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Date Posted: 05:00:26 01/31/05 Mon GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Boston haunted by mobster who disappeared (Washington Post)

washingtonpost.com

Boston Haunted by Mobster Who Disappeared
Linked to 21 Killings, James Bulger Informed on Rivals to FBI Before Vanishing 10 Years Ago

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 29, 2005; Page A03


BOSTON -- He is Boston's boogeyman. A fugitive. A phantom. And a fixture since 2000 on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list.

James J. "Whitey" Bulger, the mobster and government informant linked to 21 killings, vanished from this city with his girlfriend days before a warrant was issued for his arrest 10 years ago this month.

Since then, the investigation into his crime ring has ensnared dozens of former associates, friends and family members, generating 27 cases and 59 convictions. But, to the torment of his victims' families, his whereabouts remain a mystery, despite a $1 million government bounty and "sightings" in 44 states and on five continents.

"The only piece of the puzzle that's left right now is Bulger. Just about everybody else's been rounded up and adjudicated," said Thomas J. Foley, who retired as superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police last May after leading its investigation for 14 years. "Ten years ago I said, 'Yeah, we'll get him.' I never expected he'd be out this long, but I still hope and feel he'll be caught and brought to justice, so we can have an accounting of what he did and give some closure to those families."

A product of the tight-knit Irish enclave of South Boston, Bulger rose through this city's criminal ranks with brutality, charisma and, it was later revealed, a willingness to rat out rivals. According to court documents, he became a bookmaker, a thief, a drug peddler, a gun smuggler for the Irish Republican Army, and a hit man handy with a knife. The plot twists of Bulger's grisly reign atop Boston's Winter Hill Gang and his disappearance are as familiar to residents of this region as reruns of the "Godfather" trilogy.

"What makes this story so different from other big-city mobsters was his involvement with the feds," said Dick Lehr, a former Boston Globe reporter and co-author of the book "Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob," which describes how Bulger, now a white-haired 75, fed information to agents about his rivals in the Italian Mafia in exchange for the government's tacit protection.

"Here's a guy whose reputation has undergone a complete makeover from this Robin Hood-style mob boss with the skills of a Houdini, to now the ultimate snitch, betrayer, murderer, drug dealer," Lehr said. "There's been an enormous correction in terms of his public image."

Many of the main characters in the Bulger saga have fallen on hard times since he disappeared.

Former FBI agent John Connolly, who grew up next door to Bulger in South Boston and was his official handler beginning in 1975, is serving a 10-year prison term for tipping off the mobster that his arrest was imminent, allowing him to flee Boston, just before Christmas in 1994.

Stephen J. "The Rifleman" Flemmi, who led the Winter Hill Gang alongside Bulger and collaborated on many of the killings, was sentenced last January to life in prison.

Former Boston FBI agent H. Paul Rico, 78, died in police custody a year ago, before he could face charges that he had conspired with Bulger and Flemmi to commit a murder.

Bulger's youngest brother, John "Jackie" Bulger, pleaded guilty in 2003 to two counts each of perjury and obstruction of justice.

And William M. Bulger -- who presided over the Massachusetts state Senate from 1978 to 1996 while his brother Whitey ruled the Boston underworld -- was forced to resign as president of the University of Massachusetts system in 2003, after sparking outrage by invoking his right to silence when asked about his brother's activities during a 2003 congressional inquiry.

But despite the roundup that authorities claim crushed the Irish mob in Boston and stamped out the corruption that had plagued the city's FBI office, one question still haunts investigators and Bostonians: Where's Whitey?

At a news conference last month, members of the Bulger Fugitive Task Force -- which is made up of representatives from several state and federal agencies -- provided a rare update into the progress of their investigation, which, according to the Boston Herald, involves 13 agents and spends more money than the rest of Boston's FBI units combined.

According to a timeline of his activities provided during that briefing, Bulger was last spotted in London in 2002. He is believed to be in good health and still accompanied by his girlfriend, Catherine Elizabeth Greig. Since his disappearance he is known to have taken out a one-year health club membership in London and opened safe-deposit boxes there and in Ireland. Since Jan. 1, 2004, about 100 Bulger look-alikes have been spotted, about half of them abroad. None panned out.

Investigators also displayed a collection Bulger's possessions seized over the years, including books on travel in Europe and the Caribbean and on military history, a pouch of collectible coins, a journal that discusses LSD experiments Bulger participated in while in prison on Alcatraz Island in the 1950s and 1960s, four knives, a skull ring, and Irish and U.S. passports.

"Anniversaries usually are cause for celebration, but this milestone certainly is not," U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said that day. "Ten years is too long."

The families of many of Bulger's victims agree, though many doubt he will ever be apprehended alive and question the resolve to track him down.

"If they wanted to find him, they'd have found him by now. They are afraid of who else he might give up," said Chris Carrabino, 28, who was just a year old when Bulger and Flemmi allegedly killed his grandfather Richard J. Castucci, a Revere, Mass., bar owner and FBI informant.

"To be honest, it is almost too painful to think about. Every time it breaks my heart," said Larry Wheeler, whose father, Roger, was gunned down by a hit man allegedly on Bulger's orders 23 years ago in Tulsa. "Yes, he is on the most-wanted list, but there are a number of people who think he is the least-wanted person. Every arrest has just shown more corruption."

The Boston FBI and U.S. attorney's office, which rarely grant interviews on Bulger, declined to comment. Foley, who said his department and the FBI led parallel and often competing investigations into the Winter Hill Gang for many years, said the victims' skepticism was justified.

"For a long time, the investigation was compromised by resistance on the part of the FBI. Some of them were friends of Connolly and were still trying to protect him and Bulger," Foley said. "Whether it was wiretaps on cell phones or whatever, [Bulger] was always apprised of what we were doing. It was very difficult for me during the whole time period."

At the December news conference, Kenneth Kaiser, the special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, which has undergone significant turnover since Bulger disappeared in the mid-1990s, said: "Forget about the grand conspiracy theories that we've got something to hide. We don't. I've got a commitment to this city to get this thing resolved."

Foley said he is not optimistic about that happening any time soon. "On a couple of occasions we thought we might have had opportunities [to catch Bulger], but we were always a month or two behind," he said. "It only gets harder because the older he gets, people start to look alike and become harder to identify. By now he can probably blend in pretty easily, wherever he is."


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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