YESTERDAY IN south Boston, from where the gangland leader James “Whitey” Bulger operated with impunity for decades, there was disbelief at the news that, after nearly 17 years on the run, he had been captured by the FBI.
And in California, of all places. So much for those stories about Whitey getting back to his roots in the Ould Sod.
"I thought the feds dumped him," Dan Rull, a Southie resident who works for a cable company, told a Boston Globereporter.
He wasn’t the only one. So corrupt and sordid was the relationship between Bulger and the FBI, which gave him licence to murder as long as he was their informant, that many Bostonians assumed the FBI wasn’t really looking for him. Others, not necessarily conspiracy theorists, thought the FBI had him liquidated.
But in what it hopes is the first step towards rehabilitating an image that was badly tarnished by its association with the murderous Bulger, the FBI finally tracked him down to a non-descript apartment a few blocks from the sea in Santa Monica.
His girlfriend, Catherine Greig, was arrested along with him. In 1995, Bulger picked Greig up at an inner-city shorefront in Boston known as Malibu Beach. They ended up being nabbed not far from a far more salubrious Malibu Beach in California.
It was the FBI’s determined pitch to find Greig as a way to find Bulger that ultimately paid off. The FBI had earlier this week launched a series of public service announcements, aimed at the audiences of daytime chat shows in America, showing Greig’s photograph. The idea that desperate housewives watching inane shows would somehow lead to the apprehension of the man who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the most wanted man in America was dismissed as ludicrous by many commentators.
But the unexpected happened. Someone who saw one of those adverts called the FBI on Tuesday night, according to Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of Boston’s FBI office. On Wednesday evening, FBI agents lured Bulger out of the apartment where he and Greig were living under the aliases Charles and Carol Gasko.
Bulger (81), once the most feared criminal in Boston, put up no resistance. One law enforcement agent claimed Bulger slapped one of the G-men on the back and congratulated his captors, more or less saying with admiration, “Well, you got me.”
DesLauriers said agents found a “variety of guns” and a “substantial amount of cash” in the apartment. He said it appeared that Bulger and Greig had been living there “for a long time”. Other sources confirmed that some 20 guns were found along with “hundreds of thousands” in cash.
Guns and cash. Like old times for Whitey, it seems . . . right up to capture.
All those reported sightings, in London, in Dublin, in Galway, in Italy, across Europe, appear to have been false. The FBI had travelled all over the world, tracking down tips and wild stories, and it turns out Bulger was living not far from Sonny McLean’s Irish Pub, a sports bar where homesick, transplanted Bostonians watch the games of their beloved Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and recently crowned Stanley Cup champions Bruins.
DesLauriers acknowledged the cynicism that convinced some that the FBI didn’t really want to capture Bulger, because all he could do was create headaches with more disclosures.
“Although there were those who doubted our resolve over the years, it has never wavered,” he said.
While it was a great day for the FBI, it remains to be seen if Bulger’s capture will result in a bad year or two for America’s premier law enforcement agency. The FBI’s Faustian pact with Bulger, in which agents ignored his crimes and even helped Bulger identify potential witnesses against him so he could murder them, has done more to tarnish the FBI’s image than any other case in recent history.
Now Bulger’s only defence, or only revenge, is to point fingers at other FBI agents, now long retired, who have been implicated in but not yet charged with taking part in the unholy alliance to keep him out of prison.
“It’s good news,” said Tom Foley, the retired Massachusetts state police commander who defied the FBI and led the investigation that ultimately brought charges against Bulger in 1995. “Hopefully there’s some closure for the families he ruined.”
One of those families, the Donahues of Dorchester, was especially elated at the news. While most of the 19 murders Bulger is charged with involved underworld figures, Michael Donahue was an innocent truck driver who had the misfortune to give a ride home to someone the FBI had tipped Bulger off to as a potential witness against him. When Bulger was told by his handler, FBI agent John Connolly, that Brian Halloran was on the south Boston waterfront, Bulger grabbed a machine gun and lay in wait.
Donahue and Halloran died together when they got into Donahue’s car and were ambushed by Bulger and another gunman.
In the pre-dawn hours yesterday, Tommy Donahue, who was eight years old when his father was murdered, went from floor to floor of the family’s three-decker in Boston’s Dorchester neighbourhood, telling them the news. Then he called David Wheeler in Oklahoma. Wheeler’s father, Roger, was the owner of a jai alai business that Bulger and his game were skimming money from. Roger Wheeler was murdered in Oklahoma in 1981. It was not long after that Michael Donahue was murdered.
Wheeler, the millionaire mogul, and Donahue, the blue-collar truck driver, died the same way, victims of gangsters and corrupt FBI agents.
Not that long ago, after a divided federal appeals court told the Donahue family that they were entitled to nothing, even though their father and husband was murdered by a man bought and paid for by the FBI, David Wheeler called Tommy Donahue out of the blue.
David Wheeler told him his family felt bad for the Donahues, and just wanted them to know that the Wheelers were with them. The Wheelers, too, were denied the opportunity to be compensated by the government, on statute of limitations grounds.
“You’d look at us and say, ‘Wow, the Wheelers and the Donahues couldn’t be more different,’ ” Tommy Donahue was saying.
“One family’s from Oklahoma, the other’s from Boston. One family has a lot of money, the other family doesn’t. But you know what? We’re very similar. Our fathers were murdered because the FBI protected Whitey Bulger. David Wheeler is like me and my brothers. He grew up without a dad because the FBI protected a murdering scumbag like Whitey Bulger. Our families were ripped apart, and our families have suffered for 30 years, and still suffer, because of corrupt FBI agents.”
So they talked, the two boys who grew into men without their fathers.
“David didn’t mind me waking him up [yesterday],” Tommy Donahue said. “This was the news all of us had been waiting for.”
Kevin Cullen writes for
The Boston Globe