Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  After that, Billy Shea was out of the drug business. Bulger never bothered him. It was years before he ever saw the mob boss again, and that was a random encounter with Bulger one day near the Old Colony housing project. Billy was with his son, who was four years old at the time.

  “Did you ever see him again after that?” asked the prosecutor.

  “No. Not until today.”

  Kelly told Judge Casper that he had no more questions.

  Defense attorney Carney stood and announced that they had no cross-examination of the witness.

  Billy Shea was dismissed.

  The entire inhabitants of the courtroom, including the jury, the lawyers, the judge, the guards, and the spectators, had been lost in a near-mystical state of fascination. The intimacy of Billy’s testimony, the emotional and physical details, the softness of his delivery: it was as if Shea had cast a spell over his listeners.

  9

  SURROGATE SON

  ON THE AFTERNOON of July 2, after Billy Shea completed his testimony, it was time for the trial to adjourn for the Fourth of July holiday. Before releasing the jury for the long weekend, the judge called the legal representatives from both sides over to the bench for a sidebar. She asked Wyshak and Kelly for an assessment of how many more witnesses the government would call to the stand, and how much longer their case would take.

  “We continue to make great progress with our schedule,” Brian Kelly informed the judge. “We anticipate being done with our case by the end of July.”

  Jay Carney tried to throw water on the notion that the end was near. He reiterated to the judge that the defense had a substantial list of witnesses they wanted to call to the stand. “Our plan now, based on our witness list, is to go into September.”

  Unsurprisingly, the two sides were at cross purposes, with different versions of reality.

  Judge Casper first gave the eighteen people seated in the jury box an assessment, based on what she’d just been told by the lawyers, of how much longer the trial was likely to continue. Then she gave them the standard admonition: “As you leave for the weekend, please keep all of my cautionary instructions in mind. . . . Don’t discuss the case with anyone. Don’t let anyone discuss it with you. Avoid any media coverage of the case. Don’t do any research of any kind on your own about the case. Have a great afternoon, and a great holiday. Thank you.”

  The jury was dismissed.

  Janet Uhlar had been planning on spending the Fourth of July weekend with her mother in Quincy. But she felt so overloaded by the trial—the sheer volume of evidence and also the unseemly nature of much of the testimony—that she decided to stay at her place in Cape Cod. One thing about living on the Cape: you don’t need to go anywhere for a vacation. The summer weather is nice and the beach is inviting. On the Fourth of July weekend, tourists traditionally flood into the area from around New England, the United States, and even the world. In July and August, the population of the Cape doubles in size, making it difficult to get around due to traffic. Mostly, throughout the long mini-vacation, Janet stayed indoors and away from the throngs of people.

  It should have been a time for Uhlar to forget about the trial and return to normal life, but she couldn’t. The testimony of John Morris had been a kind of tipping point. Morris was creepy, for sure, and obsequious in his corruption, but what she found more disturbing was the fact that he not only functioned but flourished within the law enforcement bureaucracy. Each year, he received the highest possible commendations from his superiors. As long as he played the good company man, dotting his i’s and crossing his t’s, the system seemed incapable of recognizing this con man in its midst.

  Morris was depraved, but that wasn’t what bothered Uhlar most of all. What really had her shaking her head was that, as with John Martorano, Morris had parlayed his career as a corrupt federal agent into the deal of a lifetime. Here was a man who could and should have been in prison for the rest of his life, and he was still free and collecting a government pension for his years of “service.”

  Why?

  Because the government wanted Whitey Bulger, that’s why. And they had made unconscionable deals with men as bad as Bulger—or worse—in the interest of “justice.”

  For Uhlar, who had spent much of her adult life studying the Revolutionary War, justice as defined in the U.S. Constitution was something she took seriously. Both of the historical novels she had written were a consequence of this fascination. One of those books told the story of Joseph Warren, one of the original Sons of Liberty who united the First Continental Congress. Another of her novels delved into the life of Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary War commander who first petitioned Congress for a Declaration of Independence. These were men who devoted their lives to the concept that personal liberty had to be protected under the U.S. Constitution. They had fought in battle partly to help pave the way for a system of justice that was fair and above reproach. Central to that ideal was the notion of due process, a fundamental principle of fairness in all matters of law, criminal and civil.

  The universal guarantee of due process is in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Inherent in that edict is the requirement that the law be applied fairly, without manipulation, selective prosecution, perjury, the withholding of evidence, and many other legal tactics that can lead to the overturning of verdicts and censure by judges representing the appellate court system.

  Through her research as a writer and historian, and through her personal belief system, Janet Uhlar believed that the concept of due process, as spelled out in the Constitution, was sacrosanct. She believed that even a man who had committed as many reprehensible acts as James Bulger, who had begun his trial by admitting to many of the acts in the indictment, was deserving of due process.

  In the Bulger trial, Uhlar was developing a nagging feeling that due process was being trampled upon. Part of this, she would admit, had to do with her own lack of awareness of criminal procedures, especially those relating to organized crime prosecutions. She was not a mob aficionado. Most people who do follow mob prosecutions know that cases against mobsters are frequently constructed on evidence provided by informants and testimony put forth by “rats” or “snitches,” criminals who have often engaged in activities as bad as anything for which the defendant has been charged. When it comes to mob prosecutions, making sweetheart deals with hardened criminals is the name of the game.

  Call it naïveté, perhaps, but Uhlar was shocked by what she had seen so far. It was bad enough that the justice system was willing to use people like Joe Barboza, Steve Flemmi, and Bulger as informants and witnesses, to make cases by manipulating criminals while they were out on the street. But to then have men like John Martorano and John Morris, after they have been caught, walking free because they were able to bargain with federal authorities—it was like Let’s Make a Deal, with the notion of justice merely the result of whoever could best pull one over on the system.

  Throughout the entire long weekend, Uhlar did very little. Normally she would have been celebrating with family, but she felt mildly depressed. She felt as though she were in mourning. She made a point of avoiding the holiday revelers, families with young children communing together in honor of the birth of a nation. Most days before noon, she was alone in the garden, watering plants, pulling weeds. In the afternoons, she caught up on her reading. None of this made it any easier for her to stop thinking about the trial.

  Most evenings, after preparing and eating a light meal, she wrote in her journal, as she did on the evening of the Fourth:

  Independence day—a day I truly cherish. A day for grateful reflection, celebration, and patriotic display. Quite different this year. Sorrow overwhelms me. Can’t bring myself to celebrate the birth of a nation. The men who determinedly purchased for us what they considered a sacred judicial system, which protected the accused and properly and swiftly punished the guilty, has
been replaced with one that now views the accused as guilty until proven innocent, and sets free the most vile if they can be used as means to an end. If our judicial system is gone, the nation is gone. Liberty is an illusion. The price paid by the men who fought for the right to a fair trial was to offer their lives. Today is not a day to celebrate—it’s a day to mourn.

  For juror number twelve, the Bulger trial had become a personal crisis. She wanted it to be over. But she knew that before it was over, she and her fellow jurors would have to reach a verdict.

  It should have been simple. Bulger was a bad man; he had admitted to a life of crime. But the men who were being used to make the case against him were worse, and the manner in which the government was using these men was sleazy, and it undermined her faith in the case. Uhlar was beginning to wonder how she would ever be able to reach a verdict.

  I HADN’T SEEN Kevin Weeks in a while. Not since the beginning of the trial, at Mirisola’s restaurant in Southie. Since then, Kevin’s name had become a mainstay at the trial, with references to his being involved in, among other things, extortions and body disposals with Bulger. I knew there was much more to come. Unlike with many of the other witnesses at the trial, Weeks’s relationship with Bulger had been singular. As Whitey’s right-hand man, Kevin had stories to tell that no one else could tell, because much of his time with the mob boss was spent one-on-one.

  Weeks was scheduled to take the stand as soon as the trial resumed on Monday, July 8. The day before, on Sunday afternoon, I saw Weeks at a backyard barbecue in Malden, a suburban town twenty miles outside Boston. I was invited to the gathering by Pat Nee.

  The barbecue was held at the house of a Southie expatriate who had moved there with his wife and kids. Though the setting was suburban, miles removed from the city, it was most definitely a Southie gathering composed of people from the “old neighborhood,” some of whom had driven out for the occasion.

  Even with all the demographic changes that have taken place in Southie, the spirit of the neighborhood remained strong among those who stay connected, either because they still live there or because once you have Southie in your bloodstream it never goes away, whether you want it to or not.

  Both Weeks and Nee still live in Southie. Both had been sent away to do time in prison and returned to the neighborhood, because, even with all the bad memories and water under the bridge, Southie is where they felt they belonged.

  On this particular post–Fourth of July afternoon, Southie had been transplanted to a bucolic suburban backyard miles from the city.

  Weeks looked better than when I last saw him, when he had only recently suffered a shoulder injury and undergone surgery. He had lost weight, and his girlfriend had freshly dyed his hair in anticipation of all the public exposure he would receive when he showed up at court to testify. His time on the stand was expected to stretch over at least two full days.

  I reached out to shake Kevin’s hand, and I could see that he had not yet regained mobility in his right shoulder and arm. “It’s better,” he said when I asked how his recovery was progressing. “Physical therapy three times a week. The pain is gone, but I have a long ways to go before I’ll be anywhere near one hundred percent.”

  As with most gatherings of Southie folk, it was a social occasion: there was plenty of beer and barbecued meat and lively conversation. Some people brought their children; kids of varying ages ran around the yard, tossing a football and incessantly asking questions of the adults.

  I sat off to one side with Weeks and, in anticipation of his testimony, peppered him with questions.

  I knew from experience that over the years, since Kevin had been released from prison in 2006, he’d grown wary of commentary and queries about the Bulger years from outsiders. It seemed that everyone had an opinion based primarily on what they had read or seen on a TV report. Over a twelve-year period, Weeks spent nearly every day of his life in the company of Bulger; other than Steve Flemmi, there was no more central player in the Bulger organization. To listen to journalists and pundits pontificate about the Bulger years was, for Kevin, annoying at best and, at worst, downright nauseating.

  Contrary to what I’d been told about Kevin’s quick temper, my personal experience was that he listened carefully and thoughtfully to what I had to say. Which was good, because I had a theory I wanted to run by him that was a bit contrary to the accepted wisdom.

  I had gotten my hands on a copy of Steve Flemmi’s federal debriefing file, which contained dozens of DEA-6s, concise reports of information Flemmi had given to the authorities after he first began cooperating with Wyshak and Kelly in 1999. I was startled to see how involved Flemmi had been, back in the mid-1960s, with Special Agents Rico and Condon, aided primarily by the fact that his brother Vincent “the Bear” Flemmi was a Top Echelon Informant. It was because of the Bear that Steve Flemmi had been recruited and signed on as an informant, with Condon as his handler. Steve Flemmi established this relationship with the Boston FBI before he ever knew James Bulger. It was an alliance that made it possible for Stevie to commit murders and get away with it.

  “Hear me out,” I said to Weeks. “What if Steve Flemmi was the key link between the Rico and Condon era and the Connolly and Morris era. What if he was the one who convinced Jim Bulger that becoming an informant was the way to go, that it would be a virtual license to commit crimes. And Flemmi was acting, in part, at the behest of his contacts in the FBI. They used Flemmi as a way to bring Bulger into the fold. Sure, Connolly made the overture, but it was Flemmi who convinced Bulger by citing his own personal experience as an example of how advantageous it could be.”

  Weeks said nothing; by his silence he was saying, Go ahead, I’m listening.

  “Furthermore,” I continued, “by establishing this relationship with the FBI, Flemmi and Bulger solidified their partnership. Because up until then they were simply co-members of the Winter Hill Mob. But once they both signed on with John Connolly, they became a team. And this is crucial for Bulger. Because his arrangement with Connolly and the FBI is based on his ability to deliver the Italians to them. Bulger can’t do that on his own; he knows that. He doesn’t have the access. He needs Stevie Flemmi for that. Flemmi is his link to the Mafia.”

  Weeks sipped his beer and mulled over what I’d been saying. “You know,” he said, “Jim Bulger used to always say about Stevie—if left to his own devices, he would self-destruct.”

  It was a cryptic remark. But I understood what Kevin was saying. “Right,” I said. “I’m not saying that Flemmi was the guy pulling the strings in all this. I’m saying that the FBI used Flemmi to help facilitate the recruitment of Bulger. And then once the partnership was formed, Bulger used Flemmi for his own needs, to help the feds nail the Italians, with him getting equal credit for it.”

  “It’s not a bad theory,” said Weeks. In the past, he’d told me that most of what he knew about the era of the Boston gang wars and the involvement of Rico, Condon, and other key players had come from Bulger, or Flemmi, who used to regale him with stories about the good old days. They were fascinating remembrances, but, of course, they tended to be self-serving. Ever since Weeks learned that Bugler and Flemmi had been informants for nearly a decade before he came along, filling the FBI rotor file with intel about many fellow criminals with whom Weeks had been doing business, everything he’d been told by those two was cast in a different light.

  Pat Nee pulled up a chair and sat down. “Hey,” he said to Weeks, “did you tell him about the time Whitey ordered you to kill me?”

  Kevin chuckled. There were a lot of things that Weeks and Nee were able to laugh about now that weren’t so funny at the time.

  Back in the early 1980s, at the same time Weeks was in the process of becoming Bulger’s full-time pit bull, he also became friendly with Nee. They shared some things in common, one of them being an interest in martial arts, a skill that Nee had picked up during his years in the Marine Corps. In early 1981, they entered a tournament together and fought as part
ners, with matches in various karate clubs around New England. Pat is thirteen years older than Kevin, so there were plenty of jokes from their opponents about Kevin’s “geriatric” partner. Their time together during that tournament would form the basis of a friendship that exists to this day.

  Nee’s uneasy partnership with Bulger is well documented in his book; I had interviewed him about it numerous times. Less well known was Bulger’s animosity toward Pat.

  “Bulger called him Cement Head,” said Kevin. “He felt Pat didn’t listen to him.”

  In the early 1980s, Nee began spending more and more time in Charlestown. The ostensible reason was that Nee had begun to explore a secret, transatlantic connection with the IRA. Charlestown’s Irish American gangsters had a preexisting relationship with the IRA, in particular master smuggler Joe Murray. Ever since “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland exploded in the late 1960s, with British troops and the Royal Ulster Constabulary implementing repressive tactics to quell the minority Catholic population, it had been a dream of Pat’s—and others in Boston’s Irish American community—to ship guns to the IRA.

  Bulger became involved in preparations for the IRA gunrunning scheme, though according to Nee, “He never had any real knowledge or sympathy for what was happening in Northern Ireland.” Bulger became interested after Joe Murray linked the planned outgoing shipment of weapons to Ireland to an incoming shipment of marijuana, organized and overseen by the same crew of smugglers and gangsters.

  “Jim didn’t trust Pat,” said Kevin. “He knew he was off meeting regularly with the Charlestown people and the IRA. Jimmy has to be in control at all times. He didn’t know for sure what Pat was up to, and it made him nervous.”

  The tension between Nee and Bulger came to a head one night when the two had words. “It was about the IRA,” said Pat. “Whitey wanted to pull out of the gun-smuggling operation. He kept saying, ‘It’s costing us money and we’re getting nothing in return.’” Bulger was a gangster and a businessman, not a revolutionary. Where was the profit in sending weapons to a guerrilla army on the other side of the ocean, a costly operation with no profit margin?