Missing mobster's pals try to cash in with books, films re: Whitey Bulger (Milwaukee Journal Sentinal) -- Irish Media Watch Message Board

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Date Posted: 04:48:40 05/15/04 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Missing mobster's pals try to cash in with books, films re: Whitey Bulger (Milwaukee Journal Sentinal)

Original URL: http://www.jsonline.com/enter/gen/apr04/224764.asp

Missing mobster's pals try to cash in with books, films

By SHELLEY MURPHY
Boston Globe

Posted: April 24, 2004

At least a half-dozen people with ties to fugitive South Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger are trying to write a book or looking for a movie deal.

The list of aspiring authors includes Bulger's longtime girlfriend, several of his former partners in crime, and even one victim who was forced at gunpoint to sell his liquor store to Bulger.

"We've got everybody in town trying to write a book," said Teresa Stanley, Bulger's longtime girlfriend, who said she decided to team up with a local writer after rejecting overtures from several people trying to pump her for information for their own projects.

"I've spent 30 years with this guy, and I've been through hell," said Stanley, 63, who signed an agreement last year with Jonathan Wells to write a book about life with Whitey.

But in the competitive atmosphere of the Whitey book world, everything is up for grabs, as Stanley learned when her son, Billy, took a rare photograph of his mother and Bulger from her Silver Street home and gave it to Stephen Rakes, who plans to use it in his own book.

"It was stolen," said Stanley, who is contemplating a lawsuit to get it back. "Do you know the value of that picture?" she told her son. "If anybody was going to be using it, I would."

Rakes, who was forced to sell his South Boston liquor store to Bulger in 1984, declined to discuss the book he's working on with a friend, but confirmed that he plans to use the photo he obtained from Stanley's son.

"I paid $20 for it," Rakes said.

Since Bulger fled to evade a 1995 federal racketeering indictment, he has been outed as an FBI informant who corrupted some of his handlers and has been charged with killing 19 people. His story also has attracted a lot of attention because of his relationship with his brother William, the former president of the Massachusetts Senate and the University of Massachusetts.

Many of his former cohorts are now cooperating against him, are in prison, or both. And while Bulger-bashing has become a popular sport in South Boston, so has cashing in.

Former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. had been writing a book about growing up in South Boston with the Bulgers and investigating the Mafia when his project was cut short by his arrest. Convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for helping Bulger evade capture, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Former Bulger associate Patrick Nee has a publisher for his book, which will trace his life from Ireland to South Boston and his involvement in an ill-fated plot to ship guns to the Irish Republican Army in 1984.

While Nee jokes that "everyone's gone Hollywood" in South Boston, he said he's not expecting a windfall from book sales and thinks other would-be authors from his hometown might have unrealistic expectations about the literary world.

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