Earlier this year we published this blog about Massachusetts State Police Lt. Colonel Daniel Risteen, who was actively involved in both the Alli Bibaud coverup scandal, and the  Lt. Governor Tim Murray I-190 crash scandal. In the story we also divulged how he had a long time relationship with Trooper Leigha Genduso, who became a member of the MSP in 2014.

It seemed rather unprofessional that such a high ranking official could openly be dating a someone for years, and then that woman would get a highly coveted job like this.

Additionally, most state troopers when they first get on the job are sent to work in barracks far from their home. After all, someone has to work in such fabulous places as Cheshire, Russell, Athol, and Shelburne Falls, where they can do the kind of police work they signed up for – breaking up white trash domestic disputes at trailer parks in Chesterfield.

But Trooper Genduso immediately got a sweet gig on the K-9 unit:

So it didn’t take a genius to see that dating the boss seems to lead to preferential treatment in the MSP.

Many candidates who become troopers either have experience in the military or working for a municipal police department. But Trooper Genduso had no such background, and merely became a state police dispatcher in 2008:

However, after we published the blog Trooper Genduso contacted a Turtleboy blogger and let them know that we did not get our FACKS straight:

The second anyone starts off by saying, “get your facts straight,” our ratchet radar immediately goes up. Might as well say, “only God can judge.” But she insisted we get our facts straight, so we vowed to do so.

As you can see, Trooper Genduso was insistent that she got the job because she “worked her ass off.” She “made it to where I am because of me. No one else. Me.” And according to her she got the K-9 gig because Lt. Colonel Amadeo told her that her 6 years “working her ass off” as a dispatcher gave her preference over her fellow troopers who had been there longer, many of whom are combat veterans.

Lt Colonel Amadeo addresses the troops before deployment. #RedSox pic.twitter.com/SpJLYu4Xoo

— Mass State Police (@MassStatePolice) October 31, 2013

However, she failed to mention the fact that she’s extremely close with former MSP Colonel Marion McGovern, who she refers to on Facebook as her “mentor and my friend”:

As you can see, Trooper Genduso even says in her own words that McGovern “was a big part of my support system.” And McGovern was trumpeting the “you did it on your own” company line:

Marion McGovern just so happens to be very close friends with and is a supporter of Attorney General Maura Healey as well:

Also in that picture is State Senator Anne Gobi of Spencer.

It’s also noteworthy that in 2012 Marian McGovern accepted a full pension that exempted her from paying federal income taxes because of an alleged disability. This was estimated to save her around $25,000 a year that someone in her bracket would’ve paid in federal income taxes on their pension.  She also got special treatment before receiving this pension:

“McGovern’s disability pension was approved by a special three-member board, which reviews only state police disability applications. All other disability applications across the state are handled by a panel of three independent doctors, but state law requires that State Police disabilities be reviewed by the state commissioner of public health, state surgeon, and State Police superintendent, or their designees.”

No one on the board voted against the special treatment she received.

But does it prove that Marion McGovern and Daniel Risteen used their influence to get Trooper Genduso her job? No. It certainly raises some red flags, but there’s no smoking gun.

However, what does seem to prove that she received special treatment in becoming a state police dispatcher in 2008, a State Trooper in 2014, and a K-9 unit gig that same year, is the fact that she is a self admitted daily weed smoker, a fairly large marijuana dealer, a money launderer who hid and moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in weed proceeds, a tax evader, and a perjurer who lied to the cops, feds, and a grand jury.

An anonymous source recently sent us testimony from Trooper Genduso that she made in Federal case # 1:03-cr-10220, USA vs. Sean Bucci.

Mr. Bucci was her boyfriend from 2001 until 2004. They lived together at 23 Marshall Street in North Reading where they sold large quantities of marijuana.

Before we go any further, we just want to establish that we don’t care about weed. We think it should be legal, and we think all pot dealers currently incarcerated should be freed from prison.

With that being said, the fact of the matter is that when she and Sean Bucci were making excessive amounts of money from selling weed, it was in fact illegal. And now she is a Massachusetts State Trooper who just so happens to be tight with the former MSP commander and dated a high ranking current member of the MSP who’s been tied to two other coverups. In other words, she financially benefitted from dating weed dealers, moved on to dating high ranking members of the MSP, and somehow she got a coveted job for an organization that does extensive background searches. Obviously this case would have come up.

