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.