Whitey Bulger The Ruthless Crime Boss Who Ruled Boston’s Underworld

Whitey Bulger The Ruthless Crime Boss Who Ruled Boston’s Underworld

Speaker 1: If you look at the FBI's most wanted list, James

Whitey Bulger is just below Osama bin Laden. He is

charged with committing twenty murders and suspected in at least

twenty more. But despite an international manhunt, the leader of

Boston's Irish mob has been a fugitive for more than

ten years. If anyone has a clue where he is,

it's Kevin Weeks. For twenty years, he was Bulger's right

hand man and the last person known to have seen

him alive in the United States. But six years ago,

Weeks turned on his boss, becoming one of the most

important witnesses ever against organized crime. Tonight you'll hear Kevin

Week's story, which he's written in a book called Brutal.

It's about murder, mayhem, and treachery, and it's told by

the keeper of Whitey Bulger's darkest secrets. Kevin Weeks is

a soft spoken, forty nine year old native of South Boston.

But don't be fooled by the low key, matter of

fact way he answers questions about his life of crime.

You seem to have committed every crime in the brook.

Let me know if I've got all of this right.

You beat people up, yes, put him in the hospital, yes,

shot stab people, yes, help kidnap people.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: And you were an accessory to murders. Correct, that's a

that's quite a resume.

Speaker 3: That's the business we're in.

Speaker 1: The business they were in was organized crime. And what

said Whitey Bulger's organization apart was his penchant for violence.

Weeks says it was all part of the folklore of

this Irish working class neighborhood known as Southeas. Was it

a tough neighborhood when you were growing.

Speaker 3: Up, Kevin, you had to fight. You didn't have to win,

but you had a fight.

Speaker 1: On these streets. Whitey Bulger was known as a vision

gangster who never hesitated to use violence. Weeks, who had

a reputation as a tenacious street fighter, caught the crime

Boss's eye while he was working as a bouncer at

a local bar. Over the years, he became Bulger's most

trusted confidante.

Speaker 2: What did you do for him? What was your job?

Speaker 3: Anything he asked me to do.

Speaker 1: Including murder. For twenty years, Weeks was with the crime

boss nearly every day. But they were exceedingly careful. This

is one of only two known photographs of them together.

It was taken at a park called Castle Island, where

they talked business out of earshot of police bugs. Weeks

says the man he called Jimmy was a criminal mastermind.

Speaker 3: Ninety eight percent of his waking us was dedicated to crime,

two percent of pleasure. He's very disciplined, had no bad habits.

He him drinking and gambled into drugs.

Speaker 1: No bad habits if you don't count murder, And it

was something Weeks says, White really enjoyed.

Speaker 2: How did he kill people?

Speaker 3: Oh? You, I mean he stabbed people. He'd beat people

in bats. He shot people who strangled people, want them.

Speaker 1: Over cast yourself said also that he liked killing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, explain that to me.

Speaker 3: After he would kill somebody hed it was like a

stress relief, you know, he'd be a nice and calm

for a couple of weeks afterwards, like he just got.

Speaker 2: Rid of all his stress by killing. Yes, right, that's

a bizarre way to get rid of stress.

Speaker 1: Weeks told us he helped Bulger commit three murders in

this house. He lured the victims there, stood guard over

them while they were interrogated, and after they were killed,

he buried them in the basement. One of the victims

was a gun runner named John McIntyre who was cooperating

with police.

Speaker 3: Joe McIntyre was originally strangled, but the whope was too

thick so.

Speaker 2: He was gagging.

Speaker 3: So Jimmy shot him in the head and then he

pulled his teeth and we buried him.

Speaker 2: Pulled his teeth.

Speaker 3: Yes, why back then there was dental records.

Speaker 1: There was no DNA, so that was to prevent people

from being identified. No regrets about the loss of life

you're responsible for.

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: If he has any regrets, it's about one person he

didn't kill. Howie Carr is a columnist for The Boston

Herald as well as a radio talk show host who

has been a thorn in the side of Whitey Bulger

and his gang for twenty years.

Speaker 4: Whitey Bulger is a serial killer, cocaine dealer, bank robber, pedophile,

very smart criminal.

Speaker 1: Did you consider him a worthy adversary? I mean, is

that why you went after him so hard?

Speaker 4: I went after Whitey just because I couldn't believe he

was getting away with what he was doing and that

nobody would write about it.

Speaker 1: So perhaps it's no surprise that Bulger in Weeks hatched

a plan to take how he carr. We are out

of the newspaper and off the airways were good.

Speaker 3: We found out he lived down in Acting in Massachusetts.

We drove down his house and we took pictures. We

scoped it all. We looked for an escape route.

Speaker 2: We had one plan.

Speaker 3: We were going to fill a basketball with C four

plastic explosive correct, and when he came out of the house,

we were going to blow it up and kill him.

But we decided that we would probably take the house

down too and kill someone of some people's family, so

we nixed that plan.

Speaker 1: Plan B, he says, was much more direct. Weeks was

just going to shoot it.

Speaker 3: I was down his house one morning, about five thirty

in the morning, across the street in the cemetery with

the rifle, waiting for him to come out. And he

came out about between seven fifteen seven thirty, and he

had his daughter with him, whom was his daughter, young girl.

He's holding him by the hand, going to his calf.

So I had to pass on it. And then, uh,

why do you have to pass? Yeah, I didn't want

to kill him when of his daughter.

Speaker 2: You had him in your sights.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so if he had come out the door by himself,

he'd be a dead man.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Your reaction to that, I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 4: I don't know if I believe him or not.

Speaker 1: And he says he was in the graveyard. Is a

graveyard across the street from Yaes there is. He said

he was in the graveyard and had you in the scope,

He had you in his sights.

Speaker 4: It just doesn't seem like Kevin would have the stones

to do it. I mean, I could see if he

said Whitey was there, Well, you wouldn't be interviewing me

because I'd be dead. But I'm just not sure Weeks

is capable of that.

Speaker 2: He doesn't believe his story. He also said you didn't

have the stones to kill him?

Speaker 3: Really wow, I don't think Holly Kai has the stones

to confront any man and say what he prints to

their face.

