The Ponytail Gets Cut: N.E. Mob Chief ‘Ponytail’ Tony Parrillo Ticketed For Return Trip To Big House

Reputed New England mafia consigliere Anthony (Ponytail Tony) Parrillo, a convicted murderer and once a former candidate for the crime family’s acting boss post, is going back to the can. The 65-year old was sentenced to 5-to-15 years in prison this week in state court for assaulting an innocent couple at his defunct Providence, Rhode Island restaurant and lounge Club 295 five years ago. A protégé of retired New England mob don Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio, Parrillo was quietly found guilty at a bench trial last November.

Club 295 was located in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood, the city’s Little Italy and Baby Shacks Manocchio’s longtime stomping grounds. The club was shuttered in late 2014.

Parrillo and his bouncers beat up Jack Fernandez and his wife in December 2011 outside Club 295 after misidentifying Fernandez as a patron that had engaged in a sex act in the club’s bathroom and then stabbed a club employee following being confronted about it. The assault began in the bathroom and continued in the back alley where his wife got roughed up too. Fernandez was taken to the hospital with a broken nose and several cracked ribs.The incident ended when Parrillo called his men off, reportedly saying, “Stop, no more right now, there’s too many people around, we’ll get him later.”

Months before the assault at his club, Parrillo was arrested for harassing his ex-wife. Back in 1982, he was found guilty at a state jury trial for a double-homicide and sentenced to 20 years behind bars of which he served 11 – Parrillo and his then-gangland running buddy Dennis Roche killed Providence drug dealer Ronnie Leone and Rudy Baronet, a teenage neighbor of Leone’s that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on October 3, 1977.

Leone, 26, had ripped Parrillo off on a previous narcotics transaction and Parrillo summoned him to his apartment to get even. When Leone brought Baronet to the meeting with him, the unsuspecting 16-year old got caught in the crossfire. Upon arriving at Parrillo’s residence, the pair were murdered by Parillo and Roche.

While Parillo and Roche were in the process of getting rid of the bodies, Parillo’s girlfriend Janice Costa, came home from running errands and walked in on the blood-soaked scene.

“I hope you have a strong stomach,” said a laughing Parrillo to Costa, according to future court testimony.

Costa eventually broke-up with Parillo and married Providence wiseguy Anthony Manfredi. After Roche was killed on December 4, 1981, Costa began fearing for life, mistakenly believing that Parrillo had wacked Roche to keep him quiet about the Leone and Baronet murders.

Following the Christmas holiday, she went to Providence police and told them what she knew. With Costa agreeing to testify in court, Parrillo was arrested on December 28, 1981 and charged with the double execution.

Roche had in fact been murdered by local Rhode Island gangsters Anthony (Porky) DeCiantis and Ricky Silva, stabbed and shot multiple times  (his body dropped off in a Providence garbage dump) for DeCiantis’ belief that Roche was the man that had killed his brother, Rocco, years earlier.

At Parrillo’s 1982 trial, Costa testified that on the morning of the Leone and Baronet murders, Parrillo told her “Ronnie’s stopping by,” before she left to go shopping at around 10:30 a.m. Then when she returned at 1:00 p.m., she walked in on Parrillo and Roche zipping Leone’s and Baronet’s freshly-killed bodies into a pair of sleeping bags. As Parrillo and Roche left to dispose of the corpses, he instructed her to “clean the house and scrub the kitchen down,” and that she shouldn’t have any concern about what she had just seen.

“Forget about this, don’t worry about it,” she testified that Parillo told her prior to departing with Roche and the two sleeping bag-clad corpses. “Don’t even think about it anymore after today……it had to be done.”

Upon his release from prison in 1993, Parrillo used his underworld connections to secure a Teamsters union card, using it to get work on New England movie sets, specifically the Rhode Island-raised Farrelly brothers’ films, There’s Something About Mary (1998), Outside Providence (1999), Me, Myself and Irene (2000), Osmosis Jones (2001) and Stuck on You (2003). On the Outside Providence set, Parillo acted as actor Alec Baldwin’s bodyguard. On the Me, Myself and Irene set, he did the same for actor Jim Carrey.

The current power in the Patriarca crime family lies in Beantown. Boston-based Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio, the syndicate’s former underboss was released from prison last year and is alleged to have assumed acting boss duties on behalf of semi-retired don Peter Limone when previous acting boss Anthony (Spucky) Spagnolo ran into legal trouble. The name being mentioned as Parrillo’s most-likely successor is fellow Rhode Islander, Matthew (Good Looking Matty) Guglielmetti.