immediately that he didn’t know anything about farming.
After he arrived in town, Ponzo told some of his new neighbours that he was from New York.
To their ears, he had the accent to prove it. He told others that he was from New Jersey.
Ponzo told people that his parents were killed when he was young, and that he had no other family.
He said he was a graphic designer, and would work on computers for his neighbours. — Daily Mail.