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Thread: James "Whitey" Bulger

  1. #21
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    Bulger and prosecution witness Kevin Weeks go toe-to-toe in heated courtroom exchange

    Near the end of a dramatic day of testimony in the racketeering trial of James “Whitey” Bulger, key prosecution witness Kevin Weeks and Bulger shared a heated exchange of words. Bulger’s attorney J.W. Carney Jr. questioned Weeks about the deal he made with prosecutors, in which he received a six-year sentence in exchange for testifying against Bulger.

    The outburst between the gangster and his former protege was the second time Bulger has lost his temper during the trial.

    A transcript of the exchange follows:

    Carney: “You won against the system?”

    Weeks: “What did I win? What did I win?”

    Carney: “You won five years.”

    Weeks: “Five people are dead, five people are dead.”

    Carney: “Does that bother you at all?”

    Weeks: “Yeah it bothers me.”

    Carney: “How does it bother you?”

    Weeks: “Because we killed people that were rats and I had the two biggest rats right next to me. That’s why it ...”

    Bulger: “You suck.”

    Weeks: “[Expletive] you, okay.”

    Bulger: “[Expletive] you, too”

    Weeks: “What do you want to do?

    Judge Denise J. Casper: “Hey. Mr. Bulger. Mr. Bulger. Let your attorneys speak for you.

    Mr. Weeks here’s how this works: You answer the questions, okay?

    Mr. Carney, you can finish your questioning.”

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...aeO/story.html

  2. #22
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    At ‘Whitey’ Bulger trial, forensic expert describes remains found in secret graveyard in Dorchester in 2000

    A forensic anthropologist with the state medical examiner’s office told jurors in US District Court today that investigators recovered the remains of three bodies from a secret grave in Dorchester – the same site where James “Whitey” Bulger allegedly buried three people he is accused of murdering.

    Ann Marie Mires, who worked with the state medical examiner’s office until 2009, told jurors in Bulger’s racketeering trial in Boston that investigators recovered the remains in the graves across from Florian Hall on a cold Jan. 13, 2000. They stayed throughout the night digging through the grave to recover the remains, including the body of a female.

    Mires has already identified two of the remains as belonging to Arthur “Bucky” Barrett and Deborah Hussey, two of Bulger’s alleged victims.

    Kevin Weeks, Bulger’s former protégé, told jurors this week that he participated in the killings of Barrett and Hussey and a third victim – John McIntyre – in a South Boston home in the early 1980s. They allegedly buried the bodies in the basement of the home at 799 East Third St., but exhumed the remains and moved them to the Dorchester site in 1985 because the house was being sold.

    During her testimony Wednesday morning, Mires said the remains of two of the bodies were disarticulated, supporting Weeks testimony that the bodies were removed from one site to another. She also said that garden lime was also at the scene. Weeks testified earlier that they used lime so that the bodies would decompose quicker.

    Mires said that the skulls of Hussey and Barrett had damage to the jaw area, consistent with Weeks’s claim that their teeth were removed when they were killed to hamper identification by law enforcement.

    Also today, Mires agreed that a wound to Barrett’s skull indicates he was shot in the back of the head, the bullet coming out of his jaw. Weeks testified that Bulger shot Barrett in the back of the head.

    “That was our assessment,” Mires said.

    Hussey was strangled, but Mires said the injuries were not visible on her remains. Investigators determined her “cause of death was homicidal violence, ideology unknown.”

    Weeks testified he saw Bulger on the ground with his legs wrapped around Hussey, choking her. He said Bulger’s ally, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi thought Hussey was still alive, so he used a stick and a rope to strangle her some more.


    Whitey's Women

    Mires, considered an expert witness, spent the morning describing for jurors how investigators approach a crime scene and a dig site. Also, she described the process in examining remains.

    “The skeleton is like a road map, it allows us, anthropologists, to drive through the lifetime of an individual,” she said. In “archeology, you don’t know what you’re going to find, so it’s revealing itself as you go along.”

    She also said that the bodies had been at the site for some time. The bones started to take on the color of the soil. And roots started to grow in between the remains.

    “There is a lot of root growing through this material, and it speaks to how long its been in the ground,” Mires said.

