Where the Bodies Were Buried (56 page)

It was a mighty act of prestidigitation: now you see it, now you don't. Through a collective expression of relief and pride on the part of various governmental representatives of the criminal justice system in Boston, Whitey and his legacy was no more. Never again would a federal official be compelled to explain—nor would anyone, outside of John Connolly, be held criminally accountable—for having protected and underwritten the career of one of the most notorious U.S. gangsters of recent times. Case closed.

ON HANOVER STREET
, in the North End, Joe Salvati stopped to have a smoke at his favorite cigar lounge not far from Café Pompeii. In those days when the jury was deliberating over Bulger's fate, Salvati paid little attention. There was no real suspense, after all. Whitey was going down, and he would no doubt live out his dying days in prison. Like everyone else in Boston, Salvati was pleased to see Bulger get what he deserved. But Joe felt no great sense of closure from the verdict.

“I'll never get those thirty years back,” he told me.

Like the family members of Bulger's victims who had received copious attention during the weeks of the trial, speaking with the media on a near-daily basis, Salvati was among the walking wounded. But Joe sought little attention during the trial, and few came asking for his opinion. Salvati's history represented yet another unseemly side of the Bulger saga—the
poisoned root that spawned the entire rotten organism—that the prosecutors had been working to keep buried since the first day of the trial.

Now that it was over, I asked Salvati if he believed the results of the Bulger trial would lead to more honest agents and prosecutors.

Joe the Horse pursed his lips—a smile not of mirth but of resignation. “They protected Bulger the same way they protected Barboza. A lot of people in the government got away with that, with no repercussions.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but do you think the government has finally learned its lesson?”

“What's to learn?” he said. “They got away with it. A lot of people were in on it, and they were able to retire with a pension, go home, and spend time with their grandkids. And any new agents or prosecutors in there now, the lesson is, you can get away with it, too.”

Salvati and I sat in glum silence for a few seconds. It was not a pleasant thought, what Joe was saying, but I could think of no counterargument. And then Salvati put the cherry on top. “You ask me,” he said, “I don't think they learned nothin' . ”

TWO MONTHS AFTER
the verdict, I met juror number twelve, Janet Uhlar. The occasion was the official sentencing of James J. Bulger in November 2013. We met at the Palm restaurant, not far from the Moakley Courthouse. Uhlar was well known there; during the trial, the jury often was taken to the Palm for their meals. To the maître d' and the managers, Uhlar's face was familiar, and as we entered the restaurant for our midday meeting, a manager saw Janet and congratulated her on the jury having reached its verdict.

In the weeks since Bulger was found guilty, Uhlar had been vocal in her criticisms of the government's case. She had, of course, reached the same verdicts as the other jurors, with the defendant being found guilty on thirty-one of thirty-two counts, which included eleven of nineteen murders. But it had been an excruciating process. “Yes, Bulger was involved in some horrible crimes,” she said, once we sat down in a quiet corner. “He admitted to some of those crimes in the opening statement. But to me the government's case was a travesty of justice.”

The day before, in front of the courthouse, Uhlar had given an impromptu press conference to some of the media. She excoriated Wyshak and Kelly, characterizing the deals they made for the testimony of Martorano and Flemmi as “immoral.” She suggested that the trial had likely barely skimmed the surface in its presentation of who was responsible for enabling Bulger's career, and she criticized the media for not being more diligent in investigating corruption. “The media needs to start doing its job,” she said angrily.

Her comments were aired on the local Fox News affiliate and created a stir. Other jurors were quoted in the press criticizing Uhlar. Howie Carr,
on his radio show and also in his column in the
Boston Herald,
referred to Uhlar as a “nut job” and suggested that she must be in love with Bulger.

The assault on Uhlar continued. That morning, in front of the courthouse, Steve Davis got in Uhlar's face and demanded, “What are you trying to prove?”

“I'm concerned about the integrity of the Constitution,” she replied.

“The Constitution?” Davis was incredulous. “Forget about the Constitution. This is real life.”

Davis was angry. He blamed the jury for having reached a verdict of no finding in relation to his sister's murder. More recently, Uhlar, specifically, had further raised his ire when she and two other jurors drafted a letter to Judge Casper arguing that Steve Davis should not be allowed to present an impact statement before the court, as other family members of Bulger's murder victims would be allowed to do at the time of sentencing. Uhlar's argument was that the jury had taken their duties very seriously and reached their conclusion on the Debbie Davis murder after careful deliberation. To allow Davis to speak was an affront to the jury.

Uhlar's position was distressing to Davis, partly, perhaps, because he had already begun promoting his yet-to-be-published book, entitled
Impact Statement,
on Amazon.com and other Internet sites.