Speaker 2: What would you say to Harry Carve he were here.

Speaker 3: I wouldn't say any to Hawy Kah. He could tell

me what he thinks to me, and I'll show him

what I think of him.

Speaker 2: And how would you do that?

Speaker 5: You know?

Speaker 3: I think I'd be creative. I could figure something out.

Speaker 2: Creative?

Speaker 3: What is that whatever comes to mind at the time.

Speaker 1: I would assume, after the time you've spent in jail,

you're not going to kill him.

Speaker 3: No, but you know it's a loaded question.

Speaker 2: You can say yes or no.

Speaker 3: No, I don't like him.

Speaker 1: For twenty years weeks in, Bulger were practically untouchable. One reason,

he says, was that they had six FBI agents and

dozens of Boston cops on the payroll.

Speaker 3: Every time we made a score, saying there was four

of us involved in the score, it would be cut

up five ways and their fifth piece would go to

law enforcement, to the connections, and we were always getting

information back about investigations that were going on, things people

were doing, saying about us grand joys, things like that

from lawn flow law enforcement.

Speaker 1: Bulger even used tips from an FBI agent named John

Connolly to identify and kill informants within his own organization.

Connolly is charged with murder in connection with his ties

to Bulger's gang. With help like that, they amassed tens

of millions of dollars from gambling, drugs, robberies, and extortions.

Once Bulger in Weeks even hit the Massachusetts state lottery,

winning fourteen point seven million dollars, although many suspect they

simply coerced the winning ticket holder into having them as partners.

Then in a flash, their luck ran out. It was

two days before Christmas of nineteen ninety four when a

tip from a crooked FBI agent marked the beginning of

the end for South Boston's Irish mob. That was the

day Whitey Bulger found out he was about to be

arrested and charged with extortion and racketeering. Wicks says Bulger

knew he had been under investigation, but no one knew

how much planning he had done to be ready for

this day. Since the early eighties, he had been creating

new identities and stashing millions of dollars in safety deposit

boxes around the world.

Speaker 3: He's probably with fifty million dollars.

Speaker 2: Fifty million dollars so he could live a.

Speaker 3: Long time, yeah on that comfortably.

Speaker 1: Weeks was one of the few people Balder trusted enough

to stay in touch. He says, he was able to

meet face to face with the most wanted man in

America five times over the next two years in Boston, Chicago,

and New York, delivering forged identifications and keeping him abreast

of developments back home.

Speaker 2: He says.

Speaker 1: The meetings were always arranged by phone.

Speaker 3: Weird cold words for different places. When you want me

to go to New York, he tell me you'd meet

me at the Lions. Where was I It was a

public library, had two big lines of FI.

Speaker 1: Bulger told him big cities allowed him to hide in

plain sight. One time, white he asked directions from a

New York City cop.

Speaker 3: He walked up to him and he was looking for

a street at restaurant, and he asked the cop for directions.

And I couldn't believe it. I'm just looking out this

guy's wanted. He just gave him directions and stuff. He

thanked him, he walked away.

Speaker 1: Weeks says the last time he saw Bulger was in

New York in nineteen ninety six, almost two years after

he vanished. He says what he told him he'd be

in touch, but he never called again. A few months later,

there was this bombshell reports that Whitey Bulger had been

a top level FBI informant since nineteen seventy five. Bulger,

who'd killed anyone he thought was an informant, had all

along been giving the FEDS information about rival criminals as well.

As some members of his own gang, Weeks, who was

still a player in the Boston underworld, were shattered.

Speaker 3: He portrayed me, betrayed me the whole time, betrayed all

of us.

Speaker 2: Tell me how you betrayed all of you.

Speaker 3: Well, we knew we were paying for information that we

had sources and law enforcement. So as far as we

were concerned, the relationship was one way. We were receiving information,

we were paying for the information. Now we find out

he's given information.

Speaker 2: So he was giving up some of his own people.

Speaker 3: He was giving up some of his own people. He

was giving up the competition he was, I mean he was.

Basically he made a deal with the FBI. They gave

him kyt blanche and to do what he wanted.

Speaker 1: Week's turn to make a deal came in nineteen ninety nine,

when he was arrested and charged with twenty nine crimes.

Facing life in prison and abandoned by his boss, he

decided to cooperate.

Speaker 2: So what did you do?

Speaker 3: We made a deal to sit down and talk. They

wanted proof that I was telling the truth, so I

led them to three bodies.

Speaker 1: For years, why Bulger's victims had simply disappeared and police

could never make a murder charge against him. Stick Weeks

literally knew where the bodies were buried, and he eventually

led them to six of them. When it was all over,

prosecutors were able to charge Bulger with twenty additional counts

of murder in return for his cooperation. Weeks spent just

seventy two months in prison. He was released last year.

A lot of people, particularly the families of the victims.

Speaker 2: Have been outraged.

Speaker 1: I mean they look at it and said, we lost

a loved one and this guy's walking out on the street.

Speaker 3: They've entitled to the feelings. I mean, if someone killed

a loved one of mine, I'd want to kill them.

I wouldn't want them in jail. I'd want to kill them.

So they're entitled to, you know, and they probably correct.

Speaker 1: Week says he isn't worried about his safety. He's refused

the witness Protection program and is already back in Southeast,

where he says, people now know the reality behind the

myth of Highty Bulger.

Speaker 3: We were supposed to live by a certain code, and

this was his teaching too. You know, you never ran

your friends, never ran in your family.

Speaker 2: You never give it one up.

Speaker 3: You have a problem, you take it to the street.

Speaker 2: Do you have any idea where he is today?

Speaker 3: A definitive idea, though, I mean, I believe he's probably

over in Europe somewhere. I believe he went over to Europe,

and I think he got trapped over there after nine

to eleven.

Speaker 2: And couldn't come back. Correct.

Speaker 1: The Federal task force assigned to capture Bulger says the

last confirmed sighting of him was in London in two

thousand and two. Last week, the task force released this

twenty six year old surveillance state of Whitey Bulger and

hopes that someone might recognize his walk or mannerisms.

