The trouble with gangster books is that you don’t know where the truth is hidden. We saw this with Murder Man Martorano’s description of the first two murders charged against Whitey, he won’t identify who was beside him firing a machine gun. Pat Nee changed the names of the murderers to only dead guys. He didn’t identify others. Kevin Weeks testified and wrote he didn’t know who was in the back seat of Whitey’s car firing at Halloran. That means he is still alive. ll of them protect their friends, incriminate the dead, and tell us what they infer the feds want us to hear.
Here’s another thing to keep in mind aside from the courtroom setting. It’s unethical for lawyers to pay their witnesses to testify. I can’t offer a woman a thousand dollars if she can “remember” seeing a taxi run a stop sign just before hitting my client’s car. Or, then bargain with her how much it will take for her to remember. There is one exception to that; a prosecutor can pay his witnesses to testify. All the important witnesses against Whitey (as well as those against Connolly) are paid witnesses. Murder Man spent a year negotiating a deal in which he proclaimed his lawyer outwitted the feds.
In my book on the Connolly trial, Don’t Embarrass The Family, I suggest that if the prosecutors are allowed to pay their witnesses as a quid pro quo for this privilege they have a higher obligation than others to be certain their witnesses are candid and truthful.
They fail in that obligation when they allow Martorano and Weeks, and as they did with Salemme, to only identify some people and not all the people with them. They fail when they allow their paid witnesses to play dodge ball with Connolly’s lawyer Tracy Miner during her cross-examination in the Connolly’s trial. When the prosecutor recited his questions to them they gave short answers right to the point; when Miner asked for a direct answer she had to chase them all over the ball park to get even a semblance of an answer. This should not be.
I’ve suggested the governments going to have great difficulty convincing a jury Whitey had any involvement in the first two murders charged against him. Here are the others Murder Man will testify about that he said he killed because Mafia boss Gerry Angiulo wanted them murdered. .
The third murder is that of William O’Brien who was killed five days after Al Plummer and 16 days after Michael Milarno. Martorano and Howie Winter were doing the murders for the Mafia and were to be paid $25,000 for these murders according to Martorano.
William O’Brien has picked up a birthday cake and is heading home to pick up his ten-year-old daughter Marie in his car and with him is Ralph DiMasi, who is part of Indian Al’s crew. They’re on Morrissey Boulevard heading for Southie when the car being driven by Jimmy Sims, with Martorano in the passenger seat and “the Somerville guy” in the back pull up beside the car O’Brien is driving and murder him, an innocent person. Whitey, of course, is not with them. He’s in the crash car. Here again the mystery man and Howie Winter are not charged with the murder. Is that part of Martorano’s deal to only name Whitey even though he may or may not have been there?
Eight months later on December 1, 1973, Spike O’Toole is killed. Martorano says he and Howie Winter never liked him and when he got drunk he’d threaten to kill Winter. So they decided to murder Spike. This time Whitey drives the car but he has no gun. Martorano and Winter have the motive. Martorano and Joe McDonald do the shooting. (This sort of eliminates Joe McDonald as the shooter in the first three murders because if he was Martorano would have named him like he did here.) McDonald has left the his earthly abode, as you may imagine. I find it difficult to think a jury will buy Whitey was involved in this.
Two and a half months after O’Toole they get their chance to kill Indian Al who fled after his mob started to get killed. He didn’t know Martorano and Winter were behind the killings but thought it was Angiulo. When he came back he arranged with them to have a sit down with Mafia boss Angiulo. They drove him into the North End. Indian Al gave Angiulo fifty thousand as a peace-offering. Angiulo gave Martorano and Winter half the money and told them to kill him. Shortly after that Martorano and Sal Sperlinga met Indian Al to drive him to another meeting with Angiulo that he requested. Martorano sat behind him in the car and shot him in the head twice. Whitey, of course, was in the crash car. It’s highly unusual to have crash cars in this type of murder but Martorano needed to get Whitey involved. This too the jury will have a hard time putting on Whitey. As expected, Sal has gone to see his Maker.
We’ve had five murders charged against Whitey, three being innocent victims, and none of them is he shown to have had a weapon, in four he is supposedly in another car. The man saying he was there is the murderer who fires the shots, received money for the killings, and a big sweetheart kiss of a deal from the feds. The other man who arranged the deal with Angiulo and got the money for it from Angiulo, Howie Winter, is never charged. One of the killers name is a secret; the others are all dead. I’d put these five in Whitey’s pocketbook. There’s no impartial jury that would believe he had anything to do with them.
Former Suffolk DA Martin turned over all Bulger related murders to the Strike Force. The SF are the group who have allowed Weeks ad Martarano to lie. Nee is being protected by the SF. He could be an informant for the DEA or MSP. The FBI has been slammed all over the place regarding Bulger. If Nee was a Top Echelon, it would have come out during the Durham JTF investigation. Halloran,Donahue,Barrett,Hussey,McIntyre; Pat Nee participated in all of these murders. The SF fell in love with Weeks, when he gave up where the bodies were buried in Dorchester and Quincy. This was after they were exhumed from Pat Nee’s brothers basement, 799 E.3rd st SB.
The hatred of the FBI is the reason that Whyshak and Foley have allowed these murderers to lie. Weeks and Martarano should be doing life in Florence ADX.
