As far as I can tell there have been two jurors who have come forward to discuss the case from the point of view of the jury. Today the press will get the rest of the names and addresses of the jury so that they can hunt them down like wild beasts to see what tidbits of information they can extract from them.
The jurors who have rushed to out themselves are: Scott Hotyckey, 47, of Framingham, aka Juror #5 (hereinafter #5); and Janet Uhlar, 56, of Eastham, aka, Juror #12 (hereinafter #12).
#5 was one of those jurors who was guilty all the way. I’m sure after he listened to J.W. Carney’s opening where he admitted to most of the charges and told the jury Whitey made millions from his criminal activities; saw the pictures of Whitey with the Mafia and other gangsters; watched as the guns piled up on the table; heard other gangsters tell how afraid they were of Whitey and his partner Stevie (this was even before Murderman Martorano the first of the gangster witnesses took the stand); he was absolutely convinced of Whitey’s guilt to everything.
#5 resolved any doubt with the ‘bird of a feather” type rationale. He wasn’t bothered with finding that Whitey as the principal, the accessory or a conspirator, it was enough for him that Whitey knew about the criminal acts or they were done by his associates. He opined that he though the jury could have wrapped everything up in one day.
I can’t say I disagree with him too much. He had Whitey as the kingpin and believed that whatever happened did with his consent. #5 didn’t concern himself too much with the government issues saying:”The FBI wasn’t on trial.” You’d think with that attitude it would have been straight across the board guilty and all the murders would have been deemed proven. Rather there was one not guilty, 7 murders not proven including Spike O’Toole and Buddy Leonard, and one tie, Debbie Davis.
How that came about is best explained by #12. But before I get to that, one of the things that was clear from her interview was that the jurors were getting news reports about the trial. It was reported by the person interviewing #12 that, “The killing of Bulger foe Stephen Rakes during the trial was a scary moment, but when the judge didn’t sequester the jurors they thought they must be safe. “ They shouldn’t have known about Rakes if they were not hearing or reading trial news.
#12 was not kind to the prosecutors saying that the trial itself in a very real sense was “tainted” She said the prosecutors “enticed” the witnesses against Bulger to testify by giving them “extremely outrageous deals.” She said the “prosecution did not work hard enough to give us the evidence to come in otherwise” than “not proven” in the murders.
She also said she “intensely disliked (prosecutor Brian) Kelly for his cross-examination of Agent Fitzpatrick. She was angry that Kelly treated corrupt agent Morris who she said gave information that led to the murder of two people with respect but treated Fitzpatrick who she felt tried to save Halloran with disdain. She also accused him of falsely imprisoning Kevin O’Neil for 11 months.
She called Murderman Martorano, “Absolutely disgusting;”(and his best friend is Herald Columnist Howie Carr); Vileman Flemmi, “I can’t cuss on TV”; Kevin Weeks, “Scary, still scary. . . .” and John Morris, “There’s no words. There’s no words, absolutely disgusting, I felt like a traitor.”
She said she had heard of Whitey before the trial and that he was a “scary monster.” She went on to say, “Certainly he was a bad, bad man. I’m just as stunned by the corruption in government to get him into that courtroom” She told us that about half of the jury felt like that about the case.
I’d say the prosecutors can’t come away too happy after reading what she had to say about their approach to the trial. Nor must they be with a couple of things that made Whitey ecstatic with her interview. First she said that most of the jurors believed that Flemmi killed both of the women; next she said she wasn’t convinced that he was an informant. Those were the only two issues that were really being contested and she handed them both to Whitey.
I assume Whitey has already asked one of his relatives to resubmit his application to the Gangster Hall of Fame.
Matt: You mention the FBI has an internal investigatory
group. Yes it is called the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility.
The head of it FBI Supervisor John Conditt was recently sentenced to prison for 12 years for pedophilia. see
FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-17-ex-fbi-ia-chief_x.htm
Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM
The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.
John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.