    Weeks, now 57, led investigators to the grave site after he began cooperating with authorities following his own racketeering indictment in 1999. By then, Bulger had already fled an earlier indictment in 1995, and spent 16 years on the run before his arrest in June, 2011.

    Weeks cooperated with authorities and told of his crimes with Bulger, leading investigators to the bodies. He spent five years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including aiding and abetting in five murders.

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...gAO/story.html

  3. #23
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    Former drug dealers say they paid tribute to ‘Whitey’ Bulger to sell drugs in South Boston

    A convicted drug dealer from South Boston told a US District Court jury today that James “Whitey” Bulger ordered him to pay $100,000 in tribute in the 1980s, and that he only agreed to pay the money to the South Boston gangster after his 17-year-old brother was shot.

    Anthony Attardo, 55, a retired Marine who manages The Sports Connection, a bar in South Boston, said Bulger showed up at his house the day after his brother was shot and told him “you’re next” if he did not pay the $100,000.

    Bulger was never charged in the shooting, but Attardo said he believes he was involved. He had other siblings, so he agreed to pay. The teen survived the shooting.

    “I grew up in Southie all my life… everybody knew his reputation,” Attardo said. “Very dangerous. He meant what he said.”

    Attardo said he was selling 25 kilos of cocaine and making $35,000 a month in the 1980s – with cocaine he bought in Florida – but Bulger’s crew was angry he wasn’t buying from them.

    Attardo said he gave Bulger $80,000 after the visit at his home, and that the gangster told him, “You can do what you want now.”

    Henry B. Brennan, an attorney for Bulger, suggested through cross examination that Attardo has a history of lying on the witness stand, including about his own crimes. Attardo agreed he has lied before and tried to protect Kevin Weeks, one of Bulger’s cohorts who later cooperated in the case against Bulger.

    Attardo was sentenced to eight years in prison in 1998 for trafficking prescription medication. He was also involved in a scheme to extort money from drug dealers from the Dominican Republic who were operating in South Boston. The dealers were really undercover law enforcement officers.

    Earlier today, another former drug dealer from South Boston told the jury in Bulger’s racketeering trial that he sold drugs and paid rent to because he feared he would “get hurt.”

    “He was the boss,” Paul Moore told jurors.

    Moore, now 63, an Army veteran and former local boxer and bouncer, said that he partnered with Bulger’s cohort Billy Shea to sell cocaine around 1981. He later sold marijuana.

    “I wanted to make some money,” he said.

    He said he eventually sold several kilos of cocaine and hundreds of pounds of marijuana a week. He would pay $3,000 to $5,000 to Bulger in rent, as a tribute that allowed him to continue his activities in South Boston.

    At one point, in 1983, Billy Shea was arrested, but Moore continued to pay Bulger through Bulger’s one-time ally, Weeks. They also bought their drug supply from Bulger’s crew.

    “They wanted their tribute, and we paid,” said Moore.

    Moore said he paid $3,600 directly to Bulger once, and the gangster asked, “Is it all there?”

    He also said he was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine once for buying his drugs from another drug ring, even though Bulger’s crew had no supply available.

    Moore said he complained to Weeks, but was told he or his partner could “end up in a body bag.” He said Weeks, who he had known since childhood, later apologized.

    Moore and Attardo are listed among Bulger’s alleged extortion victims in a sweeping federal racketeering indictment that alleges he ran a criminal enterprise based on threats. Bulger is also accused of murder and money laundering.

    Moore agreed to cooperate with authorities after he was sentenced to nine years in prison for a drug trafficking arrest in 1990. His sentence was halved and he and his wife were placed in a witness protection program.

    Under questioning by Bulger’s lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., Moore agreed that he knew his drug dealing was illegal, but that Bulger had established rules and he would be OK if – as Carney put it – “you followed the rules and paid your debt.”

    Moore also agreed that he never sold pot to children and never sold heroin or angel dust, which Carney suggested were more lethal street drugs.

    “It wouldn’t be allowed in South Boston,” Moore said.

    Moore later agreed under questioning by prosecutors that he sold cocaine, and that people can overdose from cocaine.

    For decades, Bulger kept a myth that he kept drugs out of South Boston. But in his racketeering trial, he has acknowledged being the head of drug rings.

    Also Monday, Dr. Kathleen Crowley, a forensic dentist who consults for the state medical examiner’s office, matched the dental records of Arthur “Bucky” Barrett, one of Bulger’s alleged victims, with the remains of a man found in a makeshift grave in 2000.

    Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi removed Barrett’s teeth so it would be tougher to identify him after Bulger allegedly shot Barrett in 1983, according to Weeks, who testified this week that he helped bury the remains.

    Crowley also said dental records identified the remains of John McIntyre, a Quincy fisherman who was 32 when Bulger allegedly killed him in November 1984. McIntyre had implicated Bulger’s gang in drug smuggling and an ill-fated effort to ship guns to the Irish Republican Army.

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...9BL/story.html

  4. #24
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    Ex-FBI Agent: Whitey Bulger Victim Predicted His Own Death

    Every day of the Bulger trial, Tommy Donahue carries his father’s death certificate to court in his pants pocket.

    His father Michael was an innocent man, gunned down allegedly by James “Whitey” Bulger himself in 1982, when Bulger was aiming for someone else.

    Today, former state medical examiner, Dr. Richard Evans, showed jurors in Bulger’s racketeering trial 19 individual death certificates — Donahue’s included — one of each grisly murder with which Bulger stands charged.

    But it was Donahue’s killing that returned to the fore when another former FBI agent, Gerald Montanari, took the stand Monday afternoon.

    Back in 1982, Bulger found out a man named Brian Halloran was talking to the federal agents about what he claimed was Whitey’s involvement in the murder of Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler.

    Those FBI tips were supposed to be secret, but corrupt agent John Connolly told Bulger and his crew. A short time later, both Halloran and Donahue were dead, in the same shooting.

    Montanari says Halloran told him that if Bulger or his partner found out he was cooperating, they would “go to any extreme,” even if it meant killing bystanders.

    Disgraced former FBI supervisor John Morris has already told jurors in this trial that he was the one who told Connolly about the perceived threat to Bulger that Halloran posed.

    Then, when Bulger and partner Steve Flemmi are listed as suspects in the Oklahoma killing, they were brought into FBI Boston headquarters to pose for a picture, to be shared with investigators in Tulsa. In the photo, Bulger is smiling broadly. He and Flemmi wore business suits to the photo session.

    The FBI at the time was well aware that these two men were suspects, but apparently kept using them as informants.

    “These are the guys who was coming to my house, questioning my mom,” Tommy Donahue said after court. “Knowing the whole entire time exactly what happened to my father, and they come and throw crap questions at my mother? You know, the government’s gotta do right by my family sooner or later.”

    http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/07/1...his-own-death/

  5. #25
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    Daughter of alleged Whitey Bulger victim tells jury her father was about to sell jai alai business

    The daughter of an Oklahoma businessman testified in the federal racketeering trial of James “Whitey” Bulger today that her father was slain in 1981 as he was trying to sell his business, World Jai Alai.

    Pam Wheeler, an attorney, said her father, Roger Wheeler, wanted to sell all or part of the business, a sport that people can legally gamble on, because it was not performing as he had hoped.

    “Fairly quickly, he was becoming disillusioned with it,” Pam Wheeler said. “It was not performing as he thought it should. ... He liked to do deals.”

    The slaying came after John Callahan, a Boston businessman and former president of the company, became worried that Roger Wheeler had learned that Callahan had been skimming profits, according to earlier testimony in the US District Court trial of the 83-year-old Bulger.

    Callahan asked hitman John Martorano to kill Wheeler in order to end Wheeler’s probe of the profit skimming and enable Callahan to take over the company. After Callahan promised to make payments to Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, Bulger approved the hit on Wheeler, Martorano previously testified in the trial.

    Pam Wheeler offered a perspective into her father’s business dealings just before he was slain at a Tulsa, Okla., country club on May 27, 1981.

    Wheeler said her father, who was also chairman of the board of Telex Corp., bought the company in 1979, but was already interested in selling. He was negotiating a sale with Richard Donovan, who replaced Callahan as chief executive.

    Pam Wheeler also said that former FBI agent H. Paul Rico had been chief of security of World Jai Alai.

    According to previous testimony in the trial, Rico provided Roger Wheeler’s schedule to the Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang, helping Martorano target him.

    Roger Wheeler is one of the 19 murder victims listed in Bulger’s federal racketeering indictment. Bulger is accused of running a massive crime enterprise that killed people, laundered money, dealt drugs, and extorted businessmen. Prosecutors say he was allowed to carry out his crimes for so long because he was secretly cooperating with the FBI and was protected by his corrupt handlers.

    Also Wednesday, Donald DeFago, 64, a former agent with US Customs Services, testified that he investigated organized crime and drug smuggling into Boston Harbor, and he worked with a cooperating witness, John McIntyre.

    McIntyre was also one of Bulger’s alleged victims. Bulger allegedly shot him in 1984 after learning he had been cooperating with authorities, according to previous testimony in the trial.

    McIntyre’s remains were found in a shallow grave in Dorchester in January 2000. Bulger’s former associate, Kevin Weeks, testified that he helped bury his body there.

    DeFago said McIntyre disappeared after giving authorities a statement about drug dealing and gun smuggling. DeFago said he investigated McIntyre’s death but did not know what happened to McIntyre until his remains were recovered in 2000.

    DeFago said authorities had learned in 1984 that a Gloucester trawler, the Valhalla, had delivered seven tons of weapons to a ship off the coast of Ireland to be delivered to the Irish Republican Army. That ship and the weapons were seized by authorities.

    McIntyre, a Quincy fisherman, was aboard the Valhalla, and was arrested on a drunken driving charge after the trip. He began cooperating with authorities, DeFago said.

    McIntyre, according to DeFago, provided information about gun running and drug smuggling, helping investigators in one case that yielded 36 tons of marijuana.

    Bulger learned that McIntyre was an informant after one trip, according to previous testimony in the trial. The leaders of McIntyre’s drug ring offered to help him captain a ship if he could put up $20,000 to become a partner in the deal. When McIntyre, who had no assets, was able to come up with the money, Bulger figured he was cooperating and received the money from his handlers, according to previous testimony in the trial.

    DeFago said McIntyre “had instructions to call us. .... When he didn’t call, we got suspicious and started to go out to look for him.”

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...khL/story.html

  6. #26
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    Whitey Bulger trial witness found dead in Boston

    Stephen “Stippo” Rakes, a former South Boston man who had waited decades for a chance to testify against James “Whitey” Bulger, was found dead in Lincoln on Wednesday, authorities said today.

    The cause of death is being determined by the state medical examiner’s office. There were no obvious signs of trauma to the body, which was found at about 1:30 p.m. in the Mill Street area, authorities said.

    The case is being investigated by State and Lincoln police, according to a statement released by Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan.

    Steve Davis, the brother of alleged Bulger murder victim Debra Davis, said he became close friends with Rakes. He said Rakes was physically fit, swimming year-round in the bay outside the L Street annex in South Boston.

    Davis said Rakes introduced him to cycling and the two of them frequently took long rides from Milton and Quincy to Castle Island in South Boston.

    “He was in good shape,” said Davis.

    He said Rakes, who lived in Quincy, had talked about buying property in Lincoln and suggested that Rakes may have been in the town to look at property.

    Rakes, 59, was one of the most determined of Bulger’s alleged victims, still furious at the notorious South Boston gangster and his allies, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi and Kevin Weeks, for allegedly extorting his South Boston liquor store from him at gunpoint in 1984 — while Rakes’s daughters were in the same room.

    Rakes described the harrowing incident to the Globe in 2001 when he filed a civil lawsuit against federal officials. The suit was thrown out in 2005 by a federal judge who ruled he had waited too long to begin the litigation.

    Boston attorney Anthony Cardinale, who represented Rakes’s ex-wife, Julie Dammers, in civil litigation connected to Bulger and the liquor store, said today that both Dammers and one of Rakes’s daughters were shocked by his sudden death.

    “They were shocked to hear he passed away and anxious to find out about any details they can,’’ Cardinale said.