The Donahue family is present at every Fed Ct hearing. I cannot understand, why they are not screaming about Pat Nee. Wyshak and Foley should have a JTF investigation looking into their actions
I find it hard to believe that Ralph would not have kept at least copies of the material for Suffolk. I don’t see why DA Conley can’t ask for the material to be returned so that he can prosecute those involved in the murders.
I’d still bet Nee is a top echelon informant for the FBI, but if it is the DEA or the MSP, then that likewise should be disclosed. You are right when you say the Task Force is instrumental in some of this – they are the ones doing the debriefing and the making the promises, and if Martorano is to be believe, going along with his criminal ways. It bothered me to read in his book that to make a deal with Martorano to give him six months or so for a murder, they came up with a phone list of people Martorano would testify against, people Martorano said he did not even know. They did this to justify their willingness to let him do so little time and to deceive the public. Not something that they should be proud of. Now we see it goes deeper than that, they are protecting a murderer.
I agree that they could not do enough for Weeks after he gave them the bodies. Weeks did move some of them from Nee’s brothers basement to where they were found. Others had been placed there by other people.
No question that both Martorano and Weeks should be in ADX. The audacity of each one to write books bragging about themselves and their exploits should have made that a done deal.
Here’s my problem. No one is more powerful than the FBI. How can it be that it is standing back and letting Nee and others get a pass on these matters. Was that the deal on the Connolly case? No one else in the FBI would be targeted if the FBI let Wyshak cover up whatever crimes his criminal witnesses don’t want to disclose.
I know the Donahue family is present at court. I’ve been told they asked the identity of the person who killed Michael be disclosed by Wyshak and he refuses to do it. I can see them wanting to see Whitey take the fall. I agree with you, I don’t understand why they don’t demand that the person in the back seat who was the one who gunned down Michael (who according to what you said Flemmi said it was Nee) be identified.
Thanks for writing. I appreciate your perspective. It helps me with what I am doing by causing me to look at things from an other angle.
You are right about Weeks lying. Wysack,Foley,Doherty,Johnson all know he is lying. The only person stating the shooter in the back seat was wearing a mask was Weeks. Weeks was debriefed by DEA and MSP. No FBI involvement. Weeks is protecting Nee because Nee knows Weeks is lying. The BPD investigation of the Halloran and Donahue murders uncovered numerous eye witnesses. Not one, described the back seat shooter wearing a mask. This stuff all came out during the Jimmy Flynn trial. Flemmi testified in Connolly’s Fla trial, that Bulger,Weeks and Pat Nee committed the Northern ave murders. Shortly after Bulger fled, Weeks visited Nee in prison. I’m sure that they formulated a plan to cover each other. Whysack et al. are involved in a massive coverup. Nee is not a Top Echelon Informant. He is a hitman for Winter Hill. Nee was involved in many murders, and as of now, he has gotten away with murder. Word on the street, however, is that he is sweating the Bulger trial, Big Time, and he should.
Was there corruption in the FBI ? Yes. There is just as much corruption in the Strike Force. The SF always talk about the victims families. The Phonies know that they sold their souls to get John Connolly. This thing is gonna blow up.
Bob, you’re right they had to know he’s lying if what you say Flemmi testified to in Florida is correct and the BPD had other witnesses. I forgot that all of it would have had to come out at Jimmy Flynn’s trial. I hope that Carney has that transcript. It seems to me that no guy goes to a murder with two other guys and doesn’t know who he is with. How could anyone believe, even if the guy had a ski mask on, no one ever talked about what went down afterwards. I’m sure they told story after story sitting around having a beer about how Halloran was still alive after having so many holes punched in him. The whole scenario of the ski had was believed to be preposterous and now we know it was.
I figured out from their books that Weeks and Nee were protecting one another. They were throwing too many kisses at each other – you know how the wise guys think they’re so smart and getting away with something.
I could figure it out, so the skilled detectives you named likewise must have known. I don’t understand why they’d let Weeks continue to lie under oath. The closer I get to this case the less I understand although I did note during the Connolly’s trial how the gangsters and cops seemed to be buddy-buddy smiling and waving at each other. It wasn’t nice to see it happening. It seemed like they were all part of the same team, cops and murderers working together.
I disagree with you over Nee. I think he’s being protected by the FBI and that he is a top echelon informant. Winter Hill doesn’t have any influence anymore, that was Howie’s thing. What followed after Howie got jammed in became the Whitey/Stevie show. It’s been referred to as Winter Hill but that’s just because the gangsters first formed their group there. Nee seems to have been involved in many murders but no one has prosecuted him for those. He’s put himself at John McIntyre’s murder and you suggest other evidence to show he was in the back seat of the Halloran murder car. Where’s DA Conley? Why isn’t he acting on this information? It can only mean Nee is being protected.
I don’t know why he is sweating Bulger. No one will believe what Bulger says. Or, let me put it another way, no one will ever act on any information that Bulger gives out. The feds have promised all these guys they’ll protect them from whatever Whitey says as long as they toe the line.
I don’t see how it will blow up. Too many people are working for it to happen. The Globe and Herald want Whitey locked away as do all the prosecutors, judges and FBI agents. The public is really indifferent and doesn’t want to hear that things may not be on the level in our justice system. The trial’s Whitey’s the final act. When convicted, he’ll be shipped to Florence ADX and never be heard from again. No one will be interested in doing a second take.
Thanks for writing. You made some good points.