Speaker 6: There are few men alive today with the underworld credentials

of John Martorano, and even fewer who were out of

prison and walking the streets for more than a decade.

Martrono was the chief executioner for Boston's Winter Hill Gang,

a loose confederation of Irish and Italian American gangsters run

by James Whitey Bulger. Martarano, a former Catholic altar boy

and high school football star, became a cool and calculating killer,

but he's perhaps best known as the government witness who

helped expose a web of corruption and collusion involving the

mob and the Boston office of the FBI. For years,

he was one of the most feared men in Boston.

And this is why did you keep count of how

many people you killed?

Speaker 7: Never? Never, never, until in the end I never realized

there was that many?

Speaker 2: How many? A lot? Too many? Do you have a number?

I confessed the twenty in court. Sure you remembered the

ball I hope.

Speaker 6: So Martroano had to remember them all. It was part

of a deal he cut with the federal government that

put him back on the streets of Boston after only

twelve years in prison, a little more than seven months

served for each of the twenty people he killed, many

of them fellow gangsters, and many of them at close range,

after looking into their eyes. Did you always kill people

by shooting them?

Speaker 7: I think I stabbed one guy, But you like guns. Wow,

it's the easiest way.

Speaker 2: I think.

Speaker 6: Did you get any satisfaction out of the fact that

people were afraid of you?

Speaker 2: No?

Speaker 7: But everybody likes to be respected for one thing or another.

Speaker 6: His manner is unemotional and detached, and he speaks with

the brevity of a professional witness, which he has become.

His testimony helped wipe out one of the largest criminal

enterprises in New England, for which he served as chief executioner.

But Martarano is no psychopath, and he doesn't much like

the word hit man.

Speaker 7: The hitman is that sounds to me like somebody's getting

paid contract. I mean, you could never pay me to

kill anybody.

Speaker 6: A lot of people would say you're a serial killer.

Speaker 7: I might be a vigilante, but not a serial killer.

Serial killers you have to stop them. They'll never stop,

and they enjoy it. I never enjoyed it. I don't

enjoy risk of my life, but if the cause was right,

I would.

Speaker 6: So you felt like you were doing the right thing.

Speaker 7: I always felt like I was doing the right thing,

even if it was wrong. I always tried to do

the right thing.

Speaker 6: If you believe John Martarano, when the Justice Department does,

he killed out of a sense of loyalty and duty.

He sees himself as a stand up guy, a man

of his word, which is why he decided to talk

to us. It goes back fifty years when Martarano was

a star running back on the Mount Saint Charles Academy

football team in Rhode Island. One of his blockers was

our late colleague sixty Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley.

Speaker 2: That's you. Yeah, that's me. That's it. That's me, and

that's it. That's very good. That's what I called him,

Big Ed.

Speaker 6: He promised Bradley he would sit down with him and

tell his story, but Ed died unexpectedly before Matarano got

out of prison.

Speaker 7: I never thought it'd be sitting here with you. I

thought i'd be here with Ed. But I'm sitting here

because Ed wanted to sit here with me, and I'm

honoring that.

Speaker 6: I know wanted the questions that Ed wanted to ask you.

That's sort of the way that Ed asked those questions

he wanted to I think he wanted to be sitting

here and say, what happened, Johnny, Why was it? You

think that you went in different directions?

Speaker 7: Well, I think it was mainly the influence of my

father and his principles and his value is that he

pushed on to me.

Speaker 6: His father owned an after hours club called Luigi's in

a rough Boston neighborhood known as the Combat Zone. It

was a hangout for hoodlums who would become Martarano's role models,

and many of them shared his father's simple Sicilian values.

Speaker 7: He was the oldest son, and he taught me, you know,

the oldest, and this is your heritage. You've got to

take care of your family and be a man. I

don't care what else you are, You've got to be

a man.

Speaker 6: It was a code he lived by and killed four.

The first time. It was an ex con named Robert Palladino,

who he thought was going to implicate his brother Jimmy

in a murder. Palladino was found under an expressway with

a bullet in his head.

Speaker 2: You didn't see anything wrong with it. No, I saved

my brother's life. Somebody got hurt. That had to be.

Speaker 7: It felt like a duty, an obligation.

Speaker 6: Was the next time easier?

Speaker 7: Well, it's sort of like a lawyer trying his first case.

It's difficult, but the next case is easier. Then it

gets easier. I guess as your goal because it's you know,

doing this is harder than that. Why because it's hard

for me to do I never did it before.

Speaker 6: By the nineteen seventies, his circle of friends and family

it expanded to include the Winter Hill Gang, led by

the notorian Irish mob boss James Whitey Bulger and Stevie

the Rifleman. Flemy Martorano was their partner in a business

that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder. Martorano's specialty

was conflict resolution.

Speaker 7: We had a lot of problems with people and uh,

you know you just killed them before they killed. You

just kill or get killed at times.

Speaker 6: I mean, on one occasion, you walked into a crowded

bar and shot somebody mm hm in broad daylight. Correct,

with the policeman across the street.

Speaker 2: Correct, that's pretty confident. Well, I felt confident. You know.

Speaker 7: You get put a disguise on and you know, and uh,

and you just to get to feel invisible.

Speaker 2: Do you remember what the disguise was. Yeah?

Speaker 7: I had a yellow hot hat, a white meat cut

his coat full length and a beard and mustache and sunglasses.

Speaker 2: What'd you do? Afterwards?

Speaker 7: I went home and changed back to work.

Speaker 6: They operated out of this old body shop long Sense abandoned,

but Whitey Bulger's chair is still there.

Speaker 2: These are the rooms you don't want to go in.

Speaker 6: So is his old office.

Speaker 7: I think that's the chop door for the cellar, just

to leave that open all the time, just intimidate people,

try to get the.

Speaker 2: Truth out of him. Oh yeah, people would look down

there and just.

Speaker 6: Wonder anybody go down there and never come up?

Speaker 7: I think so, Yeah, that's a nice little touch.

Speaker 6: By nineteen seventy eight, Martarano had already killed eighteen people.

