Used with permission:
Worcester Magazine
Oct. 21, 1998
Justice denied? The word of two career criminals put Jimmy Rodwell away for life.
By Doug Hanchett

The Stoolie - David Nagle

A punk from Brighton who had developed a nasty smack habit in the early 1970s, Nagle used to pull stick-ups to fund his pricey drug dance. Those who know Nagle say the robberies were a labor of love, claiming he used to get his kicks watching the fear on his vics' faces as they stared down the barrel of his gun. One inmate who served time with Nagle said he sometimes kept the chamber of his gun empty "so that he could snap the hammer in their face to see if they'd shit their pants."

Although Nagle had been charged with 37 armed robberies in the 1970s alone - a number that ballooned to 59 by the mid-80s - he had long ago mastered the art of the snitch, sidestepping lengthy prison sentences by aiding and abetting police with tips and testimony.

Name a law enforcement agency - from local and state police to federal agencies like the FBI and DEA - and chances were it knew, and used, David Nagle.

Not all of his information was reliable, however. In 1976 he fingered a childhood friend, Edward Madden, for robbing a Brighton liquor store. At a probable cause hearing, the liquor store clerk testified that Madden wasn't the one who robbed the store. But that didn't stop Nagle from testifying against Madden, saying the two did the robbery together. The charge against Madden was later dismissed after a Boston detective told the court he didn't believe Nagle.

In early July, Nagle got in touch with Spartichino. He told the state police lieutenant that Rodwell had shot his mouth off about killing Rose and wanted to make a deal.

Spartichino interviewed Nagle on Aug. 6, 1981. Nagle laid out everything Rodwell had allegedly told him. His tale included the nittiest, grittiest little details, from the weather conditions that night to the specific bridge where Rodwell allegedly tossed the murder weapon.

To Jack Rodwell, it smelled like a conspiracy. "It burns me up inside," the elder Rodwell says. "It's criminal."

To Tom Macone, the former Somerville cop, it smelled like something else. "I know what goes on," Macone says. "I know when something doesn't pass the sniff test, and this thing fucking stinks."

Nagle isn't ashamed about being a rat. On the contrary, he seems to take pride in the fact that he elevated it to an art form. In a 1991 Boston Magazine story about him entitled "Snitch," Nagle said being an informant "was like having a get-out-of-jail-free card." In the same article, people who knew Nagle described him as a habitual liar. "He'll tell you what you want to hear if he thinks it'll do him any good," said Nagle's half-brother, who also happens to be a federal agent.

"It's fair to say that 97 percent of the cops I knew who knew him wouldn't believe him unless the guy he was giving up was laying there at his feet with the gun in his hand," said John Ridlon, a retired Boston detective who used Nagle as an informant in the early 1970s.

That didn't stop Spartichino from listening to what Nagle had to say, however. And even after the Rodwell case, authorities continued to tap Nagle as an informant.

In a letter Nagle wrote to Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kathleen White in 1991, at a time when he was serving 20 to 25 years for armed robbery, Nagle described how in the previous six years he had been visited numerous times by various law enforcement agents and taken hundreds of phone calls from them. He told White that they used to take him out of prison and drive him around Boston, take him to Watertown to visit his family and even treat him to steak dinners.

Such relationships are "the dirtiest little secret of law enforcement," according to Rodwell's attorney, Stephanie Glennon, who spent 12 years as a prosecutor in the Norfolk County DA's office. The key word, in Rodwell's case, was "secret."