Black Mass

by Dick Lehr

  By the time the transactions became a public controversy in 1988, Finnerty had dropped any pretense of being a real estate lawyer for the massive project. He said he had joined the Brown development team to bring it respectability, using his law enforcement background to overcome Brown’s past association with arsonists. His price for respectability was $1.8 million, and he actually filed suit against Brown to get all of the money.

  But a few weeks of public clamor about the deal was more than enough for the low-profile landlord. He suddenly folded, settling the suit. Brown called it a pragmatic decision to pay less in the long run. “I am a businessman, and it is not my job to pursue investigations,” he said. He never uttered another word about it.

  Despite his defiant public stance, the controversy around the skyscraper at 75 State Street was an intense ordeal for Bulger. When the furor was at its height, the senate president was briefly stalked “by the black dog of melancholy.” At the end of 1988 he slipped out of the State House and walked over to Boston Common, where he sat glumly on a park bench. He watched people eating lunch on nearby benches and, in his disconsolate reverie, became angry at their indifference to media misconduct. He thought: “Don’t any of these people walking our streets or the paths in our parks . . . see what the media are doing in this city?” The episode passed quickly as he realized that strangers had no reason to be aroused by his problems. The angst departed, and he headed back to his office “with a lighter step, ready for whatever awaited.”

  Bulger filed an affidavit stating that he borrowed money from Finnerty without knowing its origin. Over time Billy’s version of the scandal became an accepted part of his bloodied but unbowed image in South Boston. Once again Billy Bulger had stood up to outsiders and been victimized by the media for it. As always, he came out on top.

  But Bulger’s brief on 75 State Street holds up only if the facts are discarded. Bulger was not the innocent victim. The slumlord was. And just as the FBI had protected Whitey Bulger for fifteen years, the bureau stepped in to keep William Bulger out of harm’s way.

  During a federal review of several downtown developments, including 75 State Street, investigators uncovered records that shattered the senate president’s claims. The documents—which remain buried in federal files—show that Bulger actually kept a full share of Brown’s money. Although Bulger “repaid” the loan, Finnerty washed the money back to Bulger through other law firm accounts. Through this circuitous route, Bulger received about half of the original $500,000 down payment.

  Moreover, Bulger did not get anywhere near the $267,000 fee he said stood behind the loan as collateral. The law firm records show that he received less than half the claimed amount, or $110,000.

  The records would not prove extortion, but they destroyed his tale of borrowing money to fix the car and roof for Mary. Instead of putting the money into household improvements, Bulger invested it in a tax-free bond fund. If this got out, it would not sit well with Southie. After all, Billy would not be Billy if he took the money. Taking the money would be shades of Whitey.

  BUT Bulger had some help within the FBI. Despite the public clamor, the Brown extortion claim was already a closed matter in the bureau. The same John Morris who had protected Whitey Bulger and taken money from him was now on the case as supervisor of the squad overseeing public corruption crimes. In 1988 Morris moved quickly to head off damage to Billy Bulger by shutting down the case a few days before the Boston Globe published a front-page story about the deal behind the skyscraper.

  Once again, Morris had to wrestle with his conscience. The persistent Brown case was another in a lengthening line of decisions that required him to calculate the risk of doing the right thing against the certain wrath of a ruthless crook who had bribed him multiple times and slowly seduced him with fine wine and a curious camaraderie. But Morris knew Whitey Bulger would not hesitate to use his weakness against him. Indeed, at the most recent dinner party Morris held for the informants (a small gathering at Debbie Noseworthy’s apartment in Woburn), Whitey upped the stakes. After John Connolly and Stevie Flemmi had left the apartment, Morris saw that Bulger was hanging back by the coat rack. “As he was putting his coat on,” Morris said, “he pulled out an envelope and gave the envelope to me. He said, ‘Here, this is to help you out,’ and walked out the door.” Inside the envelope was $5,000 in cash.

  With this recent exchange in the background, Morris closed the 75 State Street file. But the skyscraper story lumbered on, especially after it was learned that the FBI had never even questioned Billy Bulger. Massachusetts attorney general James Shannon called for a renewed federal effort to clear the air.