This is a pattern – Trooper Genduso dates people who make lots of money and seemingly have power, and uses her connections to advance her career.

We received the 109 page PDF file of her testimony. It took place at his trial in 2007, four years after Sean Bucci was arrested. She was initially grand juried in 2003 after his arrest when she exercised her 5th Amendment rights. However, those rights were no longer applicable in 2005 for unstated reasons, and she had to testify in front of a grand jury for the Bucci case. She agreed to testify in exchange for immunity in the drug dealing case, so long as she did not lie to the grand jury under oath. However, she did lie several times, which opened her up to new charges of perjury and drug dealing.

For the sake of time we have screenshotted the entire 2007 testimony at the bottom of this blog if you’d like to read it. But it’s really, really long so we will sum it up for you:

• While living with and dating Sean Bucci she admitted to smoking weed every day, as well as taking a variety of prescription meds (with no prescription) some of which she bought online, and others which were given to her by Bucci.
• She claimed she didn’t know he was dealing pot at first, but figured it out later.
• She admitted to selling weed she got from Bucci to a guy named Tim in Worcester, but she did not know his last name.
• She sold him 10 pounds of weed at a time, wrapped up like Christmas presents in case she got pulled over.
• She also sold Tim hyroponic weed, which was more expensive, and netted her $700 a pound.
• Bucci’s supplier was co-defendant Anthony Bellmonte, and they had pictures of Trooper Genduso and Bucci together at the weed kingpin’s wedding.
• They kept large amounts of cash in the house in a safe.
• Their house at 23 Marshall Street in North Reading was robbed, but no cash was taken. However, a shotgun was stolen, and Trooper Genduso conspired with Bucci to concoct a lie about how it was stolen, because the truth would’ve raised suspicions that they were drug dealers.
• Although she was bartending at Centerfold’s strip club, she never paid Bucci rent. He also paid for her food, cell phone bills, and other expenses.
• She conspired with him to have the landline phone registered in her name, because it would draw less suspicion to him. The mortgage for the house was in someone else’s name for the similar reasons.
• She helped count cash and put it in a Middleton bank in a “family account” that was not in his name, strictly in $9,000 increments to avoid the bank reporting deposits over $10K to the IRS.
• They used the weed money to go on vacations to Vegas, Aruba, Florida, and Jamaica, where she was photographed smoking weed. Needless to say, he paid for everything.
• On June 3, 2003, she and Bucci spoke with their connect – Anthony Belmonte – who told them that he was bringing a big shipment the next day.
• Trooper Genduso went with Bucci to get the cash to pay for this shipment together.
• On June 4, 2003, a U-Haul truck drive by Belmonte delivered the weed, which she witnessed and went back to sleep.
• She was awoken by Bucci who told her to get her stuff and flee the house (the cops were coming and they had been monitored for months at this point, unbeknownst to them).
• Bucci told her to take her car, which had a box of cash in the trunk. She was caught on film from surveillance cams checking to make sure it was there before they both fled to unknown locations.
• Belmonte called her shortly afterwards, telling her that he’d been pulled over in Lynnfield and wanted Trooper Genduso and Bucci to pick him up. Sensing a trap she did not comply with his request.
• She took the box of cash to an apartment of an associate and left it in a closet.
• She then went back to 23 Marshall Street, saw cops there, and went to club Spin where she asked a friend to borrow her car (because she believed her car was marked by the cops) and for a referral to an attorney.
• The Attorney she was given was Gary Zerola, who agreed to meet her at Northern Grind coffee shop in Beverly, who offered to store the money, which he knew was from weed proceeds, at a friend’s restaurant.
• Zerola helped her count the cash – $275,000, and she told him it was from the sale of marijuana.
• Trooper Genduso agreed to hire Zerola for Bucci and paid him with $50,000 cash, which he knew came from weed proceeds. He did not get receipts.
• We spoke with several defense attorneys about this and asked if this was common or ethical. All of them said it was not, and that they would never accept that amount of money in cash, and they certainly would give a receipt and have them sign a fee agreement. So basically Attorney Zerola is Boston’s Saul Goodman.
• Attorney Zerola is a pretty boy who was once named once of People Magazine’s most eligible bachelors.

