Their Displeasure
Toward Whitey
(click to enlarge)
I hope you have a happy and healthy New Year. I thank you for reading the post and especially appreciate you who have taken the time to comment to tell me when I erred, or offered another slant on my opinion, or even given some encouragement. I’ve learned a lot since I started and looking back I’m surprised at how much. In a nut shell I guess I could say what we’ve been fed by the media about Whitey and the events in his life ain’t necessarily so.
I’m at the point in going through my reanalysis of Whitey where I can pause. Whitey’s moving from his Early Years into his Learning Years. He was forced out of his subservient role into that of a leader and pushed into picking up weapons to preserve his ascendancy. He’s about to join a confederacy of equals for protection where he will be the least equal. He’s 43-years-old and unlike his new partners has not, as best I can tell, become a murderer. Although I have no reason to believe he killed anyone by this time, he’s developed a fondness for firearms. When I resume in a day or two we’ll see what next we can learn about his life.
But today I thought I’d talk about Billy Bulger. I suggest the most pernicious part to come out of the Whitey affairs is attributing to Billy knowledge of Whitey’s criminal life. Even though no one has shown any credible evidence of it, many have inferred there is a sinister connection between them solely because of their sibling relationship.
I read two things this week that brought this to mind. Both were from newspaper articles. One was an article about a serial killer and the other about Billy O’Sullivan who was the feared Southie tough in the Killeen gang who had killed Donald McGonagle and shot Buddy Roache paralyzing him. O’Sullivan was murdered outside his house in Savin Hill in March, 1971.
Wikepedia has information on O’Sullivan attributed to a newspaper article by Richard O’Donnell titled “Dorchester Killing Mystifies Widow”, in The Boston Globe, March 29, 1971. The article said: “After her husband was murdered Mary [the mother of his six kids] professed not to have any knowledge on why her husband was shot to death, practically on the front steps of their home. She stated to the press that she was convinced that her husband’s murder was not “one of those gangland slayings””. She would later say that William was a “quiet man”, a “fine husband” and a “wonderful father, and that he (wasn’t) the type of person that you would associate with gangsters.
The serial killer article is in the New York Post on Sunday. The serial killer is Israel Keyes. The article itself is worth reading for it is well written. There is a portion of it I want to point to that talks about Keyes’s desire that his family and friends be protected from knowing about his evil acts. When he received that assurance he confessed to some other murders.
Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern University, who is a world-renowned expert in the study of serial killers is quoted as saying: “In some respects, serial killers really aren’t that different from the rest of us. Most of us compartmentalize and draw lines between people we love and respect and people we don’t. “
The article notes that “Levin says that in 99% of these cases, family and friends are shocked to learn the truth — serial killers, in daily life, present as utterly normal.” The article also stated, “Keyes wanted more than anything to keep his girlfriend and daughter away from the media so the prosecutors used that as leverage. . . . Once Keyes was convinced his family would be protected, he revealed himself to be a whole new kind of monster; for all he had in common with the typical profile of a serial killer, Keyes was an aberration, the kind of nightmare that we like to think lives only in horror movies or Stephen King novels.”
I found these articles interesting because I have theorized all along based on having been part of an Irish family that Billy Bulger would know nothing about Whitey’s criminal ways especially when it came to murders. Levin a man skilled in studying these criminals notes that even the worst of them want to keep their family in ignorance of their criminal actions.
We’ve seen how Billy O’Sullivan protected his wife from knowing about his association with gangsters. We saw the extent Israel Keyes would go to protect his family and friends. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that Whitey would do the same thing with his brothers and sisters?
In Whitey’s case that not only is a reasonable assumption but a proven fact. Look at the list of gangsters and crooked FBI agents who have associated with Whitey and none have indicated that Whitey advised Billy of his activity. (Murderman Martorano testified to a convoluted story that Billy told John Connolly who told Whitey who told Murderman that Billy wanted Connolly to keep Whitey out of trouble. Connolly was supposed to be doing this, according to Murderman, because Billy helped Connolly get into BC and the FBI. He did neither. The prosecutors who have all along been intent in trying to destroy Billy and doing a good job at it, as I pointed out in my book Don’t Embarrass The Family and in another post here, believed Martorano as did the Media. But the jury and most others knew it was nonsense.)
