Black Mass
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Police records: 1981 affidavit submitted by the Massachusetts State Police to get court approval for electronic bugging of James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi.
CHAPTER 8: PRINCE STREET HITMAN
Court records: Transcripts from the daily log of conversations inside Mafia headquarters at 98 Prince Street from January to May 1981; 1995 court affidavit by FBI agent Edward Quinn on 98 Prince Street tapes about the activities of James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi; the sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 20, 25, and 27, 1998.
News articles: Several Boston Globe and Boston Herald articles about the Bennett brothers murders in 1967, 1968, and 1985; Globe articles in 1986 about challenges by defendant Gennaro Angiulo to the racketeering statute.
Books: O’Neill and Lehr, The Underboss.
FBI records: Documents released at the Wolf hearings as exhibits 50, 51, and 73 about John Connolly’s reports on dealings by James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi with Mafia leaders at 98 Prince Street.
Police records: 1981 affidavit submitted by the Massachusetts State Police to get court approval for electronic bugging of James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi.
CHAPTER 9: FINE FOOD, FINE WINE, DIRTY MONEY
Main sources: The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 20, 25, and 26, 1998; John Morris, April 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, and 30, 1998; retired FBI agent Jim Ring, June 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, and 22, and September 18 and 22, 1998; FBI agent John Newton, May 22, June 2, 1998; Nick Gianturco, January 15 and 20, and April 20, 1998; Theresa Stanley, September 16, 1998; Debbie Morris, September 22, 1998; John Connolly’s 1998 interviews with WBZ-AM Radio, WRKO-AM Radio, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Tab; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”
We also drew on FBI reports about meetings with Bulger and Flemmi from 1980 through the spring of 1983; John Connolly’s divorce records, Norfolk County Probate Court, 82MO351-DI; 1998 interview by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility with Rebecca Morris; interviews with retired FBI supervisor Robert Fitzpatrick; and numerous background interviews we conducted in connection with our 1988 and 1998 stories about Bulger and the FBI.
Regarding the payoff Morris sought from Bulger, it is interesting to note that John Connolly, in 1998 media interviews, denied that he’d delivered any cash to Debbie Noseworthy. Judge Wolf ruled, however, that
Morris solicited and received through Connolly $1,000 from Bulger and Flemmi . . . Recalling the offer communicated through Connolly, he [Morris] asked Connolly if Bulger and Flemmi would provide funds necessary to buy his secretary a plane ticket. Connolly subsequently gave Morris’s secretary an envelope containing $1,000 cash, which Morris understood had come from Bulger and Flemmi. . . . The court finds that Morris’s understanding was correct. (pp. 19, 166-67)
Regarding the dinner parties, Wolf ruled:
The timing of these dinners suggests that they were often arranged to celebrate milestones in the FBI’s relationship with Bulger and Flemmi. . . . At these dinners, the agents, Bulger and Flemmi at times exchanged gifts. Although FBI procedures required that all contacts with informants be documented, there is only one, a 1979 report, reflecting matters discussed at these dinners. There is no record of the gifts exchanged. (pp. 5-6)
Regarding the FBI’s failure to look at reports of Bulger and Flemmi’s criminality, Wolf ruled: “In 1979 and early 1980, the FBI received information from informants that Bulger and Flemmi were involved in other criminal activity, including illegal gambling and trafficking in cocaine. These allegations too were not investigated” (p. 144). Earlier the judge had noted that “the FBI neither investigated nor disclosed such information to any other law enforcement agency because Connolly and Morris were ‘very anxious’ to continue to receive the ‘valuable’ assistance of Bulger and Flemmi in the investigation of the Mafia to which Morris had by then dedicated every member of his Organized Crime Squad” (p. 143).
The judge also mentioned Connolly’s growing influence in the FBI office. He found that when other FBI agents “received reliable information about criminal activity in which Bulger and Flemmi were engaged, they regularly consulted Connolly and then did not pursue any investigation” (p. 194).
