Mid -Morning Report – Monday July 22, 2013

I’m sort of amazed at this morning’s testimony. Benji (Flemmi) seems not to be on his game. He named Steven Davis as doing drugs and Steve who is in court jumps up and yells at him.  After a moment or two he is calmed down and judge tells him to keep control or he’s out. Benji said it wasn’t Steve but it was Mickey. Wyshak then has to struggle going back over his assets with him that the government let him keep because judge is going to let Brennan cross-examine him on the assets despite Wyshak’s grumbling about not getting his way.

Benji identified Pat Nee as the person with Bulger who murdered Brian Halloran and Michael Donohue. He said Weeks, Bulger and Nee gunned him down. He said that a meeting at the beach after that Nee complained that his gun jammed. This gives lie to Weeks saying that he never knew who was with Whitey because he wore a mask. Benji also puts Pat Nee at the murders of Bucky Barrett, John McIntyre, and Deborah Hussey. What is it that Pat Nee has on everyone that he has never been charged with any of these?

Wyshak then goes on to show that Whitey is giving Connolly wrong information. It seems to me one isn’t an informant if he’s misleading the FBI to protect himself.

Benji started off by saying that they were trying to trick Connolly into filing false reports on the Halloran murder that would get the heat off them. If Connolly was in league with them why are they trying to trick him?  Wyshak took a while to have Benji suggest that Connolly knew they were filing fake reports of the murder.

Benji has a lot of trouble remembering what he said about the meeting with Murderman in New York. Wyshak has to ask questions ten different ways to get answers he wants. Benji will continue to mess things up as he goes along. For instance Wyshak asks him who was strangled when McIntyre was taken down in the basement and he says: “Davis, Hussey and McIntyre.” Wyshak has to ask it again before getting it back to McIntyre.

As expected it was Bulger’s idea to murder his step daughter Deborah Hussey and Benji, as usual, “reluctantly” agrees. It’s a little unclear why she was murdered if you listen to his testimony. She used drugs and hung around the Combat Zone. She was coming into Triple O’s and causing some type of trouble saying who she was. He admitted having sex with his daughter but said it wasn’t intercourse.

Everything he does like extort Michael Solimando it is because Whitey insisted on it.

It was interesting when he talked about the situation involving Stippo Rakes. He said he met with him once and he wanted to sell the liquor store for 67,000; then he said that was the only time he met with him; asked what Whitey told him about the second meeting (he was supposed to talk about the extortion and putting the gun on the table in front of the kids) all he said was that Whitey had second meeting and Stippo agreed to sell.

He also got into the absurd, in my opinion, story of calling retired FBI Agent Paul Rico and asking if he could come down and meet with him. This is after the Wheeler, Halloran and Callahan murders. Now the way I see it, if Rico had anything to do with them the last thing he’d be doing was meeting with a guy who was suspected of doing them. Benji did testify that he was a suspect in the murders. And if he did, where do you think he would meet with him? Some back alley some where? No, Rico decides to meet with him at his place of business, World Jai Alai.  And not only that, Benji brings along Murderman Martorano a guy who is on the lam. Paul Rico would have to be the dumbest retired law enforcement officer in the world meeting openly with two guys, both OC and one on the lam, at his place of business.

As if that story is not beyond belief, the purpose of the meeting makes it more so. Benji says Joe McDonald, who murdered both Wheeler and Callahan, wanted to know from Rico if the World Jai Alai deal was still going through. He murdered Wheeler the owner and Callahan the buyer and he’s supposedly wondering that? Who did he think the buyer and seller were going to be? Not only did he want that answer, he wanted Rico to tell Murderman it directly.

There’s more fantastic stories by Flemmi who acts like he’s some poor stray dog staggering through life following the evil dictates of his master, Whitey.

Wyshak spends a lot of time going over the illicit financial transactions involved in buying and owning the liquor store and the land it was on. He spent time showing there was a lot of money laundering. He manages to take all the umph out of a case with his tedious examination of things that really have little relevance. I sometimes thinks Wyshak is so mired down in the minutia of the case he can’t see the big picture. Well back to the show. Hopefully the cross will be good.