Florida parole hearing curveball
Ex-FBI agent’s lawyer ‘surprised’ by today’s review
Ex-FBI agent John “Zip” Connolly’s longtime lawyer is flummoxed by Florida’s decision to question his client’s medical parole.
Attorney Peter Mullane said he has no idea what triggered today’s hearing, saying we’ll all find out when the Commission on Offender Review starts its meeting at 9 a.m.
“It came out of the blue,” Mullane told the Herald yesterday. “It was a surprise to everyone.”
He said the “mystery” after “nothing has changed” with Connolly’s case.
As the Herald reported over the weekend, the 83-year-old Connolly was allowed to return to Massachusetts on a medical release on Feb. 17, 2021, because he had about a year to live after being called “terminally ill.” He remains alive.
Connolly is on the agenda as the 11th on the list of convicts set for “Parole and Conditional Medical Releases/Revocations.”
Connolly was convicted of second-degree murder in 2008 for wearing his FBI-issued sidearm when he met with Whitey Bulger in Boston to warn him of what businessman John Callahan knew. Bulger was murdered in a West Virginia prison in 2018.
Callahan, the former president of World Jai Alai, was shot dead by John Martorano, one of Whitey’s hitmen. Martorano testified he was working for the mobster when he killed Callahan, his friend. Whitey wanted Callahan dead because the Boston businessman could implicate them in a 1981 slaying of another World Jai Alai executive.
The interstate compact signed by Connolly allowing him to relocate home with his wife in Massachusetts states “termination of supervision” is set for December of 2047. That now seems in jeopardy.