In Facing an indictment for fixing horse races, he fled

to Florida, where he was living a quiet life under

the name Richard o'coyn. He was only there a few

years when Bulger and Flemy called asking him to carry

out a murder that made headlines across the country, the

assassination of a wealthy corporate executive and the parking lot

of the exclusive Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsen. The

victim was Roger Wheeler, the CEO of Telex Corporation and

owner of World Highline, a profitable sports betting business that

Bulger was trying to muscle in on. Martarano says the

logistical information to carry out the hit was provided by

a former Boston FBI agent named Paul Rico. How did

you manage to get into the Southern Hills Country Club

to kill mister Wheeler.

Speaker 7: There was no Gates could drive in wait for him

to finish playing golf. I had an update when he

was going to his tea time. You knew what he

looked like.

Speaker 2: I had his description from Rico. How many times did

you should have once? Did you should him between the eyes?

Speaker 8: Yeah?

Speaker 2: Around here.

Speaker 6: Martarano says it wasn't the first or the last time

he would get useful information from an FBI man. One

of its top organized crime investigators in Boston, a corrupt

agent named John Conley, helped them out for years. Mornerano

says it was Conley who told them that an associate

of theirs named John Callahan was about to wrap them

out on the Wheeler murder. Callahan would become Martinrano's twentieth

and final victim. Do you think that John Conley knew

that you were going to kill Callahan?

Speaker 2: Sure, he said it.

Speaker 7: He said, We're all going to go to jail the

rest of our life if this guy doesn't get killed.

Speaker 6: And this is an FBI agent tell me of this.

Speaker 7: This is an FBI agent telling it to Whitey telling me.

Speaker 6: Martrono has already told this story under oath and is

expected to tell it again to a jury in Florida

this spring, when Conley goes on trial for complicity in

that murder. The former FBI agent is already serving a

ten year sentence for obstructing justice. In the end, it

was a Massachusetts State police investigation that began to unravel

the winter Hill Gang. In nineteen ninety five, Moderano, Flemy,

and Whitey Bulger were all indicted for racketeering. Bulger, who

was tipped off by Conley about his impact, arrest when

underground and is still a fugitive, and in a Boston courtroom,

Martarrano was about to learn something that would change his

life forever.

Speaker 2: The worst day of my life.

Speaker 6: He knew that Bulger and Flemy had been getting information

from the FBI, but he didn't know they had also

been providing it for decades. His partners were top level

FBI informants, snitching on the Italian mafia and on Martrano

and other gang members. They had violated his code of loyalty,

especially Whitey Bulger.

Speaker 7: I'll go along with a lot of things, but not

no judas, not no informant. I never informed a rat

it or nobody, and if I could have killed him,

I'd have killed him, but he wasn't there, and that's

what I think he deserves.

Speaker 6: Martinrano decided to strike back the only way he could,

using words as his weapon.

Speaker 7: I gave him back when he gave everybody else.

Speaker 2: He became an informer.

Speaker 7: No, I became a government witness, not an informant, all

a rat.

Speaker 2: I became a government witness. What's the difference.

Speaker 7: One's got the coverage of stand on the stand, the

other one doing it behind your back and dropping dimes.

And if I'm how can I be ratting on a

guy who's the rat for thirty years? I'm trying to

stop them from ratting anymore.

Speaker 6: Bulger, who is still on the FBI's most wanted list,

is now facing nineteen murder charges as a result largely

of Martinrano's testimony, and Flemy is in prison for life.

Martinrano's cooperation helped solve nearly forty murders, including the twenty

he confessed to, and it helped uncover secret mob graves,

all in return for a sentence of just fourteen years.

Speaker 2: In some ways, he got away with murder.

Speaker 8: In some ways he did to get away with murder.

Speaker 6: Donald Stern was the US attorney who eventually signed off

on the agreement.

Speaker 8: The only thing worse than this deal was not doing

this deal, because if we didn't do this deal, no

one would receive any punishment for these murders, Corrupt law

enforcement arrangements would not have been uncovered and prosecuted, and

the cancer in law enforcement that existed in Boston for

another umber of years would have remained there.

Speaker 6: So you're saying it changed the landscape of organized crime

in Boston.

Speaker 2: It did.

Speaker 6: When Martarano was released from prison last spring, he decided

to return to Boston. He says he feels safe here

now most of his enemies are dead in prison or

on the land. In some cases, regret can take over

a person's lives. I don't get the sense that that's

the case with you.

Speaker 7: Well, maybe that's just not my temperament on my personality.

Maybe it is, but you can't see it, or maybe

I can't express it the way you want it.

Speaker 2: But I have my regrets.

Speaker 6: You seem cold. I mean, you killed twenty people and that's.

Speaker 2: That's all you can say about it.

Speaker 7: I wish it wasn't that way. I mean, I wish

there was none. You know, it can't change the past.

I'm trying to do the best I can with the

future and explain it as best I can. I regret

at all. I can't change it.

Speaker 6: You're still a Catholic, sure, I mean you've burned in

hell for killing one person.

Speaker 2: I don't believe that. You don't believe that.

Speaker 1: No.

Speaker 7: At one point, maybe a couple of years ago, I

sent for a priest and gave him a confession. It

was maybe thirty years since my last confession. But I

went through the whole scenario with him, and went through

my whole life with him and confessed, and Uh. At

the end of it, he says, Uh, Well, what do

you think I should give you for for for for penance?

I says, m father, you can justifiably crucify me. He

laughed and says, nope, ten Ail Mary's ten our fathers,

and don't do it again.

Speaker 2: So I'll listened to him.

Speaker 9: Anything that could get you to kill again.

Speaker 7: Nothing I can think of, Not even Whitey Bulger. Well,

there's a bounty on him in Massachusetts.

Speaker 5: When they say mister president, they don't mean George Bush.