    Cardinale, who helped expose the connection between the FBI and Bulger and Flemmi, who were prized FBI informants during their reign of terror in Boston’s underworld, said he did not believe Rakes’s death had any connection to the ongoing prosecution of Bulger.

    “All I can say is I seriously doubt it has anything do with any part of this case,’’ Cardinale said. “That’s my sense.’’

    Rakes has been a constant presence at the US District Court in South Boston where the 83-year-old Bulger has been on trial for the past six weeks, a trial that took place only after Bulger was captured in California two years ago after spending 16 years on the run.

    Rakes, who was on the witness list of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, was told Tuesday that prosecutors did not plan to call him to testify, a decision that Steve Davis said had devastated Rakes.

    Davis said Rakes perceived the decision by Ortiz’s office as robbing him of the opportunity to refute claims made during the trial by Kevin Weeks, Bulger’s former protege, that Rakes had sent his sister, Mary O’Malley, as an intermediary to Bulger and Weeks, asking if they were interested in buying his liquor store.

    Weeks testified that they agreed on a price of $100,000, but when Bulger, Weeks and Flemmi, tried to close the deal Rakes demanded more money.

    “He [Rakes] tried to shake us down,” Weeks said on the witness stand during Bulger’s trial.

    At that point, Weeks said, the three gangsters grew infuriated and pulled a gun in front of Rakes’s small children at his home in South Boston, threatening Rakes unless he sold the store.

    But Rakes told a vastly different story, saying the gangsters approached him in what amounted to a hostile takeover. They told him to take the money or he would be killed.

    An US attorney’s spokeswoman declined comment on Stephen Rakes’s death.

    Rakes went to Florida after the transaction, and rumors were so rife in South Boston that Bulger had killed him that Bulger called him in Florida and demanded that he return. When he did, Bulger and Weeks made a point of standing with Rakes at busy intersections in South Boston so the word would circulate that Rakes was alive.

    In a series of interviews at the courthouse today, Davis said he knew something was wrong when Rakes did not call him back Wednesday.

    Davis said he was told by authorities that Rakes was still dressed in the clothes he was wearing Tuesday when he was found in Lincoln.

    News of Rakes’s death hit hard among other relatives of Bulger’s victims, including Patricia Donahue, whose husband was allegedly slain by Bulger.

    “I feel so bad,’’ she said. “You sit here every day with these victims and they become part of your life. He seemed so spirited. He had a lot of spirit.”

    Donahue said she spoke to Rakes early Tuesday about the possibility he would take the stand.

    “He was nervous, but he wanted to give his opinion,” she said.

    She added, “Our prayers and thoughts go to his family.’’

    At Rakes’s Quincy home, near Interstate 95, an unidentified man who gathered mail from Rakes’s mailbox said, “I don’t know anything, can’t remember the last time I saw him ... I don’t get involved with all that stuff.”

    A woman who owns a nearby business said she was aware that a central figure in the Bulger trial lived across the street, and she recalled seeing Rakes recently. The woman said she often saw Rakes driving a white van but she hadn’t seen the van in recent days.

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...ntL/story.html

  7. #27
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    Ex-smuggler recounts Russian roulette with 'Whitey' Bulger

    A former drug kingpin testified on Wednesday that accused Boston mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger forced him to play Russian roulette in a nightclub's back room in 1983 as a way to make him hand over $1 million cash.

    "The conversation wasn't going too well... But I wasn't going to pay him $1 million. I just wasn't going to do it," William David Lindholm said in the murder and racketeering trial of one of Boston's most storied criminals.

    He said Bulger, leader of the Winter Hill Gang which ruled the Boston underworld in the 1970s and '80s, pulled out a revolver with a silencer screwed onto the barrel and a bullet lodged in one of the chambers. "It was pointed at my head and the trigger was pulled," he said.

    Bulger, 83, is on trial for charges that he killed or ordered the murders of 19 people. Bulger has pleaded not guilty to all charges but through his lawyer has admitted being an extortionist, drug dealer, loan shark and "organized criminal."

    Lindholm said he eventually got Bulger to accept $250,000 instead of $1 million by convincing the mob boss that his marijuana smuggling operation was smaller than it actually was.

