It was the score of Eddie MacKenzie?s miserable 54-year-old life. Bigger than his previous scams, swindling unemployment checks, and far more imaginative than fleecing a 76-year-old woman out of about $200,000.
The guy who once peddled drugs and broke legs for Whitey Bulger spent the past 10 years allegedly siphoning an estimated couple of million out of a tiny Beacon Hill church with a huge bank account.
So, it was fitting that the squat, bulky director of operations for the Swedenborgian Church on the Hill should enter a federal courtroom yesterday in tan prison scrubs and chains, looking like a demented Friar Tuck.
This time, Eddie is accused of touching all the bases: extortion, bribery, mail fraud and money laundering, no fewer than 14 counts of a perfect RICO grand slam.
Eddie?s detention hearing yesterday didn?t last very long. His lawyer, Robert Griffin, asked Judge Magistrate Marianne Bowler for another month to acquaint himself with his client?s 42-page indictment.
Sadly, no one got the message to Eddie?s brother, Ronnie ? who?d also been stashed on the Swedenborgian Church payroll for a time ? that this wasn?t some OUI case in Quincy court.
Ronnie showed up with a change of clothes for his brother ? a goon that Assistant U.S. Attorney, Zachary Hafer called ?a bad guy, a really bad guy.?
In shackles, Eddie had a hard time blowing kisses to his two young daughters, whose school tuitions were allegedly paid for out of the Swedenborgian score referenced in the indictment.
Tears flooded the eyes of one of the girls as Eddie was shuffled back to jail.
There were no tears in Juliet Cunningham?s eyes.
This prim church organist came to court yesterday to gloat, not to weep. Back in 2005, Juliet Cunningham said Eddie fired her as music director of the Swedenborgian Church.
?That man, Eddie Mac?Kenzie, fired me and my husband because we dared to stand in his way,? she said.
My guess is that if Eddie doesn?t cut some sort of deal with the feds ? as he did 20 years ago to extricate himself from a sweep that ensnared more than 50 of Whitey?s drug pushers ? Juliet Cunningham will definitely be among the Swedenborgian members who will testify against him.
In the corridor later, she described at some length how this thug had managed to infiltrate her church. It basically came down to this. ?I could smell a rat from the beginning,? she said.
Juliet Cunningham?s eyes were dry yesterday ? and her smile carried radiance of sweet justice.
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