There's only one man with that title. Billy Bulger, President

of the Massachusetts State Senate. Few legislators in America are

as powerful. It's power he's proud to have and not

afraid to use. He's not the kind of politician you

run across much anymore. And by the way, his brother

Whitey is the kind of person you may never want

to run across. We'll get to him later. First, mister President,

No it's not George m cohen. No, it is not

Jimmy Cagney playing George M Cohen. It is a political relic,

a throwback to a time of populist politicians who succeeded

with street smarts and knowing which strings to pull. Billy

Bulger almost defines Boston Irish. His district is South Boston,

home of the legendary boss politician James Michael Curley, whose

spirit is alive and well in Bulger. Just watch him

hosting his annual Saint Patrick's Day breakfast, which begins with

a fine Irish anthem.

Speaker 3: Of my.

Speaker 5: Heavenly Father and of course a blessing from the parish priest.

Speaker 2: Amen.

Speaker 10: Father, of course is one of our best friends. And

also he occupies a precinct which is very valuable to

us all because that's where Saint Augustine's Cemetery is you

never know the result until the votes have been counted

from Saint Augustine Cemetery. And somehow there always seemed to

be just enough to put you over.

Speaker 5: The breakfast is a form of homage to Bulger. Anybody

who's ever been anybody in Massachusetts politics pays his tribute

by being bludgeoned by Bulger.

Speaker 10: My advice is to get here on time.

Speaker 5: If Ted Kennedy got his when he tried to sass

Bulger over where to dump Boston's garbage.

Speaker 9: I was wondering whether where you want me to bring it?

Speaker 2: Bill?

Speaker 5: Out of Western.

Speaker 10: Hyanna's Port.

Speaker 5: Did you know Ben Franklin, there is nothing he enjoys

more than taking on a well bred Yankee with inherited

wealth frue gallity, which makes Massachusetts Governor Bill Well perfect

for Bulger's meat acts.

Speaker 10: I'll bet you never bounced a check. Oh you, I'll

bet you never made out of check.

Speaker 5: Bulger's importance is as simple as this. If you want

to get something done in Massachusetts, you need him. His

fellow senators have elected him president for fifteen years, the

longest tenure in state history. Bulder knows everything about everyone

in state office, and thus knows how to get things done,

certainly how to keep things moving.

Speaker 10: Those of favas I oppose know the iyes have it

the will to suspended third reading of the bill.

Speaker 5: Legislators give him what he wants because he knows how

to get them what they want. Let me let you

describe yourself as others see you.

Speaker 10: Autocratic, dictatorial, Are those loss boss those kinds of things,

iron fisted, crick of the gavel? The rule is suspended.

The truth of the matter is that this would be

a debating society, the Senate or any legislative body unless

somebody said, at some point after we finished the debate

and after everyone has had to say, we're going to

have some kind of action.

Speaker 5: But there is the perception that sooner or later, and

generally sooner Bill Bulger.

Speaker 10: Has on many major matters, I have my way.

Speaker 5: When he's not presiding in the Senate chamber, he acts

as House historian.

Speaker 10: John Parker was the captain of the militia the.

Speaker 5: Little Irishman from Southey, holding forth in what was once

the preserve of the Protestant Brahmins. Bulger's a man of

simple taste, but does not mind one bit. The office

he inherited much grander even than the governors.

Speaker 11: You came in and you said, thanks you, Yankee Brahmins

for letting us use your country, and everybody laughed and laughed,

and so missed the President. I want to say to you,

thank you so much for letting us use your state house.

Speaker 8: Thank you.

Speaker 5: The gov is only half kidding. Bulger has been ruthless

with state appointees who cross him. He'll free salaries. One

judge lost most of his staff and did not get

a raise for ten years. Such tales only add to

his power.

Speaker 10: I heard jo The perception of power is just about

the same thing as having power. If people think you

have it, you have.

Speaker 5: It, and you do nothing to discourage that perception, and.

Speaker 10: There's value in it.

Speaker 2: For me.

Speaker 5: It can be very useful, as in the case of

Boston Edison.

Speaker 10: Of course.

Speaker 5: Yeah, they were polluting the air right, particularly polluting South Boston.

Your constituents, what'd you do about it?

Speaker 10: I called them in and reasoned with them. It was impossible,

they said, I said, well, you're going to gas very soon.

I said, you either go to gas or the mass

Turnpike extension goes right through your plant. I reasoned with.

Speaker 5: Them when you say, kidding folks, the extension of the

mass turned by Cole being to front door. It's a joke.

Everybody knows it's a joke. But it also and answers

the reputation that on the real stuff, right, he is

going to be that tough. Yeah, there's something to that.

I think it's the healthiest thing in the democracy that

the people who are elected are not afraid to assert power.

I think it's a very good thing, especially for Bulger's

favorite things like the Boston Public Library. When it desperately

needed restoration money, he came up with a thirty five

million dollar bill overnight. Somehow, when they need the money, they.

Speaker 10: Get the money as they should, as they should. I mean,

it's a bastion of our civilization. People who are reading

a book are people whose minds are engaged.

Speaker 5: When father McDonald needed money for the disabled, he went

to the Senate president and.

Speaker 2: It happened, right, what happened. Yeah, God was good that day.

I I William Well.

Speaker 5: In the begin Governor Weld attacked Bulger's back room tactics,

but he soon discovered that the wisest thing a Republicans

governor could do was to get along with the Senate President,

and together they've turned the state's budget crisis around.

Speaker 10: But for Jo.

Speaker 5: Away from work, they've become a mutton. Jeff vadgal At,

he's still on load. Anyone who's been in politics as

long as Bulger has, especially in the fertile turf of

Boston politics, is bound to be accused of corruption, and

reporters here have been trying to pin stuff on.

Speaker 2: Him for years.

Speaker 5: But according to the columnists for The Boston Globe Mike Bonnacle,

that chronicler of all things Bostonian, by local standards, he's clean.

Speaker 12: I've never heard a story about any lobbyist corporation having

the arm put on them by Bill Bulger.

Speaker 5: But what about jobs for the boys?

Speaker 12: So the boys is not viewed and girls now is

not viewed in his mind or in that neighborhood, or

I think in many neighborhoods. When you get right down

to it as corruption, they refer to it as taking

care of your own.

Speaker 5: Bulger is said to be a champion of that, especially

liberal with jobs at the NBTA known as mister Bulger's

transit authority. Wacko step up here, Wacko Hurley, for example,

what a name, what a face?