Jan,
Juror 12 did say she felt bad for Kevin o’Neil and I agree with her reasoning. The relevant testimony was that O’Neil was indicted for money laundering by Brian Kelly. At O’Neil’s bail hearing, Kelly told the judge all kinds of lies about how dangerous and murderous O’Neil was and how O’Neil was such a danger that no conditions of bail could ever assure the public safety if O’Neil were released. As happens routinely in Boston Fed Ct. the judge accepted Kelly’s lies as the truth and held O’Neil with no chance for bail.
Some months later, Wyshak and Kelly showed O’Neil their phony Whitey informant file and said it was all true and so O’Neil should turn against Whitey. O’Neil may not have believed the file was real, but that didn’t matter. He recognized it was his ticket to get out of jail and he quickly joined the prosecution team as a witness. Once O’Neil was signed up and told given a script about Whitey, Kelly went back into court and told the judge how O’Neil was not really a danger to the community and he should be released. As happens routinely in Boston Fed Ct. the judge agreed with Kelly’s story which directly contradicted his previous story and O’Neil was released after serving 11 months based on Kelly’s lies. Kelly’s actions with respect to O’Neil were illegal, immoral, unethical, and unfortunately, routine.
Here’s what Juror 12 said about Kelly:
“As far as the prosecution went, I intensely disliked (Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian) Kelly personally because of what he did to Fitzpatrick and O’Neil,” she said.
Note that Fitzpatrick was the only Federal law enforcement employee through this entire decades-long saga who even attempted to blow the whistle on his corrupt organization. As a result of his attempts to do the right thing, the FBI drove him out and destroyed him. During cross examination, Kelly ridiculed and taunted the one man who exhibited any personal integrity. At one point he revealed that Fitzpatrick had a disciplinary letter or two placed in his personnel file but under a sealed agreement. It was improper of Kelly to reveal that information, but he can do whatever he wants. If nothing else, Kelly proved to juror 12 that the protection of the family’s reputation is far more important than the integrity or career of one good agent. Juror 12 was dead balls accurate in her assessment of Kelly! Kelly is a miserable, corrupt jerk on a power trip. Just look at his jowly pug face. His mouth is upside down because he hasn’t smiled in his life.
Ironically, after the jury rejected all of Martorano’s testimony, Kelly turned to Wyshak and said “They didn’t like John.” In reality, they mostly didn’t like you, Mr. Kelly!
O’Neil was an active/aggressive co-conspirator. Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of Agent Fitzpatrick.
Matt,
As I sometimes do, let me digress into this report that the NSA violated lrivacy rules 2,776 times.
First, the press stories I’ve read do not report what percent this number is of total wiretap activity. Is this 50%, 20%, 5%, 1%? Without this, we have no idea whether the violations are systematic or aberrations.
Second, the stories do report that most violations are due to roaming instances, where the target crosses into domestic territory. So in fact the targey was targeted legally but the either thru incompetence, laziness, or impracticality a warrant was no re-obtained once target became domestic. Lazy, yes. Malice, no. Roaming incidents are described as largely unpreventable.
Third, there is the very fact that these results come from an internal audit. This shows that there is a systematic attempt to track errord, presumably to monitor and correct them.
In short, much ado about nothing.
Jon:
You are a tru believer in the goodness of our country. I suppose most people believe that. One thing I’d have to say is the FBI always had an internal investigatory group that never failed to miss most of the most egregious violations by the FBI. Didn’t we read recently of 150 of so shootings by FBI officers that were investigated internally found no FBI agent wrong in any of the shootings. Didn’t we see the internal audit team come to Boston after the Wolf hearings and find there was no wrongdoing in the Boston FBI office. So suggesting the findings come from an “internal audit” and that makes you comfortable it does the exact opposite for me.
Hardly can it be “much ado about nothing” if people on both sides of the ailse in Congress are up in arms about the extent of the NSA intrusions and the president is talking about coming up with better guidelines. As for you numbers, I have no idea what 2,776 times means. I have no idea what type of privacy violation is being counted. I’m just not as sanguine as you tend to be.
Well this is the NSA not the FBI, but the internal audit is not the main point. The overwhelming majority of violations occurred in case of roaming, whereby a foreigner under surveillance crossed into domestic territory. Hardly a matter of concern to me. And again, 2,776 needs to put into a percentage before I can judge how serious the “violations” are.