It is also worth noting that in his “justification memos” of late 1980 and early 1981, John Connolly cited a second instance of Bulger putatively saving the life of an FBI agent. The dynamic at work in the second example reflects the dynamic of the first episode involving agent Nick Gianturco. Once again, Connolly seems to take a nugget of information and polish it into Bulger hype. In the 1980 memo that Connolly was ordered to write to justify keeping Bulger as an FBI informant, Connolly recalled that in 1977 Bulger had told him of a plan to kill agent Billy Butchka. Butchka at the time was posing as a buyer of stolen paintings and jewelry from a burglary ring. Connolly wrote that Bulger, “on his own, was successful in preventing the prospective hit men from taking any action against Butchka.”
Just like Gianturco, Butchka today supports Connolly’s version of events up to a point. In a 1998 telephone interview, Butchka told us: “I will verify I was working undercover and that I did receive a call that someone was going to hit me, and later I was told it was attributed to one of John Connolly’s informants. This was basically all I knew about it.” Butchka said he was no longer able to recall the name of the agent who warned him or the names of the thieves he was told were after him.
But just as in the Gianturco example, the life-saving scenario Connolly described is contradicted by other key officials who participated in the stolen art probe. The purported threat to Butchka’s life did not come up in the case proceedings in court, either as an issue at bail hearings or in the eventual dispositions. “I don’t remember him [Butchka] ever being threatened,” said Michael Collora in a 1998 telephone interview. Collora, now in private practice, was the federal prosecutor who oversaw prosecution of the burglary ring infiltrated by Butchka. (During 1998 he actually had John Morris as a client.) Said Collora: “I would have known about any threat because we would’ve had to make a decision whether to pull him off, and that was never done.”
CHAPTER 10: MURDER, INC.
Court records: The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of John Morris, April 22, 24, 27, and 29, 1998; Stephen Flemmi, August 26 and 28, and September 1, 1998; former Massachusetts U.S. attorney William Weld, May 26 and 27, 1998; retired FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick, August 17 and 18, 1998; James Ring, June 10 and 11.
Interviews: Tulsa homicide detective Michael Huff; retired FBI agents Robert Fitzpatrick, James Ring, and Gerald Montanari; an anonymous prosecutor about the decision by former assistant U.S. attorney Jeremiah O’Sullivan to not give Brian Halloran witness protection program status; Brian Halloran family cousin Maureen Caton; an anonymous former police investigator on the murders of Louis Litif and George Pappas; an anonymous Massachusetts State Police detective on the Roger Wheeler murder (1988 background interview); an anonymous 1998 interview with a Boston Edison executive about the company’s 1990 hiring of John Connolly.
News articles: Articles about the 1981 murder of Roger Wheeler in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe; stories in the Globe and the Boston Herald on the murders of George Pappas, Brian Halloran, and John Callahan and the murder trial of James Flynn; an extensive 1997 article in the Hartford Courant on the World Jai Alai murders and the Boston FBI office.
FBI documents: An extensive February 23, 1982, report of the six-week debriefing by agents of Brian Halloran and other documents released at the Wolf hearings as exhibits 47, 52-55, 83, 91, 155, 157, 225, and 226; John Connolly’s reports in October and December 1981 and April and May 1982 from Bulger and Flemmi on the danger to Halloran posed by the Boston Mafia.
Judge Wolf addressed the FBI’s role in the World Jai Alai murders.
Morris caused Connolly to tell Flemmi and Bulger that Brian Halloran was providing the FBI information that implicated them in the murder of Roger Wheeler. Halloran was murdered soon after. M
orris believed Bulger and Flemmi were responsible. When Halloran was murdered, Connolly prepared a 209 stating that Flemmi reported that “the wise guys in Charlestown” had heard that Halloran was cooperating with the Massachusetts State Police and, therefore, had a motive to murder him. Similarly, shortly before John Callahan, another associate of Bulger and Flemmi implicated in the Wheeler investigation, was murdered in Miami in 1983 [sic], Connolly prepared a 209 stating that Flemmi had reported that Callahan was trying to avoid a “very bad” Cuban group. Flemmi and Bulger remain suspects in the still open Wheeler, Halloran, and Callahan murder investigations. (“Memorandum and Order,” p. 84)
Although John Connolly denied informing James Bulger about Halloran’s attempt to become a FBI informant, Wolf held otherwise: “In addition, when Brian Halloran became a potential witness against Bulger and Flemmi in the Wheeler homicide investigation, Morris told Connolly. As Morris anticipated, Connolly told Bulger and Flemmi. Several weeks later Halloran was murdered” (p. 163).