In front of the courthouse, Davis cursed at Janet, calling her “crazy” and other insults not fit for print. Uhlar walked away from the courthouse in tears. Later, she claimed, she was lectured by a female reporter from the
Globe
and told, “You don't know what you're talking about. The media in Boston has been covering this story for twenty years and doing a great job.”

In many ways, the reaction that Janet Uhlar experienced was akin to what Bob Fitzpatrick had also undergone in his attempts to shed light on the Bulger conspiracy. To adopt a position different from the status quo was to engender the wrath of the Boston establishment, including the media.

At the Palm restaurant, Janet had regained her composure. Her argument, she told me, was not with Steve Davis. “The U.S. attorney's office has been masterful in how they're doing this,” she said. “They're playing the victims' families again and again and again. They smash them down and then raise them up to give impact statements. It's this game they're playing with everybody.”

Uhlar had become especially disgusted by Wyshak and Kelly, who, she had come to believe, should be prosecuted for some of their actions. She cited the testimony of Kevin O'Neill, owner of Triple O's, who described from the stand how prosecutor Brian Kelly had manufactured false accusations against him so that a judge would hold him in jail. Kelly was engaged in a heavy-handed effort to force O'Neill to cooperate with the prosecution. Said Uhlar, “They held him on trumped-up charges. I was in shock listening to that whole thing. It wasn't until [O'Neill] gave Kelly what he wanted that they let him out of jail. That was such a violation of that man's civil rights. And Brian Kelly was so arrogant about it. He wasn't even ashamed.”

Eventually, Uhlar had begun to ask herself, “Why is Bulger so much worse than Martorano and Morris and the others? Why are they free today and all this effort and money is spent on convicting Bulger? How do [the prosecutors] weigh that out? How can they justify that? It didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't make sense to me.”

At certain points in the trial, Uhlar had begun to sense that there was an explanation outside and beyond the scope of the evidence. Something was being hidden. She had tried to bring her concerns into the jury room during deliberations, to no avail. Most of the jurors bought the prosecution's case without serious questions. Why? “Because it's the government,” said Uhlar. “In this country, people want to believe their government. And if you say something long enough, they believe it. People have been deceived for so long, they don't know how to ask the questions.”

With a jury overwhelmingly inclined to vote “guilty” across the board, Uhlar had to settle with getting the jurors to at least evaluate the various murder charges individually. Enough of the jurors were disgusted with Martorano, Weeks, Morris, and Flemmi as witnesses that they acknowledged you could not take the word of any one of them without corroboration. And so, if the charge rested on the sole testimony of any one of those four witnesses, the jurors agreed to rule “not proved.”

It was a modest repudiation of the government's case, but Uhlar wishes she had done more. “I do have regrets. I regret that I didn't dig my heels in and go for a no finding.”

As for the concept of jury nullification, which the prosecutors had claimed was a subterranean goal of the defense, Uhlar says it never crossed
her or anyone else's mind. “The way the crimes were packaged made it hard to declare anything but guilty. If Bulger was part of the enterprise, he was guilty of crimes committed by the enterprise. Judge Casper reiterated that during her charge to the jury. She made it clear that she did not want ‘no finding.'”

At the Palm, Uhlar hardly touched her food. She talked nonstop. She had kept her feelings about the trial bottled up for so long that it now came out in a torrent. In her worst moments, she said, she feels as though by voting guilty she had become part of a cover-up on the part of the Justice Department. “We were held captive for ten weeks. I was deceived. The first thing I did when the trial ended was to google ‘Jeremiah O'Sullivan.' There's a name—every time it came up the prosecutors objected. There's so much about this case that we weren't allowed to know. . . . This trial was a fundamental violation of the Constitution.”

THE DAY AFTER
I met juror number twelve, the court was scheduled to hear impact statements from the family members. It was an emotional day. Most of the people speaking before the court were now in middle age; they had been mere children when their loved one was murdered by Bulger or others associated with his crew. Most of these people had grown up knowing that the notorious Whitey Bulger had played a role in the killing of their father, uncle, sister, or daughter. Within the community, these were intimate murders, hushed in silence because they had occurred under the umbrella of organized crime. These people had grown up consumed with fear and hatred for the man who through his powerful political brother, his connections in law enforcement, and his control of the underworld had, for decades, seemed to be above the law.

One by one, they stood to speak, twelve of them in all. Many were consumed with emotion. Here was the murderer sitting in front of them, dressed on this day in an orange prison jumpsuit, looking even older and more withered than he had just two months earlier. Here was the man they had hated as far back as they could remember. It was almost too much to process.