• But in 2008 Zerola was charged with rape by two women. In the first case he went met a woman at a bar, went behind the bar (badass) and poured the woman a drink. They the wet back to her place where she claimed her raped her:
• Around 3 a.m. one friend left (the police report is vague as to whether the other friends did, too), but the woman was tired, and Zerola offered her the downstairs bedroom. The woman fell asleep fully clothed, only, she claims, to be awoken by Zerola. “I just want to play,” she says he told her, according to a memorandum filed in court by prosecutors. After she told him no, he allegedly repeated his entreaty: “I just want to play. I just want to play. ” He then allegedly raped her.
• During the time that he was accepting cash payments from know drug dealers he was living beyond his means, and had recently bought a Porsche. He used this Porsche to impress the alleged victim #2:
• She, like the first, was 19. They spent the afternoon of August 17, 2006, shopping on Newbury Street, Zerola buying her a $450 Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print dress and $200 shoes. Later, driving back from her parents’ house in Newton, where the woman had retrieved some makeup, they passed a fender-bender on Route 9. The woman says Zerola yelled out the Porsche’s window, “Do you need a lawyer?”That evening at Zerola’s condo, the woman met his acquaintance Jesse Bumbaca. According to Bumbaca’s later testimony, at one point, while the woman was in the bathroom, Zerola told him, “I’m going to bang this girl.” (Zerola denied the allegation during the January trial.) The couple then visited two nightclubs, Saint and Mantra; Zerola snorted cocaine and swallowed Vicodins throughout the night, according to the prosecution. (Zerola denied the charge.) The woman did drugs as well.Early the next morning, they returned to Zerola’s place, where he allegedly asked the woman to “take another Vic.” She grew nervous. According to her account, Zerola then got on top of her, held down her arms, ripped off her dress, and slammed her head into a wall. She ran into the hallway naked but he caught up with her, covered her mouth, and dragged her back inside. As the alleged assault continued, Zerola said, “I just want to play,” according to the prosecution. The woman alleges he let her go when he noticed blue lights flashing outside his window.
• Prior to being a shady defense attorney Zerola was an Assistant DA. But he was forced out of that job because of his loyalty to his woman beating friends:
• “The following year Zerola moved on to a more prestigious job as an assistant DA in Suffolk County. But he hadn’t been there long before he was accused of abusing his new clout. When a friend from law school, Vincent J. Froio Jr., was arrested in August 2000 for ransacking an ex-girlfriend’s apartment and threatening her life, Zerola appeared at the police station on Froio’s behalf. Later, he reportedly sat in on Froio’s court hearing, in defiance of his superiors’ orders. (Froio could not be reached for comment.) After that, District Attorney Ralph C. Martin asked Zerola to step down.”
• Zerola was indicted on the rape charges in 2006 and ran away to Miami, where once again he met an 18 year old girl who accused him of rape:
• There he met an 18-year-old Florida International University student at Club Mansion in South Beach, according to police reports later filed in court. They drank and then headed off to a room at the nearby Catalina Hotel, where Zerola allegedly “held her face with his hands and forced her to take an unknown amount of pills with an unknown liquid.” She passed out, and when she woke up, according to police reports, “she felt pain all over her body.” Zerola was still with her, trying to persuade her not to leave. She managed to put on a robe, grab her cell phone, and escape. The woman called a friend on campus, who then called police. “I never had sex with her,” Zerola reportedly said when the officers arrived.
• He beat all three of those charges. Then in November of 2016 he was once again accused of rape: “He was charged with two counts of rape after an incident that occurred early in the morning of November 10. According to prosecutors, the victim and defendant know each other.”

• If you’re keeping score at home, that is four different women who have all accused him of sexual assault.
• No word on what came of those charges. However, he still has an active website, but the link to the Facebook page found on it no longer works. A Google search from the last year reveals that he’s still practicing and defending assholes galore:

