Biography
Joseph "Joey" Aceto was an early participant in the Maine prison–rooted militant left of the mid-1970s — documented by a federal court as having taken part in activities of the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit and as a member of the allied Fred Hampton Unit of the People's Forces. Arrested on July 4, 1976 near Boston with dynamite and guns in his car, he pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of explosives, served less than three years, and then turned state's evidence — becoming the government's chief informant against Raymond Levasseur, Thomas Manning, and the others — entering the federal Witness Protection Program under the name "Balino." He is recorded here for his role in the group, with the explicit caveat that he was a cooperating witness, not a co-defendant who stood with the others. In later years, unconnected to any political cause, he committed serious violent crimes — a prison murder in Arkansas and a 2000 kidnapping and shooting in Montana — and died in a Montana prison in 2014 while serving a 220-year sentence.