  Enter John Connolly. With Billy Bulger now squarely on the firing line, Connolly took Morris aside and pressed him on whether the senate president should agree to be interviewed. Morris recalled that “Connolly approached me and asked me what the senate president should do, that he’s been asked to submit to an interview and what did I recommend that he do?” Morris told him that Bulger should do it because the uncorroborated Brown allegations made for a soft case. “I didn’t feel that the case was very strong,” Morris continued. “I didn’t think that he could hurt himself. I thought it would be to his advantage to submit to the interview and put an end to the public clamor.” The premise for the renewed investigation became Bulger’s best interest rather than no-holds-barred work in the trenches.

  Having covered up for Whitey to the point of warning him about other FBI informants, Connolly now swooped in to run interference for brother Bill—his real hometown hero. Whitey was mostly business. But Billy was something of an idol. Over the years Connolly had masked his relationship with Whitey, but never his friendship with Billy—Connolly wore that on his sleeve, exulting in his ties to the altar boy from St. Monica’s. Connolly believed that his friendship with Billy had convinced Whitey to become an informant. He called Billy a “lifelong friend . . . a mentor . . . a very close friend.” And Connolly worked the relationship hard inside the FBI, parading agents through Bulger’s senate office to meet the president in person. Bulger once introduced him to his fellow senators during a session, and Connolly was given a standing ovation. Knowing that many agents are like aging ballplayers who fear life after the glory years, Connolly often told colleagues that Bulger could help them get high-paying jobs when they retired. No way was Connolly going to allow a hostile FBI interview of Billy, let alone a no-holds-barred probe for the truth.

  In these circumstances, it was not surprising that the second FBI investigation consisted solely of an interview with Bulger in his lawyer’s office. Prosecutors and an FBI agent listened to a two-hour speech from Bulger in which he denied any connection with Brown and stuck by his loan and fee story. He said that Finnerty “swore” to him that he never invoked Bulger’s name to gain an advantage. And Bulger added a new twist to the loan. This time around it was not about meeting household expenses but about taking preemptive action because he didn’t trust Finnerty to give him his full share of the fee. Bulger simply wanted his money while the getting was good.

  BULGER’S friendly FBI interview became the basis for shutting down the investigation forever. Jeremiah O’Sullivan, who had become interim U.S. attorney, said the case showed power brokering but did not rise to the level of extortion. Asked if he was leaving the impression that wrongdoing had occurred without being addressed, O’Sullivan said it wasn’t his job and that further action should come from state authorities.

  Despite his behind-the-scenes interventions for Whitey Bulger, O’Sullivan did not recuse himself. He had looked the other way on race-fixing and alerted the FBI to the state police surveillance at Lancaster Street. He’d played a key role in saving Bulger from Sarhatt’s internal FBI review and then was the one who banished the doomed and desperate Brian Halloran from the witness protection program. Now the cocksure prosecutor proclaimed the Bill Bulger case dead on arrival, not even a close call. It would be O’Sullivan’s valedictory from law enforcement.

  O
ne of the matters that O’Sullivan discarded to lesser agencies was the downside of Bill Bulger’s stay at the State House. Belying Bulger’s public persona of rock-solid rectitude were steep legal fees for dubious services. For example, in addition to the $250,000 in Brown money funneled back to him by Finnerty, Bulger had split fees with a State House lobbyist who brought him influence-seeking clients. The lobbyist was Richard McDonough, the son of a legendary political rogue, Patrick “Sonny” McDonough. Although the son lacked Sonny’s gruff charm, he was a street-smart hustler who had learned well the byways of the State House. Indeed, it was Dickie McDonough who had originally brought Bulger the magical case from the contractors in need of the $2.8 million bank loan. And it was Dickie who received $70,000 in return for the referral. He also brought Bulger another client, a California weight loss company that sought assistance in getting one of its products off the Food and Drug Administration’s carcinogenic list. The company thought that Bulger could help with the FDA, but all he could do was get an appointment with minor bureaucrats in a different agency. Despite the lack of results, Bulger and McDonough split a $100,000 fee.