    He also said that before he left the club, Bulger complimented him.

    "He shook my hand, and told me that I handled myself well," Lindholm said. But he added Bulger left him with a stark warning not to sell marijuana behind his back again.

    "Yeah, he'd cut my head off."

    Bulger's trial has riveted Boston and given the jury a glimpse of an era when machine-gun toting mobsters shot associates who talked too much and buried bodies under bridges. It has also exposed a dark side of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    During his reign, corrupt FBI agents from the Boston office traded information with Bulger, who used the tips to elude arrest and murder "rats," associates who spoke to police.

    Bulger, through his attorneys has repeatedly denied ever providing information to the FBI, saying he paid a corrupt agent for tips but offered none of his own.

    IRISH CONNECTION

    Jurors in the Bulger trial also got a detailed description of how his gang used fishing boats and freighters in the 1980s to smuggle drugs into the United States and ship guns to the Irish Republican Army for its guerrilla campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

    Prosecutors focused on the events related to the murder of fisherman John McIntyre, who helped the Boston mob smuggle guns to the Irish Republican Army in the 1980s.

    McIntyre, who had crewed several smuggling vessels, vanished in 1984 after helping investigators intercept 36 tons of marijuana stashed in a gravel cargo on a freighter in the Boston Harbor, former U.S. Customs officer Donald DeFago testified.

    McIntyre's body was not found until 2000.

    "He had instructions to call us ... every day and when he didn't call we got suspicious and started to go out and look for him," DeFago said.

    Bulger associates Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and Kevin Weeks testified at previous hearings that Bulger shot the man in the head after being tipped off he was informing. Flemmi is expected to testify this week.

    DeFago said McIntyre had named Bulger associate Patrick Nee as an organizer of drugs and weapons shipments to and from the Boston area, including seven tons of guns and weapons bound for the IRA that Irish authorities intercepted in 1984.

    Those weapons and ammunition had left Massachusetts on a Gloucester swordfishing boat named the Valhalla. At the time, Irish authorities said it was the largest known weapons shipment headed to the IRA.

    Bulger rose from his youth in a housing project to become the most feared criminal in Boston. After a 1994 tip from a corrupt FBI agent that arrest was imminent, Bulger fled.

    He was finally captured in Santa Monico, California, in 2011 after 16 years on the lam.

    His story inspired the 2006 Academy Award-winning film "The Departed," in which Jack Nicholson played a character loosely based on Bulger.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...96G10O20130717

  8. #28
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    Former associate: "Bulger was long-time FBI informant"

    A former associate of James "Whitey" Bulger testified Thursday that he and the alleged criminal mastermind of a South Boston gang were FBI informants for about 15 years.

    Testifying in Bulger's federal racketeering trial, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi stared down Bulger, who he hadn't seen since 1994. Flemmi, serving a life sentence after pleading to 10 murders, is considered a key witness in the case against Bulger, the 83-year-old notorious leader of South Boston's Winter Hill gang.

    As he was led into the witness box, Flemmi gave Bulger a long, hard stare, and Bulger glanced over at him. Afterward, Flemmi, who's now 79, stood in the box with his hands on his hips and stared confidently at Bulger. The two exchanged words briefly, though it wasn't clear what they said to each other.

    Bulger has already had two profanity-laced outbursts during the trial, one directed at former protege Kevin Weeks; the other at a former FBI agent who admitted taking payoffs from Bulger.

    Though Flemmi's first appearance was short, prosecutors worked quickly, asking Flemmi to explain how he and Bulger gave information about the Mafia and other criminal organizations to an FBI agent. Flemmi said the two were top-echelon government informants from about 1975 to 1990, a claim the defense has repeatedly tried to rebut.

    Flemmi's testimony - which continues Friday - came after the body of Stephen "Stippo" Rakes was found near Lincoln, Mass. Rakes had been scheduled to testify that Bulger and members of his Winter Hill gang forced him at gunpoint to sell his liquor store to Bulger in 1984. But the U.S. Attorney's Office told Rakes Tuesday that they did not plan to call him to testify, according to Rakes' family.