Aside from that, consider what Professor Levin said: “in 99% of these cases, family and friends are shocked to learn the truth” This means unless they are convinced otherwise, they will disbelieve what people tell them about the person they have known all their lives.
Jesus referred to this in Matthew 13:15 when He said: “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.” In other words, those who know a person well will look upon him or her differently than those who did not have this close relationship. To overlook and ignore this is to jettison an age-old truth. We are supposed to assume Billy knew something that in truth he’d be the last one to know, and, that even if he heard these things about his brother rather than rejecting them outright he believed they were true. The Whitey Billy knows is not the Whitey we’ve all come to accept.
And to add one other note, that’s why the sentence of Catherine Greig is so unfair. When she left with Whitey he was not accused of any murders. If and when she heard those accusations, she probably rejected them as falsehoods impossible to believe about the man she loved. Yet she was sentenced on the basis that she fled, lived with, and protected a man she knew had murdered 19 people when no evidence of that was introduced. In one of the strangest and inappropriate sentencing hearings a judge allowed family members of people believed to be killed by Whitey insult, slur and defame her without any showing she knew anything about the events they spoke about.
In Whitey’s case there are too many people who hold the bully pulpit who are invested in telling one story, not necessarily the true story. Their minds are closed. That doesn’t mean we should emulate them.
Yes, Jan has it right. Theresa Stanley was dangerous to him at that point, and as they were on the road at the time it seems it would have been convenient to kill her rather than drop her off near home. It does make me wonder about the other murders, particularly the young women who were not as big a threat to him as Theresa was.
Pam:
There are two witnesses connecting Whitey to the murder of the two women, Flemmi and Weeks. Whitey has no motive to kill the women. Flemmi will have him killing the Davis woman as a favor to Flemmi. Not something that is usually done and quite difficult to believe. He may have thrown Whitey in to make a deal for himself. The only difference with the other woman is that Weeks is there and he corroborated Flemmi.
Weeks implicates himself because he disclosed where he had buried them. I suppose you reason that Weeks was Whitey’s man and not Flemmi’s. If Weeks buried the bodies he did it for Whitey. All the bodies buried near each other were in the burial grounds that Whitey choose therefore Whitey had something to do with them. I said from the earliest posts that Whitey would have had a better chance at beating the charges if Weeks had not disclosed the location of the bodies. The prosecutors knew this and that is why they gave Weeks a good deal.
Didn’t Theresa Stanley leave him? If killing came easily to him, you’d think he would have used one of those guns on her. It seems he had both the opportunity and the motive to do so.
Good point Pam, Bulger according to legend would have killed Stanley when he brought her back and buried her at Malibu Beach or anywhere…. but he didn’t, where was Flemmi when Stanley had a change of heart and returned to Boston….oh, yes of course Flemmi was already apprehended…..maybe Flemmi’s state of incarceration influenced Stanley’s livelihood when she decided life on the lam wasn’t for her…..remember, Bulger first fled leaving Greig alive and well also with no apparent need to kill her either. rumors often circulated that Bulger very likely killed Greig when they were on the lam…..consistently inaccurate rumors that lend validity to the thought that Flemmi was the point of origin on the Davis and Hussey murders.
Jan,
Good comment. Good points. Had Whitey been all he was supposed to be he would have killed Theresa because he knew she could give up a lot about him. It would have been in his interest to silence her to protect himself. That certainly would have been a better reason to murder (not that there is any justifiable reason to murder someone) he than Flemmi’s reason for the Davis woman (being jilted) or his step-daughter (being exposed as a child molester). Theresa eventually did give information to some FBI agent who was able to befriend and con her. I believe she gave up Whitey’s alias and gave him access to some of his papers.
Pam:
Theresa never left him as far as I know. Whitey left the area in late December, 1994. (Weeks said it was on the 23rd. I don’t believe him. US Attorney Stearns or one of his men testified that they had increased surveillance on Whitey around that time so there should be reports available. I wonder why Connolly did not look for them at his trial.) He went with Theresa to New Orleans, registered in his own name, and spent the holidays there. He was coming back with Theresa on January 5, 1995 when he learned Flemmi had been arrested and he turned around and fled again. Theresa told him after a few days she didn’t want to be on the run with him so he made arrangements to swap her for Catherine Greig. Both women knew each other was in Whitey’s life and apparently had a spat or two over it. Whitey probably couldn’t be like Stevie who could kill women he had a relationship with. Whitey apparently was involved with Theresa from 1965 to 1995, with Catherine a lesser time and Weeks had him showing up with other women at times.