• In other words – Attorney Zerola was the IDEAL lawyer for a drug dealer looking to pay in cash with no receipts required.
• Trooper Genduso also testified that she hired Attorney Mike Natola for Bucci, and paid him between $25-50K with no receipts. After the rape charges Natola vouched for his good friend’s character.
• Bucci also arranged through Genduso to pay for co-defendant Darren Martin’s lawyer with $20,000 cash. No receipts of course.
• Trooper Genduso hired a lawyer for herself named Elliot Weinstein, who she paid for with drug money, and did not get a receipt.
• Bucci communicated with Trooper Genduso through what she called “prison code” to move the cash box to a friend’s house, because he was getting nervous.
• She then used this cash (which she knew came from illegal sales of marijuana) to pay for his bills, and well as her own bills AND non-necessities such as dinners out, car payments, and drinks.
• Bucci asked Trooper Genduso to give money to friends in order to keep them from snitching, and told her to ask her to ask them if they were keeping their mouths shut. She followed these orders and reported back to him.
• She broke up with Sean Bucci a few months after he was released in late 2004, after she’d already pled the 5th to the grand jury.
• Then in 2005 she was once again grand juried and could no longer exercise her 5th Amendment rights. So she met up with Bucci at his uncle’s house in Peabody to discuss what she would tell the grand jury.
• She made a deal with prosecutor Peter Leavitt that if she told the whole truth to the grand jury, that she would receive immunity for prosecution in the drug case. However, if she perjured herself she’d face drug dealing and perjury charges.
• During the grand jury she perjured herself several times, including lying about selling weed to Tim, lying that she never counted the $275,000 cash that she gave to Zerola, and who she moved the money around to after Bucci was initially arrested.
• She claimed under questioning from Sean Bucci’s lawyer in the 2007 testimony at his trial below, that the reason she lied was because she “had a long time to think about it” and suddenly remembered what the truth was.
• Despite being a known perjurer and drug dealer, who had LIED to ADA Peter Leavitt (who had cut her a fair deal to stay out of prison), Mr. Leavitt once again had offered her immunity if she agreed to turn on Bucci and testify against him. She did so in order to stay out of prison for a mandatory 10 years.
• Trooper Genduso admitted that she met with Leavitt three times prior to testifying in 2007 against Bucci in order to get her story straight.
• Bucci’s defense attorney suggested a theory that many other people were thinking – Leavitt made a deal with Trooper Genduso to say what he wanted them to say in order to get a conviction against her former boyfriend. In return she stayed out of prison.
• In August of 2004 Bucci started a controversial site called “whosarat.com” which Trooper Genduso came up with the name for. It’s basically a forum where people can post information about “rats,” but those who administer the site don’t actually create content. The site is controversial because it outs informants, which puts them in danger. However, many police tell us they use the site frequently to find out information on cases. Additionally, administrators say they only allow people to post information about informants for non-violent offenses. This is an image from their Facebook page:

Don’t forget, a current Massachusetts State Police Officer was the one who named this website. That is insane.

Trooper Genduso also admitted in her testimony that she was married at the time (2007). We are told that the guy she was married to is currently an employee at the Worcester County House of Corrections. Our sources tell us that he was a state police dispatcher at the time, and likely helped get her the job there, since it would be impossible for someone with her record to get it on her own. Notice she shared this Facebook post on February 9:

“I was wondering if it was a certain employe at Worcester County Sheriff’s Office.” In case you can’t tell, she’s likely speaking about her now ex-husband. Especially ironic was this comment underneath her post:

Notice the one like. Guess who that was?

Yup. A woman who has a 109 page document in which she admits selling drugs, avoiding taxes, laundering money, and committing perjury, can’t figure out how someone with a record could get a job in law enforcement. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony of it all.

Just a reminder, Trooper Genduso told us to “get our facts straight.”

Hey Trooper, is that straight enough for you? Because if you’re gonna tell us to get our facts straight, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. So you should probably make sure you don’t say stuff like that to Turtleboy employees if your closet is filled with interesting facts like the ones we just provided.

Here’s a fact – there’s no way in hell Leigha Genduso should be a state trooper right now. Do you understand how hard it is to become a Statie? Your record has to be immaculate. Even then it’s tough, as those with military and police backgrounds are obviously preferred.

People who commit perjury, deal drugs, hide drug money, and spend drug money excessively after the fact, don’t get to become state troopers. More importantly, I don’t want them to be state troopers. I want to trust the police, since they serve the public. And I don’t trust liars who screw their way up the food chain both in the narcotics community and in the MSP.

So no, you did not get your job because you “worked your ass off.” You got your job as a dispatcher in 2008 (only 1 year after testifying that she was a drug dealer and a perjurer), because you were married to a dispatcher, and you got into the State Police Academy because you were banging a Major, and you were besties with her:

You can sit there and tell yourself otherwise. You can convince yourself that you worked harder than everyone and your love of dogs made you an invaluable asset that the MSP had to have in their ranks. But people like you don’t become state cops on their own. And people like Trooper Genduso would never make it through the extensive background checks without help from someone with influence inside the MSP. That person seems to be Marion McGovern.

