I’ve been through ten of the murders charged against Whitey. I have concluded that he had the motive to commit murders in three of them even though Pat Nee had a stronger motive and for all we know may have been the one behind those three murders. We know from Flemmi’s briefing that he puts Pat Nee into several murders.
There is no evidence that Whitey Bulger was the trigger man in any of the Mullen murders; the evidence in two is that another person pulled the trigger while he was there. I hook him for these primarily because I believed he was acting in a form of self-defense. If he did not move against these three Mullen gang members then they would have gone against him.
I noted Whitey did not have the courage to go after them until he began his association with Steve Flemmi a man bereft of humanity. Stevie showed Whitey how to murder people. The truth might be that Whitey never pulled a trigger on any person even though he was present when some murders took place. That we will never know because the evidence we have comes from liars who even themselves do not know the truth anymore especially since they receive rewards for lying.
James Sousa was murdered in October 1974. He was murdered by the Winter Gang primarily. Whitey did not hook up with Winter Hill gang until late 1972. Until Flemmi came to town he had a small role in that gang mainly associating with it for protection. He was unable to operate freely in South Boston,
Sousa’s murder from all that is out there had absolutely nothing to do with Whitey but everything to do with Joe McDonald of the Winter gang. AUSA Jeremiah O’Sullivan noted correctly that the Winter Hill Gang was made up of people from other gangs. The Roxbury gang (Martoranos, Flemmi), the Winter gang (Winter, McDonald, Sims), and odds and ends like Whitey.
Martorano is the only witness to the murder of James Sousa. Sousa and Fat Tony Ciulla were friends. Sousa knew a dentist who was looking around to invest some of his cash. Sousa and Fat Tony plan a scam. Sousa will convince the dentist that he could get him a crate of high quality gold bars at a good price. He shows him some gold samples. The dentist bites seeing the samples are of high quality and the price is good. They arrange for the deal to go down. There are no gold bars only bricks painted gold.
The plan is that after the transaction took place and Sousa received the money, a friend of Sousa’s named Barnoski would arrive on the scene with a gun, take the crate of gold from the dentist, and disappear. That way the dentist would never know he had been scammed. This trick of these hoodlums to hand over something and then take it back would be used again in the Richard Castucci murder which I write about next.
Now for some reason Sousa gets Joe McDonald from the Winter Gang involved. Martorano said Sousa wanted a second gunman. He does not explain why Barnoski could not do it himself. When the time comes Sousa and Fat Tony do the deal. Then Barnoski and McDonald show up with guns. The dentist who is with his ten-year-old child sees them and pulls out his gun and fires at them. Amid much shooting the gunmen flee, Fat Tony grabs the kid and takes off. He drops the kid off around the next block. Sousa is arrested at the scene. A warrant goes out for kidnapping against Fat Tony.
Martorano says the problem is Joe McDonald is now in trouble because the dentist knows Sousa and Sousa knows McDonald. They decide to kill Sousa. Martorano murders him. There is no mention of Whitey in all of Martorano’s recitations. There is no motive on Whitey’s part to have Sousa murdered. The deal with the gold did not involve Winter Hill.
The jury correctly found that the prosecutors did not prove Whitey was involved in the Sousa murder. I fully agree. I am at a loss how they even indicted Whitey on this. It shows the prosecutors desire to throw everything possible at Whitey even in a case such as this.
That makes eight murders Whitey had nothing to do with. Next I consider another one that happens two years later. Another one in which a guy is shot in the head by Martorano. .