Vincent James Flemmi (September 5, 1935 – October 16, 1979), also known as "Jimmy The Bear", was an American mobster who freelanced for the Winter Hill Gang and the Patriarca crime family.

His father Giovanni was a bricklayer who, according to fellow mobster Kevin Weeks, served in the Royal Italian Army during World War I.

Two days later, despite their knowledge of the impending murder of Deegan, the Boston FBI office approved Vincent as an informant and assigned him to the agent who had recruited him, H. Paul Rico.

The evening of March 12, 1965, Edward Deegan was shot to death by Vincent Flemmi and Joseph Barboza, among others in an alleyway in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

Radio talk host Howie Carr would later surmise, "For the FBI, it was more important to keep Vincent, and later Barboza, on the street as informants than it was to prevent the framing of innocent men.

[1] One of Deegan's friends told him about a bank burglary in Chelsea, and he'd meet up with several guys from Ebb Tide, a Mafia-run gin mill on Revere Beach.

[2] According to Kevin Weeks, a longtime associate of Flemmi's brother Stephen, The murder of Francis Benjamin, for which the Bear had gotten the life sentence, was a particularly ugly one.