Speaker 10: One word says it all.

Speaker 5: Wacko organizes the Saint Patrick's Day parade in South Boston

from his office at the MBTA. Billy Bulger seems to

know just about all of his constituents by name. He

invites them to his modest home, where he and his

wife Mary raise nine kids.

Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome.

Speaker 5: What you're watching this old fashioned Boston politics at work,

in which patronage is the first rule of life. Well,

do anything humanly possible. Boston newspapers blast him for patronage.

In return, he does everything he can do discredit journalism

in general and the Boston Globe in particular.

Speaker 12: It's authentic, he feels it, he hates us, and when

he does it it helps him in South Boston because

it's his thumb in ri something they have always wanted

to do.

Speaker 10: The first day I went into office, Marty Nolan from

the Globe said, well, mister President, looks like a nice day,

doesn't it. I said, never mind your trick questions, and

we've been getting along fine ever since.

Speaker 12: When he gets talking about the Globe, it's almost as

if he's going to have to stop and get a

venom transplant to continue.

Speaker 2: Oh do I hate that newspaper?

Speaker 10: I mean the editorials over there has to be an

opium den.

Speaker 5: Bulger keeps the tension with the press alive by not

granting interviews.

Speaker 10: I mean, who the hell are they?

Speaker 5: And he was reluctant to do one with us, as

the former state treasurer mister Crane reminded him, Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2: Wait to see that show.

Speaker 7: Oh you'll wish it with sixty seconds.

Speaker 5: What mister Crane might have been jabbing his good friend

about is the sensitive issue of Billy Bulger's brother, James,

known as Whitey, a convicted felon who served time in

prisons including Alcatraz, for bank robbery and has since become,

according to the FEDS, one of the most feared mobsters

in Boston.

Speaker 2: He's a big guy, He's a major league figure. Can't

get around it.

Speaker 5: Does white he have the same contempt for the press

as Bill does? I hope not. Some people might go

to great pains to distance themselves to disown a brother

who wrong. You've not done that.

Speaker 10: He's my brother. I care about him.

Speaker 5: You see him?

Speaker 10: Oh sure, I encourage him to come by all the time.

Speaker 5: Apart from his convictions, there was little known about Whitey Belger.

But then last year he made the score of his

life and he turned up here to collect. Whitey and

two colleagues had the winning ticket in the Massachusetts State lottery.

The prize fourteen million dollars. But was it his ticket?

Speaker 2: No, it was not his ticket.

Speaker 12: It belonged to I think mikey Lynsky, who I think

was probably told, you know, a couple of hours after

the numbers came up, that he had partners, that he

had a couple of partners that he you know, really,

you know, couldn't live without.

Speaker 5: Literally, there was a lot of suspicion. The Senate President's

brother wins the lottery, Come on.

Speaker 10: Right, sure, how'd you handle that? I sort of just

met at head on and told everybody, well, you know,

when we won, I rather when he won the lottery,

and the kind of thing. And now I lay me

down to slumber, I pray to Heaven I hit the

number if I die before I wake, put ten dollars

on four three, six, seven oh eight.

Speaker 5: My brother wrote that prayer. The Bulger brothers, the bad

one and the good one, seem out of some old

Hollywood movie. Billy, the educated classicist who does not own

a television, still reads Latin and Greek books, always a

song in his heart and on his lips, lob read

and yet true or not? The shadow of menace.

Speaker 12: Now, I don't know of anyone, and he's never done

anything too. But there is this this myth that a

lot of people live with that you know, if I

do this and he doesn't like it, either he will

get me, or God forbid, he might say my name

at lunch with Jimmy someday.

Speaker 10: Molly's gonna be good to me, an you, Molly. That's

how they all start out. I'm your pal, What is it?

Speaker 13: You?

Speaker 5: Just remember I'm editing it.

Speaker 10: Grab your camera and get out of here.

Speaker 5: Billy Bulger says he seeks no higher office, that he's

unelectable outside of South Boston, that other world filled with

Protestants and Boston Globe readers. But year after year, his

colleagues re elect him as Senate President, Afraid perhaps of

that power, or of Whitey, or maybe they're just in

awe of a masterful politician. The editorialists of Boston may

call for his blood, but for Southey, it'll be some

time before Billy Bulger's last hurrah is heard. I don't

make you right you, but they'll never say you so

my own power.

Speaker 6: Charlie and Carol Gasco were an elderly couple who moved

to Santa Monica, California, sometime in early nineteen ninety seven

to begin a new phase of their life.

Speaker 5: For the next.

Speaker 6: Fourteen years, they did almost nothing that was memorable, and

they would be of absolutely no interest if it weren't

for the fact that Charlie Gasco turned out to be

James Whitey Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster and longtime fugitive

who's just beginning to serve two lifetime sentences. Carol Gasco

was actually Catherine Gregg, Whitey's longtime girlfriend and caregiver. The

story worry of how they managed to elude an international

manhunt for so long while hiding in plain sight is

interesting tonight. You'll hear it from the Gasco's neighbors and

for the first time from the federal agents who finally

unraveled the case with the help of a boob job

and an alley cat. If you're forced into retirement with

a comfortable nest egg and a desire to be left

completely alone. There is no better place than Santa Monica, California.

This low key seaside suburb of la is shared by

transients and tourists, hippies and hedonists, celebrities, and lots of

senior citizens attracted to the climate, and an abundance of

inexpensive rent control departments just a few blocks from the ocean,

places like the Princess Eugenia on Third Street, which is

where Charlie and Carol Gasco, a childless couple from Chicago,

lived for fourteen years without attracting much attention from longtime

neighbors or landlords. Josh bond Is the building manager.

Speaker 14: Whatever they like, they were like the nice retired old

couple that lived in the apartment next to me. Good tenants,

excellent tenants, never complained, always paid rent on time.

Speaker 2: In cash and cash.

Speaker 6: Janice Good wouldn't live down the hole.

Speaker 15: They had nothing and they never went out. They'd never

had fruit delivered. She never dressed nicely.