It’s not so much that I’m too sanguine, but rather that, one, I view surveiilance and secrecy as necessary to security and, two, abuses are more about incompetence than part of some police state cabal.
Jon:
No one agrees more with you than I do about surveillance and secrecy as being necessary to security. I welcome as much of it as possible as long as it doesn’t infringe upon our rights given under the Constitution. Blanket sweeps of information do that, they are like the general warrants that caused the revolution. The 2,776 figure comes from the NSA, the explanation of it comes from the NSA, why do we believe what it tells us when it hid its programs from us, in fact lied to Congress about some of them. My point with suggesting you were too sanguine was that you are willing to accept internal audits conducted by the department of itself. I think such audits should be in the hands of those not within an agency.
Didn’t juror #12 say that she looked at Mrs. Donahue when the verdicts were read. Who had more face time on TV than the Donahue family? Did the knowledge of the Rakes murder and the daily condemnation of the defendant improperly influence the jury? Did outside influences overpower the evidence? 2. The solution may be to flip WB. In return for a decent prison and a release of Grieg he appears before a Suffolk grand jury and with the assent of the Feds implicates Morris and all the gangsters in a conspiracy to commit murder. WB gets a Federal life sentence and the disgusting ones are taken off the street. The Feds can claim that was there plan all along and the stench from the sweetheart deals fades. Everyone gets a prize. 3. Matt in Texas is right about only needing Weeks.
N:
1. The idea that a jury in such a high profile case would be oblivious of the news is really a non starter. #12 showed as much with the Rakes slip. I don’t make much of the Donohue incident since she testified in court. I don’t think the outside influence overpowered the verdict because the jurors took their time and discussed each element. My point is the jurors knew what was going on in the media, I don’t think it affected them by the way they deliberated. If they were influenced by the media they would have come back in one day with all guilties. We know where the media stood.
2. Too late for conspiracy to commit murder, state statute of limitations rules it out. Whitey was the holy grail, no deals for him. He has to continue to be held up as the most evil ever or the whole house of cards tumbles. The federals who prosecuted this case believe it is better that 100 murderers roam the streets of Boston than any deal be made with Whitey, unless he’ll give them Billy.
3. I’ll write to him and tell him.
Matt,
Juror 5 also made a slip on his front porch interview about reading news reports about the trial.
I noticed that this juror has a civil rights law suit against the Framingham Police Department pending before Judge Young in Federal Court. He was also sued by Microsoft Corp. in an unrelated case that was resolved before Judge Young. Juror 5 also reports that he has a degree in law enforcement. That fact became apparent by his approach to deliberations.
Matt, can you see what the nature of his lawsuits are on PACER? Just curious about the civil rights case, really.
P.S. Matt, I’m very interested in your opinion of a state prosecution of Bulger, Nee, and perhaps others. It seems to me that any such prosecution requires Flemmi and Wyshak will never produce him. Similarly, Weeks and Martorano would probably assert the 5th in state court. Conley could dissolve their 5th with state immunity, but that would just kick the ball back up to Wyshak. He would refuse to re-immunize them federally so they would remain “unavailable” for a state trial. The state prosecutor may argue to a federal judge that the immunity Wyshak gave to Martorano and Weeks in 1999 still holds today. Therefore, Weeks and Martorano cant assert the 5th because there’s no exposure to federal charges. Any federal judge will surely back up Wyshak, but I anticipate a hell of a chess game!
-P
P.P.S. it’s becoming clear why Hank Brennan told reporters he and Whitey are eager to get a trial in state court on the murder charges that were not proven in Fed Ct. It puts Wyshak in a hell of a bind. He has to either obstruct the state prosecution, or hand his highly questionable witnesses over to be interviewed and examined by state prosecutors and Homicide Detectives. I suspect the state authorities will quickly discover that Wyshak’s witnesses coordinated their obvious perjury.
Perhaps another alternative is Wyshak will get himself deputized in Suffolk County to try the cases so nobody else can talk to his witnesses….. Wyshak may be on trial for the next several years!
