21-05-2025
Federal authorities put this old wiseguy away. He's accused of plotting to kill them.
According to an affidavit filed in US District Court, Ralph plotted to kill three federal officials who were involved in his 2012 conviction for racketeering.
One of the most telling nuggets in the affidavit recalls that the informant who tipped the feds off to Ralph's alleged murder plot claimed he was unable to open on his computer documents with the home addresses and names of the targets' family members.
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This isn't Goodfellas. It's Oldfellas.
After serving his most recent prison sentence, Ralph had managed to stay out of jail for one whole year before being charged last week with violating probation by lying to federal agents, communicating with convicted felons, and dabbling in steroids and marijuana.
Oh, and plotting to murder the feds who put him away.
'DeLeo has been fixated on seeking revenge for years,' federal prosecutors wrote. 'DeLeo's entire life has been devoted to crime.'
Ralph has done time for armed robbery in several states and a contract murder in Ohio. He's been convicted of robbing department stores, supermarkets, banks. He's escaped custody. He was a made Mafioso, a 'street boss' for the Colombo crime family in New York. Pretty impressive for a kid from Somerville.
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And yet despite seeming non-stop convictions, he kept getting out of prison.
Whatever happened to three strikes and you're out?
Ralph has had more strikes than French farmers. His rap sheet is longer than 'War and Peace.'
Of all Ralph's myriad criminal exploits, none tops his 1977 murder of Dr. Walter Bond, a physician in Columbus, Ohio.
In 1977, Ralph was doing 25-to-40 years at the state prison in Walpole for armed robbery and kidnapping when he managed to escape from the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain after complaining of stomach pain and taking a guard hostage.
Ralph hightailed it to Ohio, where he prevailed upon Dr. Donald Plotnick, whom he met while in federal prison in Pennsylvania when Plotnick was serving time for illegally selling firearms. Plotnick allowed Ralph to hide out in a trailer on his farm.
Plotnick introduced Ralph to another dubious Ohio physician, Dr. David Ucker. Upon meeting the career criminal from Massachusetts, Ucker realized Ralph was just the kind of guy to sort out a problem he had.
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But after confronting Bond on the doctor's office doorstep, Ralph shot him dead, as he put it, 'only to be nice.' Ralph considered it an act of mercy.
After the murder, Plotnick introduced him to yet another Ohio doctor, who tried to alter Ralph's appearance with plastic surgery.
Ralph went on the lam, again, but was shot and wounded by police in 1978 after trying to rob a bank in Columbus while armed with a hand grenade.
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With no other cards to play, Ralph copped to shooting Bond and agreed to testify against Ucker.
In his thick Boston accent, Ralph regaled a jury of Midwesterners with tales of derring-do and criminal cunning. It was considered the most sensational trial in that part of Ohio.
Fortunately for Ucker, the jury didn't believe Ralph and Ucker was acquitted. There's a famous photo of Dr. Ucker and Dr. Plotnick celebrating the acquittal, drinks in hand.
But, through his cooperation, Ralph hit the lottery. As part of his plea agreement, he was transferred to a federal prison where he became friendly with Alphonse 'Little Allie Boy' Persico, who was poised to become head of the Colombo crime family in New York.
Ralph got lucky, again, in 1991, when Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste granted him clemency for Dr. Bond's murder. Bond's widow, Marie Bond, was shocked, telling the Columbus Dispatch, 'This is a hardened criminal, and they are going to let him loose.'
Ralph was returned to Massachusetts, to finish the sentence he was serving when he escaped from the Shattuck. He emerged from prison in 1997 with a standing invitation to do crime with the Colombo crew.
According to federal prosecutors, he wasn't out of prison long before he became a 'made' guy in the Colombo family.
Presumably the wiseguys in New York either didn't know or didn't care that Ralph had been a government witness in Ohio. Cooperating with the government, at any level, is usually a deal-breaker in that line of business.
Ralph used his newfound status as a made guy to carve out a new career as a cocaine trafficker, moving drugs between Massachusetts and, of all places, Arkansas.
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Alas, in 2009, one of Ralph's mules got lugged and so, too, did Ralph. At the age of 66, Ralph was charged with racketeering.
As my colleague Shelley Murphy reported in 2010, FBI agents tapped DeLeo's cellphone the year before and recorded Ralph waxing philosophic on the difference between the wiseguy subculture in Boston, where he was a nobody, and New York, where he was a somebody.
'Here,' he said of Boston, 'I'm nothing.'
But in New York, 'Everybody is holding the door for ya, helping on your coat, giving you hugs. Kissing you, and all this type of stuff. 'Oh, you gotta sit in front, you gotta do this, are you comfortable? Can I get you coffee?' '
Ralph insisted he was not the kind of wiseguy who needed all that flattery and attention.
'I'm not into that type of stuff,' he said. 'At heart, I'm a regular guy.'
A regular guy who regularly gets sent to prison. He got out last May
Last week, Ralph
'Danger would be the primary basis,' she said.
Eighty-two-years-old, and still dangerous.
Ralph's attorney, Kevin Barron, offered a more sympathetic view, describing Ralph as 'an ailing and infirm' man who suffers from a blood disorder, is undergoing chemotherapy treatment, and requires ongoing dental surgery. Ralph complained he couldn't hear the proceedings.
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Ralph's luck appears to have run out. He has a detention hearing Thursday.
The dentist can wait.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