Speaker 6: You thought they were poor, Yes, without a doubt. The

one thing everyone remembers about the Gascos is that they

loved animals and always made a fuss over the ones

in the neighborhood. Barbara Gluck remembers that Carol Gasco always

fed a stray cat after its owner had died.

Speaker 16: She would, you know, pet it and be sweet to it,

and then she would put a plate of food like

out here.

Speaker 2: And she liked the cat.

Speaker 16: Obviously, she loved the cat, and we all liked the cat.

But she was taking care of the cat.

Speaker 6: And what about Charlie Gasko, You know.

Speaker 16: He always had a hat on and dark glasses. I

have to say, it was mister curious to me why

a lovely woman like that was hanging out with that guy,

that old trumpy man. I never could figure that one

out until I heard they had eight hundred thousand something

dollars in the wall.

Speaker 17: Then I went, oh, okay, you know money wasn't the

only thing found in the Gascos apartment on June twenty second,

twenty and eleven, when the FBI stopped by and ended

what it called the most extensive manhunt in the bureau's history.

Speaker 13: Weapons all over the apartment, I mean, weapons by his nightstand,

weapons under the windowsill, shotguns, mini rugers, rifles loaded loaded,

ready to go.

Speaker 6: What had started out as a routine day for Special

Agent Scott Gariola, who was in charge of hunting fugitives

in LA, would turn into one of the most interesting

days of his career. After getting a call to stake

out of building in Santa Monica, he notified his backup

team with the LAPD.

Speaker 13: I had four guys working that day, and they said,

we got a tip on Whitey Bulger, and I'll see

you there in about an hour, and invariably the text

will return. Who's Whitey Bulger?

Speaker 2: Really?

Speaker 13: A few of them had remind him gently remind him

who Whitey Bulger was.

Speaker 6: That he was number one on the FBI's.

Speaker 13: Number one, number one big East Coast figure, but in

the West Coast not so much.

Speaker 2: Imagine a cartel leader.

Speaker 6: The cops in LA were focused on gangbangers and cartel members,

not some retired Irish mobster who hadn't been spotted in

sixteen years. But then, few mobsters have ever been as

infamous in the city as Whitey Bulger was in Boston,

and his reputation was for more than just being grumpy.

Besides extortion and flooding the city with cocaine, Bulger routinely

performed or ordered executions, some at close range, some with

a halo of bullets and at least one by strangulation,

after which it said he took a nap. Special agent

rich tea And who ran the FBI's Whitey Bulger Fugitive

task Force, had heard.

Speaker 3: Bulger was charged with nineteen counts of murder. He was

charged with other crimes. He was scorged to the Society

in South Boston, his own community.

Speaker 6: He was also a scourged to the FBI and a

great source of embarrassment to t in Special Agent Phil

Towursney and others on the FBI task force. Years earlier,

Whitey Bulger had infiltrated the Boston office of the FBI

and bought off agents who protected him and plied him

with information, including the tip that allowed Bulger to flee

just days before he was to be indicted.

Speaker 9: We really had to catch this guy to establish credibility

after all the other issues, and it was just a

matter of bringing this guy back to Boston to make

sure this guy didn't die or know or get away.

Speaker 2: With this thing.

Speaker 6: Toursney, who's now retired, and the agent Tommy MacDonald joined

the task force in two thousand and nine. The joke

was Bulger was on the FBI's Least Wanted List. There

hadn't been a credible lead in more than a decade,

and their efforts in Bulger's old neighborhood of South Boston

were met with mistrust, in ridicule.

Speaker 9: Some people, they told us right out from you guys

aren't looking.

Speaker 7: For that guy.

Speaker 9: People just made the assumption we had him stashed somewhere.

I mean, people really thought that kind of thing.

Speaker 18: Despite that mindset that we're not going to help you,

the FBI.

Speaker 2: Still got it done. Took sixteen years. Took sixteen years.

Speaker 18: This was not a typical fugitive.

Speaker 6: The FBI says Bulger had planned his getaway years in advance,

with money set aside in a fake identity for a

Thomas Baxter. During his first two years on the LAMB,

Bulger was in touch with friends and family, shuttling between

New York, Chicago and the resort town of Grand Isle, Louisiana,

where he rented a home until his identity was compromised.

After that, it seemed as if Bulger had disappeared from

the face of the earth, except for the alleged sightings

all over the world. How many of these tips do

you think might have been true.

Speaker 2: Boy.

Speaker 9: There was thousands and thousands of tips, and I think

I don't think any of.

Speaker 2: Them are true.

Speaker 6: One of the obstacles was there were really no good

photographs of Bulger or his longtime live in girlfriend, Katherine Gregg,

a former dental hygienist. The FBI often noted that the

couple shared a love of animals, especially dogs and cats,

and asked veterinarians to be on the lookout. There were

reports that Greg once had breast implants and other plastic

surgery in Boston, so the task force reached out to physicians. Eventually,

they got a call from a doctor, Matthias Donolan, who

had located her files in storage.

Speaker 18: I was trying to leave the office early to catch

one of my kids' ballgames, and I said, well, listen,

I'm going to swing by in the morning and pick

those up. And they said to me, do you want

the photos too, And they said, you have photos and

they said, yeah, we have photos.

Speaker 2: I said, we'll be there in fifteen minutes.

Speaker 6: The breast implant lead produced a treasure trove of high

resolution Catherine greg photographs that would help the case. The

FBI decided to switch strategies going after the girlfriend in

order to catch the gangster.

Speaker 5: This is an announcement by the FBI.

Speaker 6: The FBI created this public service announcement.

Speaker 5: Sixty year old Greeg.

Speaker 18: Is the girlfriend of eighty one year old Bulger.

Speaker 6: It ran in fourteen markets on daytime talk shows aimed

at women. Called the tip line at one eight hundred

call FBI, and it didn't take long. The very next morning,

the Bulger Task Force got three messages from someone that

used to live in Santa Monica and was one hundred

percent certain that Charlie and Carol Gasco Apartment three to

three at the Princess Eugenia Apartments were the people they

were looking for. The descriptions and the age difference matched,

and Deputy US Marshal Neil Sullivan, who handled the lead,

said there was another piece of tantalizing information.