She even wished her a happy birthday while we were writing this blog!!!

And in case the MSP brass wants to deny that they knew about this, here’s a press release from the Department of Justice, which states that the MSP was a major part of the investigation and prosecution.

This story is infuriating. But more importantly it’s disappointing. At Turtleboy we revere and respect the Massachusetts State Police as an institution. I personally have many friends who I admire personally who are troopers. Many of them have gotten fucked over in the job at the expense of people like Trooper Genduso.

That’s because they actually did work their ass off to get where they were, but because they weren’t having sex with the Lt. Colonel and weren’t friends with Marion McGovern, they got to have guns pulled on them at trailer homes in Savoy and Monroe (those are real towns).

Troopers Ally Rei and Ryan Sceviour were disciplined months ago for writing a factual report about a judge’s daughter during a drug arrest, and then not changing it when people on Risteen’s level ordered them to. Only a completely corrupt and fucked up organization would punish good cops and promote criminals like Trooper Genduso. If it can be proven that Marion McGovern used her influence to get Trooper Genduso her job, she should be IN JAIL!! This is a woman who rubs elbows with the Attorney General Maura Healey. If we cannot trust the police and the AG then we do not have law and order. Anyone who betrays that trust is the lowest of the low and should be treated much more harshly than a common criminal.

As we said, we value and respect the MSP and 99% of all troopers. But the bad apples have risen to the top, and this is an institution in serious need of top down reform. Your move Charlie Baker.

P.S. Here’s the summary of Bucci’s trial:

The evidence presented at trial established that Bucci’s co-defendant Anthony Belmonte sold Bucci approximately 300 to 350 pounds of marijuana eight or nine times each year, over the course of three and one-half years. Following a nine-month investigation, the United States charged Bucci with sixteen counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and tax evasion. At trial, Bucci acknowledged that he was a marijuana dealer, but disputed the amount of marijuana with which he was charged. The jury found Bucci guilty on all sixteen charges and specifically found that the charged drug-trafficking conspiracy involved over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. The jury also returned several special forfeiture verdicts against Bucci.¹ The district court then sentenced Bucci to 151 months in prison.

The United States initially indicted Bucci, along with Belmonte and another co-defendant, Darren Martin, on two drug-trafficking charges: 1) conspiring to possess at least 100 kilograms of marijuana with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846; and 2) possessing at least 100 kilograms of marijuana with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(B)(vii). The indictment also charged that any of Bucci’s property that represented proceeds from his drug-trafficking offenses was forfeitable under 21 U.S.C. § 853.

A year later, in August 2004, Bucci started a website, whosarat.com, where individuals could post information about government informants. Six months after Bucci started this website, the Government, on February 3, 2005, filed a superseding indictment which charged only Bucci and Martin with the same two drug-trafficking counts, but increased the amount of marijuana charged in the alleged conspiracy from 100 to at least 1000 kilograms. The increased amount of marijuana charged raised the statutory mandatory minimum sentence Bucci faced for the conspiracy offense, if convicted, from five to ten years. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(vii).

A year after Bucci started whosarat.com, the Government, on July 28, 2005, filed a second superseding indictment charging Bucci with the same two drug-trafficking offenses, but adding fourteen additional counts involving money laundering, tax evasion, and unlawfully structuring financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements. The second superseding indictment also added Bucci’s mother, Catherine Bucci, as a co-defendant.

Bucci claims that the Government’s decision to file the two superseding indictments in his case-which increased the number of charges against him from two to sixteen and the amount of marijuana charged in the alleged drug-trafficking conspiracy from 100 to at least 1,000 kilograms-amounted to vindictive prosecution intended to punish him for exercising his First Amendment right to operate his website, whosarat.com.

Bucci next argues that the sentencing court did not realize the extent to which it had discretion to impose a sentence below the advisory guideline range. As proof, Bucci points to the district judge’s announcement, after imposing a sentence at the bottom of the advisory guideline range, that “I, myself, don’t believe in sentences as long as I imposed today, but I couldn’t in my conscience as a judge find reasons that I should go below the guidelines; and accordingly, I’ve sentenced you to the bottom of the guidelines.”