P
Patty:
I want to think about this and do a post on it. It’s something to ponder. If Whitey were ever to be indicted by Suffolk it would give life to the name of my blog again. I don’t know if I’d be happy or sad about it.
Wouldn’t the local and state authorities already have questioned witnesses and suspects or…..why wouldn’t they have already questioned Wyshak’s witnesses in the past when the murders took place and during any on-going investigations that already should have taken place over the years.
Jan:
Wyshak would have kept them away from them because he would not want to produce any more contradictory statements than he already had. You are right though that investigations should have been done but no one seemed to want to do them
Patty:
I don’t know how they could avoid reading information about the trial. I’m surprised at #5’s background. I’ll see what I can find out about it. I can’t see keeping a person like that on the jury. Where did you get that info?
I want to think about the state prosecution of Whitey. I’ll do a post on it tomorrow I hope.
Juror number 12 seems to have a biased opinion regarding Kevin O’Neil and his relatively short time spent incarcerated….isn’t she from Quincy….wouldn’t be all that shocked if she was already familiar with O’Neil who has reportedly lived in Quincy for years.
Jan:
#12, which you meant, is from the Cape. She may have lived in Quincy but 100,000 people live there. Doubt she ever heard or laid eyes on O’Neil prior to the trial. 11 months isn’t a short time, 1 day in prison would be a long time for me.
Matt,
I got the information from Googling Juror 5’s name, excluding the word “Bulger”.
It brought up his LinkedIn profile on which he listed his degree in law enforcement. Google also showed two federal court dockets bearing his name and the parties/actions.
The full interview Juror 5 held at his house left me feeling he is a little sketchy, or maybe just abrasive and pushy. See the raw interview video posted by WCVBtv on YouTube. He calls the opinions of some jurors “moronic” and “idiotic”. He seems to still be perturbed that some jurors didnt see the evidence his way. He ridiculed another juror for saying of a 3rd juror, ‘she’s entitled to her opinion.’ Hotyckey clearly disagreed.
He said he found the most compelling testimony came from Mr. ‘Bertucci’. He was astonished other jurors could question whether Mr. Bertucci’s check for $200k might have been from a legit property deal. As proof it was extorted, he notes that a bank cashed the check (?!). I’d have questioned it too as soon as Mr. Bertucci testified he was a long time friend of the Martoranos and had no idea they were in OC….the old “birds of a feather” argument.
When a reporter asks Hotyckey about his personal life, he flinches and says words to the effect “you could say I’ve had a shaky life…with some of my relationships, I guess. Ya, I’ve had kids.”
It almost seems like his kids are deceased or at least they are something in his past.
Juror 5 was visibly uncomfortable talking about himself and his past.
His accent is also seemed more like PA or CT than Boston, but the mighty Google indicates he’s a Framingham native. Perhaps its me, I haven’t gotten way out West to hear Framingham accents lately.
-P
Patty:
Thanks for all that information. I did a post on prosecuting Whitey I’ll put out tomorrow. Let me know what you think? #5 using the term “moronic” and “idiot” seems appropriates since those were the thoughts that came to me when I heard him talk about finding Whitey guilty if he knew about the murder. I had the impression like you that he was new to the Framingham area. Reming me if I forget about Pacering his cases. I’ve got a busy weekend coming up and might forget.
Correction: I’m referring to juror 12 above, uhlar.
Jan,
Figured that and I’ll change it.
Matt,
Do you mean change your blog name back to include “FBI Informant”? I’m certain that even if Whitey is indicted in state court he would never testify against anyone. He knows he will never get out of jail and he will hold to the truth that he never in his life helped law enforcement put anyone in jail. The only thing he wants to do is expose the corruption that is going on right now in the US Attorney’s Office. What Whitey wants to expose is best described by someone who witnessed it firsthand, Juror 12:
“Certainly he was a bad, bad man,” she said. “I’m just as stunned by the corruption in government to get him in that courtroom.”
Bulger is only one part of a far more disturbing story, Uhlar-Tinney, 56, who is also a nurse, said while holding her young grandson.
