Black Mass

Dick Lehr

Description

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING JOHNNY DEPP AND BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, DAKOTA JOHNSON AND KEVIN BACON A gripping true story of violence, double-cross and corruption, Black Mass takes us deep undercover, exposing one of the most outrageous scandals in FBI history. Boston, 1975. Under a harvest moon,'Whitey' Bulger, godfather of the Irish Mob, waits for an old school buddy. Since they last met, Little John Connolly has become a high-ranking FBI agent. Connolly needs an informant - someone with a good view of Boston's dark side. Whitey needs certain priority treatment. Soon the die is cast.

Sujets

• True crime
• Massachusetts

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 05 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782116257
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2012 by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill
First published in the United States of America in 2000 by Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 250 West 57 th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107, USA
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 623 3 eISBN 978 1 78211 625 7
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Photo credits: James J. “Whitey” Bulger Jr . / FBI photo; Stephen J. “the Rifleman” Flemmi / FBI photo; Former FBI agent John Connolly / Boston Globe Staff Photo by George Rizer; Donato “Danny” Angiulo . . . / FBI photo; An early arrest photo of Bulger / Boston Globe;Frank Salemme . . . / Boston Globe Staff Photo by John Tlumacki; Flemmi / FBI photo; Gennaro J. Angiulo . . . / Boston Globe Staff Photo by Jim Wilson; John Connolly Jr., . . . / Boston Globe Staff Photo by Ted Dully; Boston FBI agent . . . / FBI photo; John M. Morris . . . / Boston Globe Staff Photo by Tom Herde; Millionaire Roger Wheeler . . . / FBI photo; Edward Brian Halloran / Boston Police photo; South Boston Liquor Mart / Boston Globe Staff Photo by John Tlumacki; By 1984, Bulger . . . / Boston Globe Staff Photo by John Tlumacki; FBI wanted poster . . . / FBI web site; Bulger and Catherine Greig, 1988 / Boston Globe Staff Photo by John Tlumacki; James J. “Whitey” Bulger / FBI photo.
For my sons, Nick and Christian Lehr, and my daughters, Holly and Dana Lehr
▪
For my even keel wife Janet and my sons, Brian and Shane O’Neill
Contents
Cast of Characters
Prologue
Introduction
Introduction to the Paperback Edition
Map: Whitey’s World
PART ONE
one
1975
two
SOUTH BOSTON
three
HARD BALL
four
BOB ’N’ WEAVE
five
WIN, PLACE, AND SHOW
PART TWO
six
GANG OF TWO?
seven
BETRAYAL
eight
PRINCE STREET HITMAN
nine
FINE FOOD, FINE WINE, DIRTY MONEY
ten
MURDER, INC.
eleven
BULGERTOWN, USA
twelve
THE BULGER MYTH
thirteen
BLACK MASS
fourteen
SHADES OF WHITEY
fifteen
CONNOLLY TALK
sixteen
SECRETS EXPOSED
PART THREE
seventeen
FRED WYSHAK
eighteen
HELLER’S CAFÉ
nineteen
IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND
twenty
THE PARTY’S OVER  
Epilogue
Sources
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Cast of Characters
THE BULGER GANG
James J. “Whitey” Bulger
Stephen J. “The Rifleman” Flemmi
Nick Femia, enforcer
Kevin Weeks, enforcer and Bulger’s “surrogate son”
Kevin O’Neil, associate
Patrick Nee, associate
Joseph Yerardi, associate
George Kaufman, associate
THE ORIGINAL WINTER HILL GANG
includes Bulger gang members and:
Howard Winter, boss
John Martorano, hitman
William Barnoski, associate
James Sims, associate
Joseph McDonald, associate
Anthony Ciulla, horse-race fixer
Brian Halloran, associate
MAFIA IN BOSTON
Gennaro J. “Jerry” Angiulo, underboss
Ilario “Larry” Zannino, capo de regime and consigliere
Donato “Danny” Angiulo, capo de regime
Francesco “Frankie” Angiulo, associate
Mikey Angiulo, associate
J. R. Russo, capo de regime
Vincent “The Animal” Ferrara, capo de regime
Bobby Carrozza, capo de regime
Frank “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, Flemmi’s boyhood pal and leading Mafia boss in 1990s
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, BOSTON FIELD OFFICE
H. Paul Rico, organized crime squad
Dennis Condon, organized crime squad
John J. Connolly Jr., Bulger’s and Flemmi’s handler
John Morris, organized crime squad supervisor
Lawrence Sarhatt, special agent in charge (SAC) early 1980s
James Greenleaf, special agent in charge (SAC) mid-1980s
James Ahearn, special agent in charge (SAC) late 1980s
Robert Fitzpatrick, assistant special agent in charge (ASAC)
James Ring, assistant special agent in charge (ASAC)
Nicholas Gianturco, organized crime squad
Tom Daly, organized crime squad
Mike Buckley, organized crime squad
Edward Quinn, organized crime squad
Jack Cloherty, organized crime squad
John Newton, special agent
Roderick Kennedy, special agent
FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES
Robert Long, Massachusetts State Police
Rick Fraelick, Massachusetts State Police
Jack O’Malley, Massachusetts State Police
Colonel John O’Donovan, Massachusetts State Police commander
Thomas Foley, Massachusetts State Police
Joe Saccardo, Massachusetts State Police
Thomas Duffy, Massachusetts State Police
