In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Tulsa homicide detective Mike Huff joins host Gary Jenkins to break down one of the most shocking mob hits in U.S. history. Det. Huff tells about the 1981 murder of businessman Roger Wheeler at Southern Hills Country Club and the investigation that ended in the arrest of Boston F.B.I. agent Paul Rico. You can learn more about this story by reading Mike's book, Killing My Father: The Inside Story of the Biggest FBI Corruption Scandal in History.
What started as a local homicide case quickly unraveled into a national organized crime conspiracy involving Florida Jai Alai gambling, the Winter Hill Gang, and notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger. Huff shares how he uncovered links to FBI corruption, the Dixie Mafia, and hitman John Martorano, who eventually confessed to the killing.
Huff also opens up about working with Roger Wheeler’s son, David, the emotional toll of the investigation, and how their joint efforts finally exposed the truth. His book Killing My Father reveals even more about this decades-long fight for justice.
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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have another former cop, a retired copper from not too far away from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he has a heck of a story. He's written a book about it, but it's a heck of a story. Down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they've got a mob murderer. Well, now, mob murders don't just go down every day in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it's a really interesting story that ties clear back to to the highlight business down in florida to the winter hill gang in uh boston massachusetts uh to whitey bulger really and and a hit man named john moderano and to a one of the infamous corrupt fbi agents out of boston you know they seem to have had a problem in the boston fbi for a period of years there and a couple three of their guys end up going to jail uh over probably being a little bit overly uh that they forgot where the line was it looks to me like but anyhow it was uh it's a retired detective mike huff welcome mike, Well, hey, welcome to U2. Thank you for doing this. All right, Mike. Now, tell us a little bit about your career. You know, how did you come up through the ranks in Tulsa PD? Well, I started in January of 1975.
[1:20] I got promoted to a detective in 1980. I didn't much like it. It wasn't enough action. I had a good career on the street. But I like my supervisor a lot. So I stuck with this being a detective.
[1:39] In May of 81, May 27th, you know, I just got to work. I was checking on a guy that I had shot three weeks earlier who was in intensive care. We're just sitting there and we're talking about we're going to eat supper. And I was on the phone with the hospital. Checking on this guy's condition, and police radio came on and said, we need all the homicide detectives to head out to Southern Hills Country Club on a shooting. I guess 5-0s that night, you know, we hit it out there, and, you know, Southern Hills, even at that time, before a lot of all the major golf tournaments they've since had, was a very, well, it was the kind of place that I wasn't familiar with.
[2:34] Everybody with money was part of that country club, and I wasn't one of that crowd. There's a middle-aged man swamped over in a seated car. He'd been shot between the eyes. It was a little bit foreign to me. You know, I'd been a homicide detective for a year and had been to a good bunch of homicid...