Speaker 19: The tips A specifically described that they were caring for

this cat and their their love for this cat. So

that was just on one piece of the puzzle on

the tip that just added up to saying if this

isn't damn it's it's something we better check out immediately

because it sure sounds like them.

Speaker 6: A search of the FBI's computer database for the gascoes

raised another red flag, not for what it found, but

for what it didn't.

Speaker 9: Basically like they were ghosts.

Speaker 19: No driver's license exactly, no driver's license, no California ID,

Like they didn't exist.

Speaker 13: That's the apartment that corner on the third floor, on

the right hand side.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 6: By early afternoon, FBI agent Scott Gariola had set up

a number of surveillance posts and had already met with

apartment manager Josh Bond to talk about his tenants.

Speaker 14: He closed the door, threw down a folder, and open

it up and said, are these the people that live

in part of three oh three?

Speaker 9: Did you say anything when you saw the pictures?

Speaker 5: Minus?

Speaker 14: The reaction was holy, you're living next door to a gangster. Well,

I still didn't really know who he was, but.

Speaker 6: It didn't take him long to figure it out. While

the FBI was mulling its options, Bond logged onto Bulger's

Wikipedia page.

Speaker 14: I'm just kind of scrolling down. It's like, oh wow,

this guy's serious. It's like murders and extortion. And then

I get to the bottom and there's this thing. It's

like from one of his old people saying, well, the

last time I saw him he said, you know, when

he goes out, he's he's gonna have guns and he's

going to be ready to take people with him. I

was like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be involved in this.

Speaker 6: We were sitting here laughing about it.

Speaker 2: But he's a pretty serious guy.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I killed a lot of people who had them.

Speaker 14: Kill I didn't know that at the time.

Speaker 6: Bond told the FBI he wasn't going to knock on

the Gasco's door because there was a note posted expressly

asking people not to bother them. Carol had told neighbors

that Charlie was showing signs.

Speaker 5: Of dementia, so we were back there.

Speaker 6: So Garyola devised a ruse involving the Gasco storage locker

in the garage.

Speaker 13: Had the name Gasco across an apartment.

Speaker 5: Three or three.

Speaker 6: He had the manager call to tell them that their

locker had been broken into and that he needed someone

to come down to see if anything was missing. Carol

Gasco said her husband and would be right down.

Speaker 5: We just rushed him.

Speaker 6: He mean, guns out, FBI, don't move.

Speaker 13: Gave the words hey, FBI, and get your hands up,

and hands went up right away. And then at that

moment we told him get down on his knees, and

he gave us, Yeah, he gave us, I ain't getting

down on my f and knees. Didn't want to get

his pantstory, don't want to get his pants dirty, you know,

wearing white and seeing the oil on the ground.

Speaker 5: I guess he didn't want.

Speaker 13: To get down in oil.

Speaker 6: Even at eighty one. This was a man used to

being in control.

Speaker 13: I asked him to identify himself and acting go over well.

He asked me to f and identify myself, which I did,

and I asked him, I said, are you Are you

Whitey Bulger?

Speaker 5: He said yes.

Speaker 13: Just about that moment, someone catches my attention from a

few feet away by the elevator.

Speaker 2: Chef.

Speaker 6: It was Janie Goodwin from the third floor, coming to

do her laundry.

Speaker 15: And nice, So excuse me, I think I can help you.

This man has dementia, so if he's acting oddly, you know,

that could be why.

Speaker 13: Immediately we flashed through my mind as, oh my god,

I just arrested eighty one year old man with Alzheimer's

who thinks he's Whitey Bulger. What is he going to

tell me? Naxty's elvis? So I said, do me a favor.

I said, this woman up here says you have a

touch of Alzheimer's. He said, don't listen to her. She's

f and nuts. He says, I'm James Bulger.

Speaker 6: A few minutes later he confirmed it, signing a consent

form allowing the FBI to search his apartment.

Speaker 13: As he's signing, he says, that's the first time I

signed that name in a long time.

Speaker 6: There was a feeling of resignation.

Speaker 13: I don't think he had it.

Speaker 5: I did ask him.

Speaker 13: I said, hey, Whitey, I said, aren't you relieved that

you don't have to look over your shoulder anymore? And

it's come to an end? And he said, are you nuts?

Speaker 6: But in some ways, Whitey Bulger and Catherine Gregg had

already been prisoners in apartment three three, which appeared to

be a mixture of the murderers in the mundane. Alongside

the weapons and all the money they had stockpiled the

lifetime supply of cleansers, creams, and detergents. The FBI took

special interest in a collection of sixty four ounce bottles

with white sock stretched over the top.

Speaker 13: I said, hey, Whitey, what are these some kind of

Molotov cocktail you're making, he goes, No, he said, I

buy tube socks from the ninety nine cent store, and

the two tied of Mike Calves, so I stretched them out.

I said, why are you shopping at the ninety ninth

cent store. You have half a million dollars under your bed,

he goes, I had to make the money least.

Speaker 6: It's been said that one of the reasons it took

so long to catch Whitey Bulger is that people were

looking for a gangster. In Bulger, whether he liked it

or not, had ceased to be wood.

Speaker 9: He said, it was hard to keep up that mindset

of a criminal, and that's part of the reason he

came down to that garage. He said, if he was

on his game, you know, fifteen, twenty thirty years ago,

he probably would have sent something there. But he said

it was hard to stay on that edge, that criminal edge.

After being on the lamb as a regular citizen for

fifteen years.

Speaker 6: The master Manipulator gave credit to Catherine Gregg for keeping

him crying free, hoping it would mitigate her sins. She's

now serving eight years for harboring a fugitive on the

long plane ride back to Boston, Bulger told his captors

that he became obsessed with not getting caught and would

do anything to avoid it, even if it meant obeying

the law. Whitey Bulger's biggest fear, they said, was being

discovered dead in his apartment, and he had a plan

to avoid it.

Speaker 9: If he became ill and knew he was on his deathbed,

he'd go down Arizona, crawl down the bottom one of

these mines and die and decompose and hope, hope that

we would never find him and still be looking for

him forever.