  In their interviews with federal investigators, neither Bulger nor McDonough could produce paperwork to support the fees. McDonough knew next to nothing about the work done for clients that indirectly paid him $120,000.

  Two months after O’Sullivan slammed the door on any further investigation, the senate president was the guest speaker at a retirement party for FBI agent John Cloherty. Cloherty had handled press relations when the bureau closed its review of 75 State Street. He was also a former member of the Organized Crime Squad under Morris and a friend of Connolly’s. It was a rollicking good time.

  ABOUT a year after Bill Bulger and Tom Finnerty split up $500,000 from the state’s largest landlord, a small South Boston realtor received an offer he couldn’t refuse. Once again money allegedly was demanded under duress, but the terms were starkly different in Southie. Raymond Slinger’s alternative to paying $50,000 was to get blown away by a shotgun.

  Slinger thought he might be on to something good when his dealings with Whitey Bulger began in the fall of 1986. Bulger stopped by his office unexpectedly for a short primer on how to cash in on the suddenly surging local real estate market. They chatted for about twenty minutes, and Slinger may have seen himself working with Bulger in some real estate deals.

  But it was not to be. Six months later Slinger was summoned to the dreaded Triple O’s bar. He gingerly entered the dank, claustrophobic barroom, with its warped floorboards and low ceiling, its dark walls and sticky tabletops. It was a place where someone was always playing pool while nursing a drink and solitary patrons stared into their shot glasses and beer chasers. Slinger was ushered to the second-floor office, where Bulger was waiting for him, arms folded. He looked up and announced, “We got a problem.”

  Bulger said he had been hired to kill Slinger, an assignment that would require him to arrive at Slinger’s Old Harbor Real Estate office “with shotguns and masks and so forth.”

  Bulger would answer no questions, including who it was who wanted Slinger dead or why. He would only talk about what could be done about it—pay Bulger to cancel the contract. Slinger, who had some large debts and his share of enemies, gulped and asked if he could be out from under for $2,000. But Bulger laughed at him and said his boots cost more than that.

  BULGER: “$50,000 would be more like it.”

  SLINGER: “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  BULGER: “Well, I think you better find it.”

  Slinger went straight to the downstairs bar to fortify himself before returning to his East Broadway Street office. He made a desperate call for help to city councilor James Kelly. After Kelly talked to Bulger, he told Slinger everything should be okay.

  But it wasn’t. Two days later Slinger heard from Kevin O’Neil, the Bulger associate who ran Triple O’s. O’Neil told him “the man” wanted to see him again. Sensing the worst, Slinger returned to Triple O’s with a racing heart and a gun borrowed from a friend. Once inside, two of Bulger’s henchmen seized him immediately, pushing and shoving him up the stairs to the second floor, where a ranting Bulger was waiting. Slinger recalled that they “grabbed me and pulled me upstairs, frisked me, opened my shirt, took my gun away, and started belting me, beat me up.” Out of the melee, Slinger had the clear memory of Bulger kicking him.

  Bulger and his underlings sat Slinger down hard in a chair. They made sure he was not wearing a wire and then upbraided him for talking to Kelly. Bulger took Slinger’s gun and placed the barrel pointing down on the top of Slinger’s head, explaining that the bullet would go down the spinal column and not cause a bloody mess. Bulger then ordered an aide to get him a “body bag,” and Slinger nearly passed out from fright. “I thought I was done.”

  The moment passed, and Slinger was given a second chance to come up with the money. With a ripped shirt and scarred psyche, Slinger stumbled to the downstairs bar again. When he got back to his office, he called his sister and wife and lined up loans for a $10,000 payment. He also agreed to a weekly payment schedule.

  About two months after he was slapped around and terrorized by Bulger, Slinger began to stagger under the burden of making the weekly $2,000 payments, which he put in a paper bag and handed over to O’Neil in a car outside the realty office. Slinger had paid half the debt, but he was so desperate that he turned to law enforcement. In the spring of 1987 he reached out to the FBI.