Richard Bergeron, Quincy police detective
Al Reilly, federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Stephen Boeri, federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Daniel Doherty, federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan, federal prosecutor, Justice Department
Fred Wyshak, federal prosecutor, Justice Department
Brian Kelly, federal prosecutor, Justice Department
James Herbert, federal prosecutor, Justice Department
Prologue
One summer day in 1948 a shy kid in short pants named John Connolly wandered into a corner drugstore with a couple of his pals. The boys were looking to check out the candy at the store on the outskirts of the Old Harbor housing project in South Boston, where they all lived.
“There’s Whitey Bulger,” one of the boys whispered.
The legendary Whitey Bulger: skinny, taut, and tough looking, with the full head of lightning-blond hair that inspired cops to nickname him Whitey, even if he hated the name and preferred his real name, Jimmy. He was the phantom tough-guy teen who ran with the Shamrocks gang.
Bulger caught the boys staring and impulsively offered to set up the bar with ice cream cones all around. Two boys eagerly named their flavors. But little John Connolly hesitated, heeding his mother’s instructions not to take anything from strangers. When Bulger asked him about his abstinence, the other boys giggled about his mother’s rule. Bulger then took charge. “Hey, kid, I’m no stranger,” he said. Bulger then offered the boy a quick but crucial lesson in history and bloodlines: both their fore-bears were from Ireland. They were hardly strangers.
Whitey asked again: “What kind of cone you want?”
In a soft voice Connolly said vanilla. Bulger gladly hoisted the boy onto the counter to receive his treat.
It was the first time John ever met Whitey. Many years later he would say the thrill of meeting Bulger by chance that day was “like meeting Ted Williams.”
Introduction
In the spring of 1988 we set out to write for the Boston Globe the story of two brothers, Jim “Whitey” Bulger and his younger brother Billy. In a city with a history as long and rich as Boston’s, brimming with historical figures of all kinds, the Bulgers were living legends. Each was at the top of his game. Whitey, fifty-eight, was the city’s most powerful gangster, a reputed killer. Billy Bulger, fifty-four, was the most powerful politician in Massachusetts, the longest-serving president in the State Senate’s 208-year history. Each possessed a reputation for cunning and ruthlessness, shared traits they exercised in their respective worlds.
It was a quintessential Boston saga, a tale of two brothers who’d grown up in a housing project in the most insular of Irish neighborhoods, South Boston—“Southie,” as it was often known. In their early years Whitey, the unruly firstborn, was frequently in court and never in high school. There were street fights and wild car chases, all of which had a kind of Hollywood flair. During the 1940s he’d driven a car onto the streetcar tracks and raced through the old Broadway station as shocked passengers stared from the crowded platform. With a scally cap on his head and a blonde seated next to him, he waved and honked to the crowd. Then he was gone. His brother Billy set off in the opposite direction. He studied—history, the classics, and, lastly, the law. He entered politics.
Both made news, but their life stories had never been assembled. So that spring we set out with two other Globe reporters to change all that. Christine Chinlund, whose interests lay in politics, focused on Billy Bulger. Kevin Cullen, the city’s best police reporter at that time, looked into Whitey. We swung between the two, with Lehr eventually working mostly with Cullen, and O’Neill overseeing the whole affair. Even though we usually did investigative work, this project was seen as an in-depth biographical study of two of the city’s most colorful and beguiling brothers.
We’d all decided that central to Whitey Bulger’s story was his so-called charmed life. To be sure, Whitey had once served nine years of hard time in federal prison, including a few years at Alcatraz, for a series of armed bank robberies back in the 1950s. But ever since his return to Boston in 1965 he’d never been arrested once, not even for a traffic infraction. Meanwhile, his climb through the ranks of the Boston underworld was relentless. From feared foot soldier in the Winter Hill gang, he’d risen to star status as the city’s most famous underworld boss. He had teamed up along the way with the killer Stevie “The Rifleman” Flemmi, and the conventional wisdom was that they were taking an uninterrupted underworld ride to fame and riches because of their ability to outfox investigators who tried to build cases against them.
But by the late 1980s the cops, state troopers, and federal drug agents had a new theory about Bulger’s unblemished record. Sure, they said, the man is wily and extremely careful, but his Houdini-like elusiveness went beyond nature. To them, the fix was in. Bulger, they argued, was connected to the FBI, and the FBI had secretly pr