Wolf also addressed the FBI indexing issue.
With one exception, however, the many reports containing Halloran’s charges against Bulger and Flemmi were not properly indexed with a reference to their names. Thus, these documents were not found or considered by the Department of Justice officials who were assigned in July 1997 as a result of this case to review allegations that had been made by informants and witnesses against Bulger and Flemmi. (p. 173)
In the case of United States v Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil, the November 1999 affidavit of Thomas B. Duffy in support of pretrial detention of the defendants Kevin J. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil addressed the murder of Brian Halloran. About a year after the murder of Roger Wheeler, “Bulger and Flemmi learned that a Boston resident, Brian Halloran, was providing information to the FBI regarding the murder of Wheeler. Bulger, Flemmi, and others shot and killed Halloran on the South Boston waterfront” (p. 12).
CHAPTER 11: BULGERTOWN, USA
Main sources: The 1998 sworn testimony of Julie Rakes, Joseph Lundbohm, Jean Miskel, Jamie Flannery, and Richard Bergeron at the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Stephen M. Rakes, United States v Stephen M. Rakes; the sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 26, 1998; Jim Ring, September 22, 1998; and Theresa Stanley, September 16, 1998; John Connolly’s 1998 interviews with the Boston Globe and Boston Herald during the Rakes trial; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order”; United States v Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil; United States v John J. Connolly Jr., James Bulger aka “Whitey,” and Stephen Flemmi; FBI reports on meetings with Bulger and Flemmi from 1981 through early 1984; interviews conducted in connection with articles about Bulger and the FBI published in the Boston Globe in 1990 and 1998.
It is interesting to note that John Connolly, in media interviews in 1998, denied ever talking to Bulger about the Rakeses. In sworn testimony, Stephen Flemmi said he believed Connolly had tipped off Bulger, giving them a “heads-up” so that Bulger could issue Rakes a warning.
In his 1999 ruling, Judge Wolf found:
Connolly received very reliable information concerning an ongoing extortion by Bulger and Flemmi. In violation of FBI policy and practice, Connolly did not record the information or disclose it to his Supervisor as required by the FBI Guidelines. Nor did he try to obtain the testimony of the victims or conduct any other investigation. Instead, he told Bulger of the charges. (“Memorandum and Order,” p. 181)
Following his 1998 perjury conviction, Stephen Rakes decided to cooperate with federal prosecutors. During late 1998 and 1999 he testified before the federal grand jury that indicted Bulger associates Kevin Weeks and Kevin O’Neil in November 1999. The racketeering charges against the two included the takeover of the Rakeses’ liquor store. In exchange for his cooperation, Rakes was spared prison when he was sentenced on November 22, 1999. Rakes told the judge he had “great remorse” for lying twice to earlier grand juries. He was placed on probation for two years.
Several other points are worth noting about the Rakes affair. The first is that Boston police detective Joseph Lundbohm eventually ran afoul of the law himself; he was convicted in 1990 of taking bribes to protect Mafia gambling operations. Also, the FBI’s apparent “hands-off” policy regarding Whitey Bulger covered small matters too. After the liquor store was taken over, FBI agent James J. Lavin III was notified by a Boston Globe photographer, Joe Runci, about unusual improvements under way on the store’s property. Runci provided the FBI with photographs showing city workers installing guard rails on the private property. During the Wolf hearings, Lavin testified that the construction work by city employees represented a possible case of public corruption. Lavin testified that he told John Morris about the photographs and that Morris told him to “run it by John Connolly.”
