Where the Bodies Were Buried (44 page)

For the jurors, this was telling. They had heard, via the testimony of John Martorano, that Tommy King put on a bulletproof vest the night he was murdered. King believed that he, Bulger, Flemmi, and Martorano were going to kill a sad sack hoodlum named Suitcase Fidler, not realizing that his executioner was, in fact, Martorano, sitting behind him in the car. A bullet to the back of the cranium ended Tommy King's life.

At the site, the skull fragments and other remains, mixed with dirt and debris (the marshland had also been used as landfill), were dumped out on a tarp. Mires highlighted a section of the video that showed her carefully sifting through the dirt. “Here, you can see elements of the spine. Here, I'm in the pelvic area, and this is pelvic bone I'm exposing, or the hipbone. . . . This is the humerus or the upper arm bone. . . . And this is a remnant of a blue suit jacket and a vest. It was a three-piece suit.”

Though the Mullen gang had largely been considered a group of ruffians, Tommy King wore a three-piece suit to his execution. Not only that,
he wore what was, perhaps, the premier fashion statement of the gang. “If you look here,” said Mires, “you'll see what I later determined to be driving gloves. They were the kind of gloves that only goes up to your fingers and then the fingers are exposed. But I want to draw your attention to—this is a claddagh ring. So the gloves were on the hands, and there's a claddagh ring here on the finger bones of the individual.”

Said prosecutor Wyshak, “Showing you what's been marked five-six-two for identification, I ask you if you recognize what that is.”

Once again, Mires held up a claddagh ring, the Irish symbol of friendship and eternal love worn by many South Boston gangsters.

It would be another month, in October, before they found the remains of Debra Davis. Her grave site was found nearer the river, in an area that was often underwater. The skeleton was found encased in a plastic body bag that had deteriorated. The body had been trussed up and tied with rope, and was tightly compacted in a fetal position. As with the other shoreline burials, some aspects of the remains had been preserved by the salt water, which served as a kind of brine. With Mires narrating, the prosecution showed a ghastly photo of the remains, where hair and some scalp tissue had been preserved though the body had been interred in its marshy grave for nearly twenty years.

As with the other remains, the bones were secured and brought to a lab for postmortem analysis. DNA tests were conducted to identify that it was, in fact, the remains of Debra Davis. Then the bones were laid out on a stainless steel table, in what had become a ritual of the Boston diggings. “Because [the Davis remains were found] in a very tight pit,” said Mires, “we were able to recover almost all the material.” She ran through the visual inventory of bones, a complete skeletal catalog of the human form.

Debbie Davis had been strangled to death, so there were no bullet holes to the skull or traumatic damage to the bones to help determine the cause of death.

Earlier, when Deborah Hussey's remains were found, Mires confronted a similar situation. Hussey had also been strangled to death, which was a mode of death undetectable through skeletal examination. In both cases, Mires determined that the cause of death was “homicidal violence, etiology unknown.”

Wyshak asked the witness to explain what that meant.

“Cause of death is really looking at the body and trying to find that mechanism that stopped life. In skeletal remains of women that I've examined, there will not be any marks of any kind on the skeleton indicating what exactly was the mechanism that stopped life. So there's a category that we engage in or I can use, it's called homicidal violence, etiology unknown or cause unknown. It's a designation that allows us to say, ‘I believe this person died of homicidal violence.' Exactly what stopped life, I do not know.”

“Well,” said Wyshak, “in this case what are the indicators of homicidal violence?”

“Actually, they come more from the fact that the body was buried . . . the act of or trying to disguise the location of the burial often suggests homicidal violence.”

Wyshak was not satisfied; he wanted Mires to crystallize for him how the circumstances of these people's interment were the clearest indication of how they had died. “It is unusual in this day and age to find individuals who die of natural causes buried in unmarked graves?”

“Yes,” said Mires. “It's unusual.”

“It is unusual in this day and age to find people who die of natural causes buried in an unmarked grave with two other individuals?”