Matt – juror # 12 Janet Uhlar was born and reared in Quincy according to her web site and she currently lives on the cape. Either way, Kevin O’Neil did not have a long testimony nor was there much in other witnesses testimony regarding Kevin O’Neil and his approximately 11 months spent in prison years ago, therefore, I felt she had an apparent biased/informed opinion regarding O’Neil. Contrary to Uhlar’s opinion I believe the mere 11 months was actually a god send for him.
Matt,
Juror 5, Scott Hotyckey is originally from Queens, NY according to an interview he gave recently to a local newspaper. That explains his accent.
P
I think everyone is disgusted with what the prosecution agreed to do in order to get James Bulger to trial. I do have to ask, did they have much of a choice? Across the board, the prosecution states that they could not have gotten a trial, let alone a murder conviction without the testimony of the 4 dirt-bags of the apocalypse. Based upon the lack of physical evidence outside of what the 4 provided, I can see that being the case for the murder counts.
Didn’t the FBI put the DOJ in such a terrible position as well as Bulger being careful that the prosecution had to make a deal to get the murder conviction?
Perhaps they could have let the guilty rot in jail and then take the “Capone approach” where they use the already flipped bookies to get enough for a RICO conviction, which would have put him off the streets for good anyways? I believe that is what the original indictment in 1994/5 really was.
So, for me, the question is the specifics of the criticism, is it that they negotiated poorly when they were holding the most valuable asset or is it that they could have foregone the murders and just stuck with the gambling/laundering charges and kept murderman in jail.
From the results of the trial, in hindsight it looks like all they needed was Weeks.
Dear Another,
Your question is very timely. I just read the recent CNN article that had interviewed two of the jurors. I was very interested to read in that article that the prosecutor essentially said they really had no choice but to make the deals with the devils. But, if our facts are correct, the Boston FBI went out of its way to destroy our complaints in order to protect the Winter Hill Gang, and those very same deals. Perhaps this is why my family has been disappeared along with our complaints? To protect those very same deals and those very psychopathic devils? Even the jurors were disgusted, and rightly so. There should be an investigation. Maybe the Boston FBI left the prosecutors out of the loop. It would not have been the first time.
Another:
Kudos to Wyshak for how he went after these guys. But pile on the demerits for the way he did it.
Wyshak’s intitial error was to form a relationship with the Boston Globe – I’d love to see the communications between him and Gerry O’Neil – which set out his agenda for him. (It seems to have continued over the years with the most recent probation case.) You may notice one thing that seems to obsess the Globe and the federal prosecutors and that is Billy Bulger.
That goes back to 1968 when Morris was providing the Globe with inside FBI information and the Globe was urging him to press on with an investigatioin against Billy Bulger. They also urged the prosecuting authorities to do this and two attorney generals and US Attorneys looked at it. They came up with nothing. But the Globe fille Wyshak’s head with the idea he should get the Bulgers. That was the goal he set out to accomplish.
The prosecution had many choices. They didn’t have rto deal with Martorano. He was never believed by any Boston jury. Despite what he testified that he was only facing 5 or 6 years, he was actually facing a RICO charge that punishable up to 20 years. He faced even more and if the right charges were brought, the 16 year fugitive from justice charges along with charging his girl friend in the same way they charged Greig and taking all his assets from him.
Even though he was the worst of the lot he was not the target so Wyshak was willling to deal with him to get Bulger. The deal was universally recognized as the worst deal ever entered into by a prosecutor. It wasn’t deal with him and we’d never be in court with Whitey as Wyshak alleges. They could have, as you recognize, gone ahead with the bookies who were extorted and the drug dealers who all wanted to sing for their freedom to get Whitey, Martorano and Flemmi.
Put them all in prison first and deal from strength and not from behind the eight ball because you are targeting another person other than the worst guys.
Weeks was all they needed to get Whitey and Flemmi. He had the bodies and the association to put it all together. They had enough charges against him to keep him in jail forever and were able to get him to talk and assist them. They got him through the pressure on the Southie dope dealers who proved to be guys who couldn’t stand the idea of prison. The worst deal of all was Flemmi. Absolutely no deal needed on him except that their goal was to go after Whitey, who is clearly much lower in the rung of criminality than Flemmi. He should have been fried years ago so that he could go to a better place.