    Rakes' body was found at about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office. There were no signs of trauma to Rakes' body. The medical examiner's office is conducting an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.

    ABC News reported that police told Rakes' family that the death appeared to be a suicide. No phone or wallet was found on the body. Local and state authorities are investigating.

    Steve Davis, a Rakes' friend and brother of another alleged Bulger victim, told the Boston Globe that the decision not to testify had devastated Rakes, 59.

    Davis told ABC News that Rakes would not have killed himself and "was looking forward to testifying." He said Rakes, who had been attending Bulger's trial regularly over the past six weeks, had planned to deliver a "big bombshell" on the witness stand.

    Rakes was a particularly angry and determined victim of Bulger's gangland tactics.

    He was apparently supposed to testify that Bulger, 83 and Flemmi threatened his daughters at gunpoint and forced him to sell his South Boston liquor store for $100,000. The building eventually became Bulger's headquarters.

    Rakes was an outspoken pre-trial critic of Bulger. "The day I see him in a box, not breathing, will be better," Rakes said in April.

    Tommy Donahue, son of alleged Bulger victim Michael Donahue, said Thursday that Rakes "wanted to get up there and tell his side of the story."

    Among relatives of Bulger's victims, word of Rakes' death was devastating. "I feel so bad,'' Patricia Donahue, whose husband was allegedly slain by Bulger, told the Boston Globe. "You sit here every day with these victims and they become part of your life. He seemed so spirited. He had a lot of spirit."

    Bulger, a much-feared South Boston gangster for decades, fled the city in 1994 ahead of his arrest. He was captured in California two years ago after 16 years on the run.

    Bulger has pleaded not guilty to 48 charges, including 19 counts of murder, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury, narcotics distribution, and weapons violations.

    Trial observers say Rakes' death shouldn't affect the outcome of the trial. "He had a special level of outrage and really wanted to tell his story, but his story was not consistent" with Weeks' prior testimony, says Rosanna Cavallaro, a Suffolk University criminal law professor.

    Last week, the testimony of Weeks, Bulger's former right-hand man, included an account of how Bulger acquired Rakes' liquor store. Weeks denied that the gang forced Rakes to sell the store, saying Rakes had agreed to an offer from Bulger to buy the store for $100,000.

    He said when they arrived at Rakes' house to close the deal, Rakes said his wife didn't want to sell the store and complained about the price.

    "He was trying to shake us down," Weeks testified.

    Weeks said he pulled a gun out of his waistband and put it on a table, in front of Rakes' two young daughters, who were in the room. One of the girls was bouncing on Bulger's lap and reached for the gun, and Bulger told Weeks to put it away.

    Bulger told Rakes that he couldn't back out of the sale and they made the deal, according to the testimony.

    Rakes was present for the testimony and later disputed the account, saying he was forced to sell the liquor store.

    "Kevin continues to lie, as usual, because that's what he has to do," Rakes said that day. "My liquor store was never for sale - never, never, never."

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...-body/2551323/

  9. #29
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    Bulger's ex-partner recounts multiple killings

    Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, the once-loyal partner of reputed Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger (BUHL'-jur), has recounted multiple killings he says Bulger was involved in, either as a triggerman or a driving force.

    Flemmi returned to the witness stand Friday after a brief appearance Thursday.

    In rapid-fire succession, Flemmi described Bulger's alleged role in a string of killings during the 1970s when both men were leaders of the Winter Hill Gang.

    Flemmi said he and Bulger sprayed a phone booth with bullets in 1975, killing Edward Connors, a bar owner, who was targeted because he was "telling people Winter Hill business," including details about a killing committed by the gang.

    Flemmi said Bulger emptied the bullets in a double-barreled shotgun and a pistol, while Flemmi fired seven or eight shots at Connors.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...07-19-11-55-51

  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    A Tender Gangster Romance

    IT was a subtle distinction, for a psychopath.

    “I loved her,” Stevie “The Rifleman” Flemmi said of his onetime girlfriend, Debbie Davis, a sparkling blond Farrah Fawcett look-alike, “but I was not in love with her.”

