Pubdate: Sat, 27 Aug 2005
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2005 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: Laura Crimaldi and O'Ryan Johnson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

DAD OF MAN WHO OD'D IN PUBLIC GARDEN SHARES

My Boy's Sad Story

 From the cake to the sausage dinner, everything was in place, and John P. 
Gagliardi Jr. seemed excited about celebrating his girlfriend's birthday 
Thursday night.

But when he never showed, the party was canceled and the family started 
searching for a man they knew spent most of his adult life consumed by 
drugs and crime.

Their search ended yesterday morning when they saw the 42-year-old Medford 
native succumbing to heroin - in public - on the front page of the Boston 
Herald.

"Maybe all the people who he knows who are drugs users would be deterred," 
said Gagliardi's father, John Sr., who has now lost two sons to drug 
overdoses. "If it deters one drug addict, then it's worth it - his picture 
being on the front page of the paper."

Gagliardi Jr. died in the Boston Public Garden at midday Thursday after 
shooting up heroin with two other men. The final hit of smack brought 
decades of drug addiction to an end. It also broke the hearts of 
Gagliardi's devoted kin.

Family say John Jr. lost his way in 1973 after his mother, Joan, 34, died 
during open-heart surgery on Good Friday. In 1999, his younger brother, 
Joseph, 35, was found dead of an overdose in the men's room of a Cambridge 
public library.

"Many years ago when one of my close friends dared me to try drugs I 
succumbed to the pressure of my peers and went along with the crowd," 
Gagliardi Jr. wrote in a 1994 affidavit while serving nine years in prison. 
"That day was the beginning of the end of my life as I had known it up to 
that time. . . . In a short time my life became one never-ending search for 
drugs."

Gagliardi resorted to crime to feed his addiction to OxyContin and heroin. 
His nine-year stint in state prison began after he pleaded guilty to 
stabbing three cooks and a cashier at Bambino's Restaurant in Malden while 
high in 1993.

Gagliardi was most recently arrested in March when he refused to pay a $47 
cab fare, then threatened the driver with a knife. When police questioned 
him, he begged cops not to arrest him, since it was Easter weekend and his 
mother died on Good Friday. Once in the cruiser, Gagliardi attacked the 
officer next to him, records indicate.

"When he's straight, he's the best person," said his sister, Joan Limone, 
who last saw her brother Thursday when she dropped him off near Medford 
City Hall so he could run errands. Gagliardi had gained weight and seemed 
to have cut back on drugs in recent months, she said. "Everybody loved him. 
He had the best heart. He was the first one to send a birthday card. The 
first one to call if someone was sick. Everyone in Medford knows him for that."

Gagliardi's 65-year-old father, who himself has been convicted of marijuana 
trafficking, received an unexplained cell phone call yesterday that family 
members said was a message from John Jr.

The message, they say, begins "I'm OK," is interrupted by a kiss, then 
finishes, "I love you, Dad."

Gagliardi's girlfriend, Kim Anderson, who turns 28 this weekend, said she 
will name their unborn son John. She made John Jr. a grilled cheese 
sandwich Thursday before sending him off for the afternoon. "He left the 
apartment. He said, 'I love you. I'll always love you. You're all I got,' " 
she said.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman