I’ve told how I have to reconsider many of my opinions that I’ve developed relying on the media. I also have to do this in relation to the evidence that has been presented by the prosecution. I’ve spoken how the prosecutors join hands with their criminal witnesses and take them on as part of the prosecution team whenever they utilize them as witnesses. To get their evidence, if you’ve been reading my writings, you know they protect them from having to disclose the full truth and give others who may be their friends or relatives a free pass for their crimes even if they involve murder.
One of the most egregious instances is the circumstances surrounding the Kevin Weeks’s story. He has himself and two others, one being Whitey, going to the waterfront to machine gun a guy (Halloran) and he says he does not know the identity of one of the people he is going with. How likely is that? Weeks says the other man keeps his facial features obscure, never speaks to him before or after the murder, and Weeks never speaks to Whitey wondering who this mysterious gunman was even though rather than murdering one man they murder two. It’s like the guy if he exists was standing in another aisle in the grocery store rather than participating in a murder. Truth is, if there is another man, he does know who he is.
The prosecutors let Weeks spout this fantasy. They need Weeks’s testimony. So they let him take an oath and spin a tale which defies belief. The reason for this conspiracy with Weeks to keep the public from knowing the identity of the second gunman is to protect the identity of the second man.
In Weeks’s story, he is the lookout. When he sees Halloran leave a bar room he uses some type of radio communication to tell Whitey and the man in the back seat of the car (who is wearing a ski mask) that Halloran is leaving and they drive up and fire away murdering Halloran and another guy.
I don’t know who was in the back seat. I have speculated that the identity of the man is Patrick Nee based on the following: Nee is still alive so he can still be charged with murder; Nee wrote a book saying he was Whitey’s partner and Whitey would not do such a murder with someone he did not trust; Weeks in his book had nothing but nice things to say about Nee; Nee in his book had nothing but good things to say about Weeks; (the old wink and nod gangster trick) and independent witnesses stated the man in the back seat was bare headed. Others have made the same speculation
Now I’m thinking maybe I am wrong. Maybe there was no lookout. Maybe there was no second car as Weeks testified. Why bring two cars to a murder like this? Maybe Weeks was the gunner in the back seat. He, after all, was the person who Whitey did all his beatings and shooting with. Why in this one situation would Whitey cut him out. If there were a second car and a lookout wouldn’t it have been someone like Nee rather than Weeks?
I offer this for two substantial reasons. First, if I were involved in a lookout for a gangster murder, saw the murder, and then fled the scene, one thing that would be burnt in my memory is the identity of the car I was driving. Does that make sense to you? Why then is Weeks confused over the car he allegedly used to be a lookout? At Connolly’s trial he testified it was his sister’s car; in his book he writes that it was Whitey’s car. Perhaps he was not in any car but the hit car which was called the Tow Truck.
The other reason is that the independent witness to the shooting who saw the person driving the car and the person in the back seat was shown a photograph array of guys the FBI believed may have been involved in the murder. They were Southie guys or those who hung around with them, who were known criminals. Among the photographs shown was one of Nee. Missing from the photographs were the pictures of the two most likely persons involved, Whitey and Weeks. The FBI was protecting Whitey and friends so they were kept out of the photo array. (the old FBI trick so a report could be written saying they were not picked out)
Why then would the prosecutors want to keep Weeks out as one of the shooters? They could never have structured the deal they gave him had they not manufactured the evidence to keep him out of the actual murders and to present him only as a spectator. In the five murders Weeks admitted he never seems to take part in them, he’s always standing around as some sort of spectator watching as Whitey and Stevie Flemmi do their dastardly work. The portrait the prosecutors want to paint of Weeks is he is there but is never an active participant and never knows a murder is going to happen. This doesn’t square if he’s pulling the trigger on the machine gun throwing slugs into Halloran and Donohue.
Remember the prosecutors came up with a list of people from South Boston that Martorano agreed to testify against even though he did not know anything about them. They did that, according to Martorano in his book, so that they would make the deal more palatable to the public. So too would they have had the same mentality when creating Weeks’s testimony.
I’m really upset that I’ve been taken in by the media and these cooperating criminal witnesses. I should know by now that they are all slanting their tales for their own ends. I’ll have to keep examining things with a more critical eye in this case because the scallywags that pass in and out of this story stay away from the truth like a vampire avoids day light.
Not sure if you have seen it but in the documentary “Bullets Over Boston”didn’t Weeks state that Whitey got out of the car to make sure Halloran was dead? Not sure what he said about that in his testimony. I have noticed in interviews he does have a few different versions of the shooting.
Poutyblonde:
I haven’t seen Bullets Over Boston. (I’ll try to find it.) If Weeks said that I don’t think he said it at the Connolly trial. I have to go back and look at it and I’ll let you know. Thanks for the comment.
dear author, i think this was another outstanding post. perhaps at some point you might wish to write about how the north end mafia repoted to raymond patriarca and how that worked to i think whitey bulgers advantage. by that i mean raymond patriarca at one time tried to recruit steve flemmi into being a made man. i have read that steve flemi wanted to stay independent and did not wish to join. i am sure that the brothers from the north end were aware of the patriarca and steve flemmi relationship. your readers may not realize just how poweful mr patriarca was. longstanding relationships with the new york families. i have read of 100,000 a month payments made by boston to him to operate in boston. mr patriarca died in 1984 perhaps some of your younger readers are not aware of him. whitey benefited from the patriarca flemmi relationship. never hurts to have a partner on good terms with the godfather of new england . perhaps you would care to go into this subject a bit. regards and best wishes for the holidays
Side question, were you by any chance an Assistant D.A. at any point?
Jim:
Yes I was an assistant DA for quite a while, over 20 year in Norfolk County. I was also the deputy da there but that was another name for an assistant da.
I ask because I was discussing this website with a retired officer who recognized your name through having to testify in Roxbury court in prostitution cases.
Jim:
I would never have been involved in a Roxbury case but early in my career I prosecuted a guy who ran a prostitution ring in Brookline. It was a tough case because punishment was very low. it received a lot of publicity, and the ladies who I was depending on as witnesses seemed to drop out of sight as time for trial neared. Fortunately the defendant, whose name I forget, did something stupid. (We often depended on defendants doing stupid things.) He called a couple of the ladies who had yet to leave the scene and threatened them. They got so scared they came to us for protection. I was able to indict him for intimidating witnesses which gave me a better case with much higher punishment. That defendant also had some business in Boston so the person you ran into may have known about me from the Brookline case.
I have a feeling anyone’s he name he drops is going to be strictly out of spite, whether they had anything to do with the crime at all. Which Morris is at the top of the list of, but i’m interested to see if he names the guy who started dating Teresa Stanley who used to work for Whitey in anything, Weeks describes him as a “fucking piece of shit” in Brutal and his name escapes me.
Jim:
That’s the problem with Whitey’s tale, no one will believe it. Even if it is believed, no one would take any action based on it. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be dating any of Whitey’s girls. He was mean enough without a reason.
We may honestly never know, and it’s one of the bigger question’s I’ve had for years regarding this whole ordeal (The “Guy in the Ski Mask”) I concluded who you concluded it was as well if it isn’t Weeks, but if the feds grill him or the prosecutors ask him on the stand, Whitey’ll probably just say it was Jimmy Flynn, seeing he can’t be tried for the same crime twice (Unless he was only charged in Halloran’s murder due to the “Dying Proclamation” that I have a hard time believing)
Jim:
I don’t think the feds want to know from Whitey who was in the back seat since they already know. I’m told Flemmi said Whitey said it was Nee but who can you believe among that group. I believe Halloran said it was Flynn. A Boston cop was the first at the scene and that’s what he reported. He had no reason to lie. Halloran had just given the FBI information on Flynn and the FBI had just raided his house a couple of days earlier. So he probably had Flynn on his mind. Weeks said Whitey said he looked somewhat like Flynn with his disguise of a mustache and wig. Flynn had a good alibi that got him off the hook.
True, I agree with you and have been convinced that was the story all along. However, that citizen on channel 4 saying that someone with dirty blondish hair had no disguise and some one with black hair in the back seat was shooting as well then the fbi pressing him to name flynn a half hour later after they saw that he saw the shooting has me second guessing weeks’ account, unless of course, it was a convincing disguise. I believe you’ve previously written on this.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/10/15/witness-to-alleged-bulger-murder-says-fbi-pressured-him-to-id-wrong-man/
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/19826726/2012/10/15/witness-scared-to-come-forward-in-case-against-whitey-bulger
link where he talks about the FBI visit
Jim:
Great link. The independent witness totally contradicts Weeks. He has the two men out of the car walking to Halloran’s car. The prosecutors had this information and let Weeks lie about how the shooting came down. It seems more likely now that there was only one car and two men, Weeks and Whitey, who did the hit. Thanks,
Jim:
The Boston cop who arrived first got the name Jimmy Flynn from Halloran. He then passed it on to the others. I’m sure some FBI guys were looking for the witness to identify Flynn because that is the name they received. The big thing that bothers people about this is that this witness has been kept hidden and we have to pretend he didn’t see that guy in the back seat without a ski mask. You’ve a right to question everything because the FBI never showed the witness a photograph of the most likely person involved in the shooting Whitey Bulger.
What will happen if a jury cannot find him guilty of the 19 murders? Matt, you have raised a lot of good questions about the reliability of witnesses in the cases that are going forward. As you say, there is little doubt that Mr. Bulger is going to walk free, but what is the plan if Carney manages to poke holes in the prosecution of each of these cases? Given the amount of time that has gone by and the sketchiness of the witnesses, this case has to be a challenge for the prosecution. I think they will need to rely heavily on a presumption of guilt. What if they fail? What is Plan B, if you know?
Hi Pam:
The case for the prosecution is really a slam dunk. All they need to do his hook him on two of the murders to have him convicted under the RICO statute. That’s why the prosecution made the give-away deal with Weeks giving a guy who lead a vicous life who also murdered several people only five years in an easy prison. It needed Weeks to give them the bodies. When Tom Foley or one of the troopers or DEA guys describe digging up the bodies Whitey’s chances will go down with every shovelful. I can see him beating Murderman Martorano’s evidence but when Flemmi, Weeks, and Nee line up against him, just the fact he knew and hung around with those guys is enough to convict him.
But assuming Whitey beats all 19 murders, then Plan B is that he has to face trial in Florida and Oklahoma for the murders there. That’ll be hell for him sitting in one of those prisons. That’s why Whitey’s only plan is to stay in the Plymouth Jail for as long as possible. He knows he’ll never get out and the next place he goes, whether a Supermax federal prison or a Southern state prison, he’ll be miserable. If he beats the Florida and Oklahoma cases (they’ll drag those out until he’s in his nineties) the feds will bring gun charges against him for the guns found in his Santa Monica apartment. Whitey won’t get out unless he escapes and he’s a little too old to be climbing over walls.
The prosecutors are pissed because they believe this is all a waste of time by J.W. Carney. They just want to get it over with. Carney sees that his job is not to help the prosecutor but to do everything in his power to make the prosecutor prove its case. Plus, Whitey is demanding Carney do some of the things he is doing. I think they’ll be some surprises as we go along. The wise, wily and wicked Whitey still has a bag of tricks so we have to see what ones he pulls out next. Thanks for writing.
WOW! You’re fired up about this subject! I lurk, read and never comment, but may I say, that this entry is very well written. Excellent punch at the end.
We differ in that a ‘fair’ trial for Whitey would amount to a kangaroo court and a firing squad, in my opinion. However, your eloquent, impassioned articles written in the the defense of one of the most heinous of men, moves me to rethink things. I +still+ hope that Whitey lives to see supermax, but Flemmi did not get that just treatment. I don’t expect that Whitey will see trial, but if he does, it’ll be a short time before age takes him. No matter what happens, there is no justice, so it is best that the trial keep strong adherence to our ‘innocent until proven guilty’ ethos. It is not worth allowing our system to sink further over a sociopathic piece of narcissistic, weak humanity such that Bulger represents. This is a slippery slope.
Kristi:
Thanks for writing. It may seem I’m fired up but the more apt description from my perspective is intrigued. I don’t think we differ in what will be a fair trial. I do think Judge Stearns is wrong in not recusing himself (he’s going to have to make decisions on acts of people he worked with when he was in the U.S. Attorney’s office) but I have no doubt he genuinely believes there is no reason for him to do so and he will be absolutely fair with Whitey. The only problem I have with the trial is the prosecutors use of witnesses who are not telling the “whole truth” and it being apparent to the prosecutors or at least it should be apparent. In the Boston Connolly trial it was apparent to the jurors since they acquitted him on any gangster testimony that was not corroborated by independent facts.
I’m not trying to defend Whitey. He’s got a good lawyer who can do that. I’m sort of giving another view of the case for us to consider. I don’t think he’s innocent by any means but I do think the media has a certain agenda to unfairly tear him apart and see that everything he ever did was evil or anyone who associated with him became part of his criminal empire.
In one sense for Whitey to get an absolutely fair trial you’d need sixteen blind and deaf mice. If there are any jurors who sit on the trial in Boston who have never heard of Whitey Bulger then it seems to me they should be disqualified and those that say they’ve heard of him and have an open mind I have a hard time accepting. But we are looking for a fair trial, not a perfect trial, and what I’d like to see, like you, is that it is done with all the safeguards available even if they are insufficient.
You pin point what the case is about at the present time: it is only a question of where Whitey will spend the rest of his life. He knows there’s a supermax in his future and he’s just trying to drag his feet so he won’t go there until he exhausts all the tricks in his books. I’d say we have motions for a change of venue or the old Mafia “too sick to go to trial” things to go through.
I think we’ll get to trial. Whitey will testify. What I look forward to is Carney’s cross-examination of the gangsters. Whitey’s testimony won’t shed much light on anything as far as I can see. He’ll tell us the others are the real bad guys or something like that.
I always wondered that about Kevin. I grew up and hung around the same 3 guys for 20+ years and I can say that the fact that he was always just ” around ” when the murders took place and the fact that he never helped but was there does not sit well with me and I always thought that was a huge crock of BS that he was always there but never knew it was going to happen and never hel
Craigmack:
That’s the game that the feds play with their witnesses. They want to minimize their involvement in the criminal acts. We’re really supposed to believe that none of these guys would have ever thought of killing someone unless Whitey made them do it and then then just stood there cleaning their fingernails while watching someone get murdered. It’s like Kevin and Whitey never spoke and Whitey did things that caught Kevin by surprise. When John McIntyre got killed Kevin wrote in his book that as soon as he got into the house he threw him to the ground and held him there so he couldn’t get away. I don’t recall him testifying to this at his trial. That pretty much contradicts the idea he was a passive participant. All these guys Murderman Martorano, Brutalman Weeks and Pat Nee wrote books never thinking Whitey would be captured so they’ve all become damaged witnesses but the feds are stuck with them. Thanks for writing.