“Yes. It's unnatural.”

The forensic anthropologist finished her direct testimony, and there were no questions from the defense. She was dismissed without cross-examination.

A FEW DAYS
after Mires's testimony, I was standing at Tenean Beach, at the exact location where the remains of Paul McGonagle had been exhumed. I was standing there with someone who was alleged to have helped put McGonagle's body in the ground: Pat Nee.

It was a crystal-clear day. From the beach, you could see all the way to downtown Boston, an impressive skyline that hardly existed back in 1975, when McGonagle was buried.

The setting was more of a cove than a beach, hidden from the main highway and located alongside a marina. The most dominant landmark
was a large gas tank from Boston Gas, which partially blocks the downtown view, depending on where you are standing on the beach. There is also a large children's play area that was not in existence back in 1975.

Nee did not really want to be there. In previous interviews, he had told me that he would show me the sites of the burials, which had previously been identified in the media. But Nee kept putting it off. As with many things relating to Whitey, and especially anything to do with the demise of the Mullen gang, it was not a pleasant memory for Nee.

The death of Paulie McGonagle had been the beginning of the descent. McGonagle was one of the original Mullen gang members who had been resistant to an alliance with the Winter Hill Mob, which was one of the reasons that he was murdered by Bulger. As a newly established partner of Bulger, Nee, it was alleged in trial testimony, had been enlisted to help dispose of the body.

All these years later, it is a topic of discussion that still bothers Nee. As we strolled over to the section of beach where McGonagle was buried, which I had recently seen depicted in video footage at the trial, Nee's discomfort was evident. He fidgeted, looked around nervously, and generally adopted the demeanor of how I imagine a person might have felt were they enlisted to dig up sand and soil, creating a small pit in which they dumped the body of a former friend and gang member.

“I was able to justify [the death of Paulie McGonagle] in my head,” said Nee, “because Paulie getting killed was all about business. We were making good money at the time with bookmaking and gambling. Bulger had a conflict with the McGonagles that went back years. Now that we were in business with Whitey, his problems became our problems, in a way.”

According to courtroom accounts, present that night were Bulger, Nee, and Tommy King.

Among other things, one prominent detail of the McGonagle burial was the fact that, if Nee were involved, the man standing next to him that night digging the grave—Tommy King—would be the next to go.

I said to Pat, “Somebody digging the grave of a Bulger victim, standing alongside a fellow digger who wold himself soon become a Bulger victim, wouldn't that tell you something?”

Nee thought about it and said, “Yes. It might even make that person feel that they, potentially, were next in line.”

As we got in Pat's car and headed toward the next burial site, Nee pointed out locations off Morrissey Boulevard where key Bulger-related killings took place. “Right there,” said Pat. “That's where Eddie Connors was shot. There used to be a phone booth there. He was in the booth when they drove up on him.” A few miles down the road, Nee continued, “This is where they shot Billy O'Brien. They drove up on his car from behind and opened fire.”

I had heard the details of these murders at the trial, and seeing the locations now was a weird juxtaposition, but also a historical revelation, sort of like going on a South Boston version of the city's best-known tourist expedition—the Freedom Trail.

Before we pulled into the burial site off Commander Shea Boulevard, where the remains of King and Debbie Davis were found, Nee showed me Bulger's condominium building, where he had lived with girlfriend Catherine Greig. From the outside, it was a nondescript redbrick building with many units. Nee had been inside the condo on a few occasions. “It was a nice place,” he said. “A duplex. With a beautiful view of the harbor. Whitey used to stand at the window with binoculars. He could see the burial sites from there. He used to say, ‘Tides coming in. Let's have a drink on Paulie.'” Nee shook his head at the memory. “Sick fuck. That was the kind of humor he had.”

We parked Nee's car in a lot, crossed the street, and walked along a path that took us into a dense grove. Right away, I recognized the location from the testimony of Mires: the sweeping marshland leading out toward the mouth of the river, the elevated MBTA tracks running behind us.

