They had come to Maine when they were in their early teens, after their father had been shot in a dispute over garbage collection routes in Irvington, New Jersey. Louisa Fulci wanted a better life for her sons than for them to be drawn inevitably into the criminality with which her late husband had been associated. Even at the ages of thirteen and fourteen respectively, Tony and Paulie looked like prime candidates for use as instruments of blunt force. They were then barely five feet four inches tall but each weighed as much as any two of his peers, and their body fat ratio was so low that a waif model would have wept for it.

Unfortunately, there are individuals whose physical appearance condemns them to a certain path in life. The Fulcis looked like criminals, and it seemed inevitable that criminals they would become. The possibility of their cheating fate was further hampered by their emotional and psychological makeup, which might charitably have been described as combustible. The Fulcis had fuses so short that they barely existed. As time went on, a great many medical professionals, including a number attached to prison welfare and probation services, attempted, unsuccessfully, to balance the Fulcis’ moods by pharmaceutical intervention. What they discovered in the process was quite fascinating, and interesting papers for professional and academic study might well have resulted had the Fulcis been willing to stay still long enough to cooperate in their formulation.

In most cases of psychological disorder, aberrant behavior could be moderated and controlled through the judicious application of a cocktail of assorted medications. It was simply a matter of finding the right combination of drugs and encouraging the subject to take them regularly and continually. Where the Fulcis were concerned, though, it was discovered that the drugs would only operate effectively for a short period of time once they had lodged in their system, frequently one month or less. After that, their effectiveness dwindled, and upping the dosages did not result in any corresponding decrease in psychotic behavior. The medical professionals would then return to the drawing board, come up with another potential winning combination of blue, red, and green pills, only to discover that, once again, the Fulcis’ natural inclinations appeared to reassert themselves. They were like organ recipients rejecting a donor kidney, or captive lab rats that, faced with an obstacle preventing them from reaching their food, gradually worked out a way to get around it.

One of the psychiatrists even went so far as to title a possible paper on the Fulcis. It was called Viral Psychosis: A New Approach to Psychotic Behavior in Adults. His theory was that the Fulcis’ psychosis bore some resemblance to the manner in which certain viruses mutated in response to medical attempts to counter them. The Fulcis were psychotic in a way that went far beyond any normal conception of the term. The paper was never published because the psychiatrist was afraid of both the mockery of his peers and the potential damage that might be inflicted upon his person if the Fulcis discovered that he had referred to them as psychotic, even under the guise of protective pseudonyms. The Fulcis were not stupid. A senior law enforcement figure had once suggested that the Fulcis “couldn’t even spell rehabilitation.” This was untrue. The Fulcis could spell it. They just had no concept of how it might be applied to their own situation, for they had no insight into their own psychosis. They were happy. They loved their mother. They valued their friends. It was all very straightforward. As far as the Fulcis were concerned, rehabilitation was for criminals, and they were not criminals. They just looked like criminals, which wasn’t the same thing at all.

Some branches of the law had been given cause to differ with the Fulcis’ interpretation of their condition over the years. The brothers had been jailed in Seattle for the theft of $150,000 worth of Russian vodka from the port, even though they had only been hired to drive the trucks. Nevertheless, they were the ones who were found in possession of the booze, and they took the fall. They had also done time in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the Canadian maritime province of New Brunswick, mostly for offenses involving what their good friend Jackie Garner liked to call “transfers of ownership,” occasionally involving a degree of violence if someone deliberately or inadvertently broke one of their rules. As with the law, ignorance was no defense.

But the most significant moment in their lives occurred when they were arrested for murder in Connecticut. The death in question was that of a bookie named Benny the Breather, who had engaged in a little creative accounting that did not meet with the approval of his bosses. These bosses were distantly related to some of the individuals who had been involved in the garbage disposal dispute that had ended the life of the Fulcis’ father. Benny the Breather was so named in honor of a conviction for making lewd and lascivious telephone calls to various women who had been less than flattered by his attentions. Since Benny had made all of the calls from the comfort of his own bed, it hadn’t taken the police long to track him down. In the course of his arrest, Benny had taken a nasty tumble down the stairs of his apartment block due to the fact that one of the women he had called was the wife of a sergeant at the local precinct. This fall had left Benny with a slight limp, so he was also sometimes known as Benny the Gimp. Benny hadn’t cared much for either of his nicknames, and had been known to protest vociferously at the use of either of them, but the judicious introduction of a bullet to his head had solved the problem for all concerned.

Unfortunately, a good citizen had witnessed the crime and came forward with a description of the men responsible, which happened to match that of the Fulci brothers. They were hauled in, identified in a lineup, and tried for murder. Circumstantial evidence was found confirming their presence at the scene, which was nearly as surprising to the Fulcis as their initial identification in the lineup, given that they hadn’t killed anyone, and certainly not Benny the Breather, aka Benny the Gimp.

The judge, taking into account psychiatric reports, sentenced them to life imprisonment, and they were sent to separate institutions: Paulie to the Level Four Corrigan Correctional Institution in Uncasville, and Tony to the Level Five Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. The latter was designed primarily to manage those inmates who had demonstrated an inability to adjust to confinement and posed a threat to the community, staff, and other inmates. Tony’s immediate incarceration there-do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars-was ordered because his mind began to shake off the shackles of his medication while his trial was still ongoing, resulting in an altercation that left one jailhouse cop with a broken jaw.

And there the brothers might have remained-puzzled, hurt, and innocent-had the men who ordered the killing of Benny the Breather/Gimp not felt a pang of guilt at seeing two Italian-Americans wrongfully convicted of murder, particularly two Italian-Americans whose father had died in the service of a greater criminal good, leaving a widow who was regarded by one and all as a model of ethnic motherhood. Some calls were made, and it was suggested to a crusading attorney that the convictions in question were unsafe. The case against the Fulcis was further weakened when two similarly large gentlemen were arrested in New Haven following the attempted murder of a nightclub owner and were found to be in possession of the weapon that had killed Benny. Apparently, it had some kind of sentimental value to one of them, and he had been reluctant to part with it.

The result was that the Fulcis were pardoned and released after thirty-seven months in jail, and obtained a very nice settlement from the state of Connecticut for their troubles. This they used to ensure that their mother would be kept in comfort and style for the rest of her days. Louisa, in turn, gave the brothers a weekly allowance to do with as they chose. They chose mainly to buy beer and ribs, and a monster Dodge 4x4 that they customized to within an inch of its life. Next to their mother, and each other, it was their most cherished possession on earth.