Sean McGonagle, the son of Paulie McGonagle, stood at the podium
and referred to Bulger as Satan. He was eleven years old when his father disappeared; he's now forty-nine. His voice choked with emotion, he vividly recounted how a few months after his father's disappearance, he received a phone call one day. The voice on the line said, “Your father's not coming home for Christmas.” Sean McGonagle recognized the voice. It was Whitey Bulger. The voice was unmistakable. But still he asked, “Who is this?” The person answered, “Santa Claus,” and then hung up.

In the pantheon of cruelty in the life of a mobster, there are bound to be many indefensible acts, but calling the young son of someone you murdered and taunting them with the knowledge that his father would not be home for Christmas was in a category all by itself.

Bulger looked down at his legal pad, scribbling notes. He never once made eye contact.

McGonagle concluded by saying, “You thought you carried yourself as an Irish icon. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

The son of Al Notarangeli stood to speak, and the daughter of Billy O'Brien. Patricia Donahue spoke, as did the daughter of Stephen Rakes, a son and daughter of Eddie O'Connor, and the son of John Callahan.

Steve Davis was allowed to speak. “It's been a long thirty-two years,” he said. “I have fought hard for justice for my sister Debbie.” Davis became overwhelmed with tears, struggled to get out the words. “This man has built up so much hate in my heart. I'd like to strangle him myself. The son of a bitch should have to look in the eyes of his victims.” Davis yelled at Bulger: “You piece of shit, look at me!” Whitey glanced up briefly, then looked away.

Davis ended by saying, “I hope Whitey dies the same way my sister did, gasping for breath as he takes his last breath.”

The daughter of Bucky Barrett stepped forward. Her name was Theresa Bond, and she was strangely calm. After introducing herself, she said in a soft, almost kindly voice, “Mr. Bulger, would you please look at me?” Her tone was so different than the others who had spoken that it caught Bulger off guard. He looked up. She reminded Bulger that on the night her father was murdered, he had been praying to a photo he had in his wallet, a photo of a young girl. “That was me,” said Bond. “I was that little girl.”

Bulger looked down. He betrayed no emotion, but it seemed as though
Theresa Bond had reached Bulger in a way the others had not—not through invective or hatred, but through forgiveness. “I just want you to know that I don't hate you,” she told him. “I don't have that authority. That would be judging you. I do hate the choices that you've made, along with your associates, but more so, I hate the choices our government has made in allowing you to rule the streets and perform such horrific acts of evil.”

Whitey hung his head in what seemed like shame, and Bond finished by saying, “Mr. Bulger, do you have remorse for taking my father's life? I think you do. I forgive you.”

There was so much personal animosity toward Bulger, built up over a lifetime of suffering, that few of the victims' family members could see beyond Whitey. He had become the symbol of an evil that lurked in their community and the city; he had shattered lives almost beyond comprehension. None thought to reflect upon the context that made Bulger possible—except for one.

David Wheeler, the son of Roger Wheeler, had turned his father's murder into something of a crusade. Not long after Roger Wheeler had been murdered in Tulsa, shot in the face by John Martorano, the Wheeler family had begun to suspect that the killing had been facilitated by retired FBI agent H. Paul Rico. This was especially shocking, since Rico had been hired as a security consultant for World Jai Lai by Roger Wheeler. As the son noted in his courtroom statement, “My father's fatal mistake proved to be his faith in the FBI. . . . A team of retired FBI agents, led by former agent H. Paul Rico, assured him that they would protect his business and ‘keep it clean.'”

Standing at the podium, Wheeler was a son of wealth and privilege, as distinguished from the working-class Boston folks who had given impact statements. His father had been CEO of an international company. The Wheeler family had been slow to comprehend the conspiracy of corruption that led to his father's murder. After the killing, said Wheeler, “I was confident that we would quickly catch Rico and his criminal associates. Sadly, my faith in the American government was misplaced.”

It wasn't until sixteen years after Roger Wheeler was murdered that the family learned the truth. John Martorano provided the details at the Wolf
hearings in 1997. It was also then that the family learned that John Callahan and Brian Halloran had both been killed to keep them from talking about the Wheeler murder, a cycle of killing that involved not only former FBI agent Rico, but also Agents Connolly and Morris. This raised many unanswered questions. Asked David Wheeler, “How many others were involved in these and other FBI informant murders? Who else at the bureau knew about these secret relationships with these vicious criminals but turned away, said nothing, as others were murdered? Did any supervisors or other agents care to ask any questions, connect the few simple dots between these murders and their own informants? Where was the Justice Department in all this?”

Eventually, the Wheeler family filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department for their role in their father's wrongful death. The government responded that it was too late; that the Wheeler family should have filed their suit against the government years ago. The statute of limitations had passed.