At least Greig and other women in Bulger’s life were not killed. Interesting it’s the woman and girl in Flemmi’s life that were killed…seems Flemmi must have essentially been the aggressor in these 2 murders. I use the term ‘girl’ above to describe D. Hussey because a little girl is what she was when Flemmi began molesting her. Flemmi and MacKenzie were the sex offenders….interesting that they both attribute their offenses to Bulger…..and that the authorities and media assist Flemmi and MacKenzie with this deflective attribution. 8 years, perhaps does seem harsh, imagine MacKenzie is running a church/church programs supervising adolescents – 8 years wouldn’t be enough for MacKenzie – it does seem backwards, very much so.
Jan:
You make a good point that Whitey never killed the women in his life. However it seems none of them threatened to leave him. Kevin Weeks testified he had a girlfriend named Connolly (too many Connollys lurking in this saga) who he once told he was going to kill her and throw her in a landfill. He said he never intended to do it but he just said it. He then went on to say they had a long relationship with her after that as if it showed she understood he wasn’t serious when he said it. I thought the opposite. If he threatened her like that what choice did she have but to continue the relationship.
Don’t know much about McKenzie except what he wrote in his book. I do believe though that people can turn their lives around and if McKenzie has done so good for him. McKenzie ratted out some drug dealers to get a deal for himself. He said he was not a rat because he ratted out people who were not his friends. Every rat seems to have an excuse but the bottom line is that they are cutting a deal to help themselves.
As for Whitey, I’ll get to the murders of the young women in a bit when I come to his Boss Years.
With your thought process regarding MacKenzie you could apply same to Bulger and consider Bulger as having had changed his life around the past 16 years….case solved, case closed, give Bulger a job and the pulpit at the Swedenborgian church! Lol
Jan:
Good point. True, Whitey stayed out of trouble for 16 years. What does that tell us about the man? It is something to consider. Not only did he stay out of trouble he lived pretty much like a member of a cloistered order.
I don’t hold it against him that he didn’t join the Swedenborgian Church. Had he, I suppose his sermons might have been compelling. He’d have been good at passing the collection plate because he’d have scared people into contributing especially if he was packing an AK47. Even though I believe people can change, I didn’t say I could just close my eyes to their past actions. That type of forgiveness if far, far above my pay grade
I will say had Whitey held on to the janitorial job in Suffolk he’d have got a good pension and could be living somewhere in Southie and enjoying his old age by going out and shoveling out his space in the winter and walking around the lagoon on fall days and swimming at L Street in the summer.
You have a double standard regarding your opinion of accountability regarding Bulger vs. MacKenzie.
I believe Pam’s statement that Stanley left Bulger was in reference to the fact that Stanley left Bulger when she didn’t want to live a life on the lam with him.
Jan:
I don’t agree that I have different standards for them. Maybe you could explain where that is shown. As far as Theresa is concerned, I interpreted Pam’s statement as suggesting that Theresa left him against his will because she indicated he had the opportunity and motive to kill her. I wanted to suggest to her that the leaving was by mutual agreement – Whitey cooperated in her departure by bringing her back to the area.
In the above article you state:”In Whitey’s case there are too many people who hold the bully pulpit who are invested in telling one story, not necessarily the true story. Their minds are closed. That doesn’t mean we should emulate them.” A fair reading of this statement would indicate to me that this would apply to the prosecutors as well, if not more so, since they do have a duty to JUSTICE.
Jean:
People take slants on things and believe they are right and it is difficult to change their minds. Prosecutors are like any other people.
John 8:32 “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
I understand that prosecutors are human too…but, when material facts shout out ‘truth’, then whose job is it to set the record straight? And, if the answer is to be found in a trial, then material facts should matter. It cannot only be a matter of law, but of law and fact.
Jean: Facts are difficult things. When you have two persons who were the only people to observe what happened and each says the exact opposite of the other who do you believe. There’s a Japanese classic movie where seven people witness an event and each one tells it differently when asked about it. How is a jury to decide whether a witness is lying or not? In these cases you have a witness like FBI Agent John Morris who admitted he lied on numerous occasions in the past but now is telling the truth. How does the jury or anyone else know?