MARSING, Idaho  Enrico Ponzo was never a proper mobster, a “made man” in the vernacular of the underworld. He was a renegade, prosecutors say, part of a violent faction intent on ousting the bosses of the powerful Patriarca crime family in Boston in the early 1990s.

When a wide-ranging indictment came up against him and 14 others in 1997, Mr. Ponzo was charged with crimes that included attempted murder and extortion. But he was also listed as the target of a contract killing planned by one of the other defendants.

While most everyone else in the case went to prison, Mr. Ponzo was not arrested  he had been missing since 1994.

Image Enrico Ponzo, left, when he was known as Jeffrey John “Jay” Shaw to his neighbors in Marsing, Idaho. Credit... FBI, via Associated Press; right, Angela Richard, via Associated Press

Jeffrey John Shaw, known as Jay, was never a natural rancher. The accent from back East and his inexperience with cattle gave him away quickly as another newcomer reinventing himself in the West. “He wore bib overalls and straw hats,” said Brodie Clapier, a neighbor and a longtime rancher. “People did wear bib overalls here  in the 1930s.”