Tommy Marra loved stealing cars.
Likeable, lamentable, liable, he was all of those things as well as a car thief who had earned a reputation as the Robin Hood of car thieves, ripping off luxury cars throughout the Northeast and selling them at bargain prices to the underclasses of the inner city.
His uncanny duplication of vehicle titles and registrations drove officials at the Connecticut Motor Vehicles Department nuts and, in fact, forced them to amend colors and paper patterns to avoid counterfeiting.
Marra was a central casting figure during Bridgeport’s guys-and-dolls hey days in the 1970s and 80s. I interviewed him numerous times, sometimes in the joint and he had a lot to say even if sometimes in his mighty imagination.
Marra died in prison recently, according to a Department of Corrections spokesperson.
For a chronology of Marra’s life of crime, also convicted of murder, see CT Mirror reporter Dan Tepfer’s timeline here.
The year 1981 was a scream for a young reporter: mob hits, car fire bombings, the mayor wearing a bulletproof vest. The biggest news, it went national, was the botched FBI sting attempt against the legendary police chief Joe Walsh.
Marra was smack in the middle of it.
In August the feds employed Marra to lure Walsh, a target of a federal grand jury investigation, into a bribe.
Two months earlier, federal authorities disclosed both Walsh and his long-time associate Inspector Anthony Fabrizi were targets of a grand jury exploring possible violations of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act.
In Walsh’s 40 years as a cop, he had earned praise as one of the department’s finest officers, a detective who could figure out what phone number a person was dialing just by listening to the dial turn. His reputation was enhanced during the hot summers of the 1960s when Bridgeport avoided the kind of racial violence that plagued other cities during the civil rights movement.
“The Boss,” as almost everyone who knew Walsh called him, or “Jaws” (from his initials, Joseph A. Walsh superintendent) fought with mayors and police boards for control of the department and with minority members of the force who claimed Walsh’s department discriminated against them. Numerous charges of police brutality alleged Walsh’s management style encouraged the beatings. Whatever allegations surfaced, Walsh rose from the clouds of dust as the shrewdest, most powerful and charming politician in Bridgeport.
Federal authorities, however, had concluded Walsh not only condoned corruption but also was corrupt himself. They utilized 28-year-old Marra, whose family had known Walsh for decades, to bribe the superintendent to gain back the city’s lucrative towing contract (which Walsh had revoked in May) for his uncle’s garage.
As Marra, following lengthy discussions with Justice Department officials, headed to the Downtown meeting spot with Walsh and wearing a concealed recorder, so too did the superintendent cloaked a recorder, and he crooned the tune “Little Things Mean a Lot” on his way to the meeting. Federal officials hadn’t counted on the fact Walsh was prepared for a setup.
The scene was set, the participants in place. The feds staked out in a nearby van. Walsh’s boys staked out in a nearby vacant firehouse. “I hope this thing is working,” Walsh barked into his body recorder as he neared Main and Chapel, the meeting spot, a mere block and a half from police headquarters.
Here’s the transcript from that meeting:
“Come on, get in, lover,” Walsh said to Marra, who obliged
Walsh, breaking one of the feds’ commandments.
“What the hell we got to do to straighten this towing out?” Marra asked.
“I don’t know. I’m kind of in a bind. What do you suggest?”
“Joe, I got some money put away. I scraped up some cash. I got to give it back to my uncle. If we gotta, you know, go through you, through the mayor, through somebody.”
“The mayor’s not involved. I’m the one who runs it. Well, what are you offering?”
“I can come up with about thirty grand.”
“Thirty grand? That sounds good. Okay. Let’s understand. Let’s lay it on the line now, and we’ll work from there.”
“Okay, I can give you some of the money now. When we get back the towing, I’ll give you the rest, and keep coming up with a couple, whichever way you want to work it. You lay the line down
with me.”
“You’re offering me thirty grand to change it back to the way it was so your old man would have the towing of stolen cars?”
“Right.”
“Where’s the money? How much you got with you?”
“Five, six thousand.”
“It’s a deal. I won’t say it’s a deal. We’ll work it out. You trust me or what?”
“Yeah, I trust you. How soon can we get it back?”
“Within a week, maybe?”
“Okay, take me to my car.”
“I’ll wait, you go.”
Marra, having by now done exactly everything the feds told him not to do, went back to his car, picked up the money, and ignored the feds’ beeping signal to abort the mission. By now, the feds smelled a rat.
“Should be five in there, Joe. Why don’t you count it.”
“I don’t want to count anything, I trust you. Now put your hands on the dashboard; you’re under arrest for attempted bribery! Don’t move because if you run I’m going to fucking shoot you!”
Walsh’s men moved in; the feds moved in.
Mass confusion and a tense standoff between two law enforcement agencies followed as FBI agents rushed to Marra’s assistance. Walsh’s men grabbed Marra, threw him up against the car, stripped him of his pants, and snatched the recording box from his leg. Special Agents Bill Hutton and Brendan Fisk demanded that Marra be released.
“He’s coming with us.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is.”
Walsh refused the agents’ claims and ordered his officers to take Marra into custody. Gleefully snapping pictures of the laughable event was Bridgeport Post photographer Frank W. Decerbo, who had been tipped off by Walsh to watch from the sidelines.
U.S. District Court Judge T. F. Gilroy Daly dismissed the bribery charge against Marra, ruling that he was acting under the “behest, direction, and control” of federal agents and lacked criminal intent. Walsh emerged from the incident looking better than ever-a righteous hero ready to raise serious questions about sting-type law enforcement methods. For years, the feds had tried to catch him as a cop on the take; now he’d taken them. While Walsh gloated, embarrassed members of the U.S. Justice Department shuffled away.
While Walsh maintained “it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening,” Marra confessed later that the idea of stooging against a man he’d known all his life was too much for him, and he had gotten word to him: real or imagined.
