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.