  Without making an appointment, two agents showed up at the Old Harbor Real Estate office one day. Slinger opened his door to John Newton and Roderick Kennedy.

  Later Newton would say that Slinger was willing to testify about a “shakedown” by Kevin O’Neil. But he claimed that Slinger never mentioned Bulger’s name. For his part, Kennedy could not remember a single detail about the interview, including whether it happened at all. And in an extraordinary departure from standard procedure, neither agent wrote a report on the session with Slinger.

  In a classic example of what not to do with such a case, Newton discussed Slinger’s account with his boss, who talked it over with the assistant agent in charge. The top-level managers promptly dropped it, ignoring internal guidelines that they either refer it to prosecutors or explain their decision not to use it to FBI headquarters.

  Ironically, the unproductive FBI interview helped Slinger get off the hook in his unexpected business relationship with Whitey Bulger. After the agents left his office, a worried Slinger immediately called O’Neil to cover himself by explaining that the unexpected visit by the FBI was none of his doing. O’Neil called him back the next day and told him he could cancel his installment plan. The $25,000 would be payment in full, a rare half-price sale from Bulger Enterprises.

  Some years later Newton admitted that the bureau passed on what would have been a great extortion case. He was asked in court if there was a connection between the case dying and Bulger being an informant.

  When an informant is involved in a crime, he said, “either you’re going to go ahead with this investigation or you’re going to have to figure something out.”

  The something figured out was agent John Connolly telling Whitey to back off on the balance due from Slinger. That was what being a loyal friend was all about.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Connolly Talk

  Late Monday morning, February 8, I988, FBI agent John Connolly strode out of a hardware store near his FBI office and bumped into Dick Lehr, a reporter for the Boston Globe (and one of the authors of this book). Connolly had been at the store getting some duplicate keys made while Lehr was crossing town en route to an appointment with a source.

  It was a chance encounter on a crisp winter day.

  Connolly, recognizing the reporter, stopped on the sidewalk to say hello. They didn’t know each other very well, although Connolly was well known by a corps of reporters in the Boston media who covered organized crime as a regular beat. Of all the FBI agents in Boston, Connolly
was the most accessible, the agent most eager to talk to the media about his work and the FBI.

  Crime was not Lehr’s beat. But he had met Connolly the year before, in 1987. He was part of a team of Globe reporters who spent months interviewing FBI agents from the Organized Crime Squad about the Angiulo bugging. Lehr and the reporters had met with nearly a dozen agents— Connolly, John Morris, Ed Quinn, Nick Gianturco, Jack Cloherty, Shaun Rafferty, Mike Buckley, Bill Schopperle, Pete Kennedy, Bill Regii, and Tom Donlan. The series had been a hit with both the newspaper’s readers and the bureau, for it showed the FBI at its technical best: breaking into the Mafia’s inner sanctum to plant a listening device. Lehr had not seen or talked to Connolly since the newspaper project a year earlier. There was a round of greetings, and then the reporter asked the FBI agent how things were going.

  Connolly, jingling the shiny keys in his hand, didn’t hesitate. He began talking about a new FBI bug, one targeting the post-Angiulo mafiosi who were jockeying for position and power. Connolly said that for about six months, from late 1986 to mid-1987, the FBI had monitored the new Mafia lineup conducting business in the back of a grinder shop located in a shopping plaza at the foot of a Boston landmark, the Prudential Tower.

  “It was great,” the agent said about the bug that agents installed inside Vanessa’s Italian Food Shop.

  Lehr listened intently, realizing right away that the information might make for a great story. But the reporter was also taken aback by Connolly’s loose manner. There was no talk of the conversation being “on background” or “off the record” or restricted in any of the ways information can be when passed along to reporters. To the agent, talking about Vanessa’s seemed to be the same as talking about the Boston Bruins, who the night before had beaten the Calgary Flames, 6-3, to take over first place in their division in the National Hockey League. Or politics. The Democratic Party’s Iowa caucus was under way that very same day, featuring a challenge by Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis to the front-runner status of Richard Gephardt. Connolly, it appeared, was used to putting tidbits into orbit and not having them traced back to him.