    That’s fortunate, since it would have made it ever so much harder to plan the 26-year-old’s 1981 murder, look into her eyes as she was strangled in your parents’ house, strip off her clothes, yank out her teeth and then dig her grave in marshland by the Neponset River.

    Deterring identification was his specialty. He was the one who pulled the teeth out of corpses. He was so meticulous at his job that his partner in the Winter Hill gang, Whitey Bulger, had his girlfriend, the dental hygienist, get Flemmi a proper set of extraction tools.

    It’s hard to imagine now, seeing the two old wiseguys snarling expletives at each other in court — Dracula battling Frankenstein, as one Boston lawyer told The Associated Press. The 79-year-old Flemmi is hard of hearing and wears a cheesy windbreaker. But back in the day, Stevie and Whitey fancied themselves rat-a-tat-tat Romeos. Flemmi has said he was more adept with the ladies, but then, his taste ran to under-age girls.

    The primary triangle in the Winter Hill gang involved Flemmi, Bulger and an F.B.I. agent named John Connolly.

    Whitey and Stevie got close in 1974, drawn together, funnily enough, by their clean-living ways. “He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he worked out regularly,” said Flemmi, who described their relationship as “strictly criminal.”

    And, though Bulger risibly keeps denying it, he worked as a rat for Connolly, another Southie who had grown up in awe of Whitey and his political kingpin brother, Billy. Connolly and Bulger took walks on the beach, and Bulger gave the F.B.I. agent a diamond ring for his girlfriend and envelopes full of cash for vacations and at Christmas.

    In return for being that most loathed thing in Irish culture, an informant, and providing information about the Mafia, Bulger got protection and tips from Connolly. That allowed him to play Jimmy Cagney, dispatching underworld enemies. He also got the signal to go on the lam.

    “It’s always good to have connections in law enforcement” to survive, Flemmi said, noting that they had about a half-dozen F.B.I. agents on the payroll.

    “Zip” Connolly began swanning around spending his ill-gotten gains — $230,000 over the years — on flashy clothes and a boat.

    Whitey made the agent sell the boat, and he cut back on Zip’s cash payments. “If he needed it,” Flemmi said, “he was going to have to explain what he wanted to do with it.”

    Flemmi was also a rat, recruited even earlier by a different corrupt F.B.I. agent. The 83-year-old Bulger, neat and upright in jeans and sneakers, must have been seething as his former “associate” fingered him for his “numerous, numerous” meetings with the F.B.I., even though everyone already regards him as a cheese-eating rat fink, the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed.”

    Then there was the other deadly B-movie triangle. The 38-year-old Flemmi met Debbie Davis, who was working for a fence, when she was married and 17. Both got divorces, and Flemmi lavished her with a Mercedes, jewelry and vacations.

    Whitey — “a low-key sort of a guy,” according to Stevie — was once more upset by the ostentation. And the competition.

    “He wasn’t too happy with my relationship with her because it started to interfere with my business,” Flemmi said. “She required a lot of attention. She was a young girl.”

    Whitey called one night to summon Stevie while they were out celebrating Debbie’s birthday. “She said, ‘You meet him all the time during the day, why do you have to meet him now?’ ” Flemmi recalled.

    Trying to assuage her, Flemmi “blurted out inadvertently” that they needed to see their F.B.I. connection, Connolly.

    Flemmi said that when Whitey learned of the slip, he ordered her killed because they owed it to Connolly.

    “I couldn’t do it,” Flemmi said. “He knew it. He says, ‘I’ll take care of it.’ ” They continued to work together until 1994, but the sour taste lingered. “It affected me, and it’s going to affect me till the day I die,” Flemmi said.

    Stevie lured Debbie to the house in South Boston — facing Billy Bulger’s house — under the pretext of wanting decorating tips. Whitey claims he would no more kill a woman than be a rat. But Flemmi says Bulger grabbed Debbie by the neck as soon as they walked in and strangled her “all the way down to the basement.”

    One juror cried as Flemmi told the grisly tale of wrapping Debbie in a tarp, throwing her in the trunk and driving her to Quincy.

    “I dug the hole,” Flemmi said, while Whitey sat on the side and watched. In a weary, bitter tone, the Rifleman concluded, “That’s what he does.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/op...r-romance.html

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