Ex-FBI agent John ‘Zip’ Connolly’s parole in Massachusetts in jeopardy

Shady ex-FBI agent John “Zip” Connolly’s “conditional medical release” is up before a Florida parole board next week.

This means the former handler of murdered mobster James “Whitey” Bulger could be forced back behind bars.

The 83-year-old Connolly was allowed to return to Massachusetts on a medical release on Feb. 17, 2021, because he had about a year to live after being called “terminally ill.” That estimated timeline of his demise has not proven correct.

The Florida Commission on Offender Review voted 2-1 to grant Connolly’s medical release, allowing him to “finish out his life in sunshine,” as one supporter testified that day.

Now, that same commission has Connolly on the agenda for Tuesday. Zip is 11th on the list of convicts set for “Parole and Conditional Medical Releases/Revocations” in a hearing slated to begin at 9 a.m.

Connolly was convicted of second-degree murder in 2008 for wearing his FBI-issued sidearm when he met with Whitey Bulger in Boston to warn him of what businessman John Callahan knew. Bulger was murdered in a West Virginia prison in 2018.

Callahan, the former president of World Jai Alai, was shot dead by John Martorano, one of Whitey’s hitmen. Martorano testified he was working for the mobster when he killed Callahan, his friend. Whitey wanted Callahan dead because the Boston businessman could implicate them in a 1981 slaying of another World Jai Alai executive.

Callahan’s widow, Mary Callahan, has been left to cope and carry on as best she can.

She told the Herald Friday she is grateful the Florida parole board had the decency to alert her to Tuesday’s hearing.

“As a victim, it is good to know they follow up,” said Mary Callahan, also in her early 80s. “He’s supposed to stay at home unless he’s going to the doctor or church. I want to know if they are watching.”

Connolly is also collecting a pension, as the Herald previously reported.

He kept his pension, despite being convicted of second-degree murder in 2008, because Congress passed the Hiss Act in 1954 that allows lawmakers, and therefore federal employees, to keep their retirement benefits unless convicted of espionage or treason.

The interstate compact signed by Connolly allowing him to relocate home with his wife in Massachusetts states “termination of supervision” is set for December of 2047. That now seems in jeopardy.