Lavin testified that he then sought out Connolly and explained the situation; Connolly asked him: “What are you going to do with that?” Lavin testified that Connolly then told him that Bulger had provided “valuable information to the office.” Lavin testified that one could infer from Connolly’s response that Connolly was suggesting to him to drop the matter. Lavin did just that. He testified that he stuck the photographs in his desk drawer at the Boston office of the FBI and never even wrote up a report. “I didn’t do anything with it,” he testified on May 6, 1998. The photographs sat in his desk until the 1998 Wolf hearings. During his testimony Lavin admitted it was unusual—a breach of standard procedure—to leave the photos in his desk and to fail to write a report. “In hindsight, I should have put [the photos] in the file.” Furthermore, Lavin said that shortly after his meeting with Connolly he got word that the guard rails had been taken down. It was an end-of-story twist mirroring the Rakeses’ experience—all roads seemed to lead to Bulger.
Lavin testified that he was surprised to hear the guard rails were removed so quickly. “It was a possibility that someone called Mr. Bulger, or it could have been a coincidence. I thought it was very odd.” He said he did not know if Connolly had alerted Bulger. “You know, it could have been. I just don’t know.”
Finally, there is Stephen Flemmi. Usually talkative on the stand during the Wolf hearings, particularly about the protection the FBI had provided him over the years, Flemmi turned remarkably mute when the questions turned to Stephen and Julie Rakes. On August 26, 1998, federal prosecutor Fred Wyshak and Flemmi had the following exchange:
WYSHAK: Let’s talk a little bit about . . . Stephen Rakes.
FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.
WYSHAK: He and his wife Julie opened up a liquor store; did you know that?
FLEMMI: Assert the Fifth on that.
WYSHAK: And you took the store from them, didn’t you, you and Mr. Bulger?
FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.
WYSHAK: And they complained, didn’t they, to Joe Lundbohm?
FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.
WYSHAK: Didn’t you have a conversation with John Connolly where he told you that Joe Lundbohm had reported to him that you and Mr. Bulger had extorted the liquor store away from the Rakes[es]?
FLEMMI: I’ll assert the Fifth on that.
CHAPTER 12: THE BULGER MYTH
Main sources: The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 20, 24, 26, 27, and 28, and September 2, 1998; John Morris, April 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, and 30, 1998; Jim Ring, June 10 and September 22, 1998; FBI agent James R. Blackburn, Jr., May 7 and 22, 1998; retired FBI agent Roderick Kennedy, April 14, 1998; DEA agent Stephen Boeri, May 14, 15, 18, and 19, 1998; DEA agent Al Reilly, May 20, 1998; former assistant U.S. attorney Gary Crossen, May 11 and 12, 1998; former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts William Weld, May 26 and 27, 1998; former Quincy police detective Richard Bergeron, June 3 and 4, 1998; former Boston DEA agent in charge Robert Stutman, April 15, 1998; former Boston FBI agent in charge James Greenleaf, January 8, 1998; Theresa Stanley, September 16, 1998; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”
In addition, we relied on John Connoll
y’s 1998 interviews with WBZ-AM Radio, WRKO-AM Radio, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Tab. For background on Operation Beans, we relied on a number of internal investigative reports, particularly the surveillance logs kept by the Quincy Police Department for 1983 through 1985 and the DEA affidavits in support of the agency’s bid to obtain court permission to attempt electronic surveillance of Bulger and Flemmi. For information about John McIntyre’s cooperation, we relied on a forty-eight-page transcript of his debriefing with Quincy police and the DEA on October 14, 1984. For information on the burial of three bodies in the basement of a South Boston home, we relied on the superseding indictment unsealed on September 28, 2000, in United States v Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, criminal docket 99-10371. For information about the anti-drug poster in Bulger’s store and the perception of Bulger in South Boston, we drew on Michael Patrick McDonald’s 1999 memoir All Souls.
We drew on extensive FBI internal reports, including reports about Bulger’s drug activities. The FBI documents include but are not limited to those released at the Wolf hearings as exhibits 11, 12, 14, 19, 45, 48, 63, 88, 89, 91, 102, 104-107, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 164, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 233, 237, 254, 255, 257, and 258.
We also drew on numerous interviews conducted in connection with articles in the Boston Globe about Bulger and the FBI published in 1988 and 1998. A number of other Globe stories were helpful regarding drugs in Southie—specifically, articles by Brian MacQuarrie published March 5 and April 16, 1997, and December 27, 1999, and an article by Charles Stein published in the Globe’s Sunday magazine on December 13, 1998.