“It looked completely different back then,” said Nee. The path where we were standing was surrounded by a jungle of vines and overgrowth. “None of this was here. Far as I can tell, where we're standing right now is exactly where Tommy King was buried.”

Even though Pat neither confirms nor denies any role in the burial, he does admit that the murder of King—committed without his foreknowledge by Bulger, Flemmi and John Martorano—had been another turning point. The realization by Nee that he might be next on the hit list loomed on the horizon like a bad case of delirium tremens.

It was around this time that a legendary IRA operative named Joe
Cahill, from Belfast, reached out to the South Boston criminal underworld. Cahill was looking for money and guns in the IRA's clandestine struggle against British occupation of the six counties of Northern Ireland. At the Triple O's Lounge, Cahill met with Bulger, Nee, and a handful of others who were active in NORIAD, or Northern Irish Aid, a U.S. organization that was sympathetic to the IRA. The war in Northern Ireland had intensified in the late 1970s and would eventually culminate in the hunger strike of 1981, when Bobby Sands and ten other Irish republican prisoners in Long Kesh prison starved themselves to death as an act of protest against the authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Given that he had been born in the old country, Pat was drawn to “the struggle.” Some Irish Americans saw the IRA as nothing more than a criminal organization, with a history of thuggery that included the punishment of “touts” or informants via violent means, including death. As someone who had been around violence as a marine, a Vietnam veteran, and a gangster, Nee had no problems with that side of “the Movement.” And, whether you agreed with him or not, his political motivations were sincere. He viewed it as his duty to do what he could on behalf of the fight for Irish freedom. And along with all of that, he saw the IRA gunrunning operation as a way to distance himself from Bulger.

In late 1978, Nee moved across town to Charlestown, where much of the city's underground activity on behalf of the IRA was centered. There Nee met regularly with Cahill and others. As much as Nee tried to remove himself from Bulger's orbit, they remained entangled. Bulger was instrumental in securing black market weapons for the large shipment that became the basis for the
Valhalla
expedition, the gun-smuggling operation in which John McIntyre played a key role.

Bulger's involvement in the Southie Mob's IRA ventures may have been beneficial to gathering money and guns for “the cause,” but it was not good for Pat Nee. Once again, Nee found himself in partnership with someone he never fully trusted. Also, it was around this time that Nee became friendly with Kevin Weeks. Nee knew that Bulger was suspicious of his relationship with Weeks. When Bulger had suspicions, he tended to scheme and manipulate as a way to control the situation.

One of Bulger's manipulations involved the use of Pat's brother's house
as a site for murders and burials of bodies. It made no sense to bury those bodies down in the basement of the Haunty. Why not just take them out in the woods, as they eventually had to do anyway? Over the years, Nee had come to the conclusion that Whitey used the house as his own personal chamber of horrors as a way to compromise and entrap him in the worst of his schemes.

The other way Bulger manipulated people was by roping them into the burials, especially if the person killed was a former friend or associate—which would have been the point of having Nee put in the position of burying his former Mullen gang compatriots.

The various burials would eventually become a key element in the Bulger prosecution, and in a way may have played a role in Nee never having been indicted.

Back in 2000, after Kevin Weeks began cooperating with the government, part of his deal was based on his ability to lead investigators to the various burial sites. Weeks had no difficulty locating the grave site across from Florian Hall because he had taken part in those burials. He knew about the other burials; the general location of those graves had been pointed out to him, but when it came time to do the digging, he was unable to pinpoint the exact locations of the remains. So, according to Kevin in his testimony at the Bulger trial, he reached out to Pat Nee.

Nee was in prison on attempted armed robbery charges in 1997, when the revelations about Bulger and Flemmi first exploded in the media. In a roundabout way, he was fortunate; he avoided being subpoenaed to testify at the Wolf hearings. Through his attorney, he was told that prosecutors had every intention of charging him with being an “accessory after the fact,” but the statutes of limitations at both the state and federal levels had passed.