Where the Bodies Were Buried (34 page)

“There is no one around there for me. The only people there was us four.

“Jim and I walked into the courtyard. The courtyard, as I said, was abandoned. Deserted . . . I think we're going to stop, there's some wash yards there, there's a doorway there, there's four or five doorways. No, he doesn't want to talk there. He wants to talk down on the cellar steps.

“Now, I don't know how many people are familiar with housing projects. But in housing projects, the cellar steps are like a coffin. As you walk down the cellar steps, deeper and deeper, to get to the cellar door, there's concrete reinforcement that is built around those stairs. So by the time you
hit the bottom of the stairs, you're in a well-enclosed area. That's what really got me very paranoid. Very paranoid.”

“What happened? What did you do?”

“We come down the stairs. I think Jim was in front of me. I'm trying to the best of my ability to remember this. It should be burnt in my memory. I think he was in front, I was in back. I wanted to get down the stairs before him, because at the bottom, basically, there's four feet of concrete all around you. I tried to get in front of him, and I succeeded. Very quickly, I got in front of him and turned so my back was at the cement wall, so there would be nobody coming from my back side.

“So we talked. And I didn't see any tells that he was aggravated. What I was doing was watching his hands. . . . He didn't normally carry a gun. He normally carries a knife, and it's down here. . . .” Billy tapped his ankle, where Bulger kept a knife in his cowboy-style leather boots. “I was looking at his hands to make sure they didn't move anywhere, and I was looking over his shoulder at the top of the stairs to make sure I didn't see Stevie's head show up.”

“What was discussed?”

“Again, my getting out of the business. The same argument I presented many times. I'm adamant. But I'm thinking that he took me down there to either frighten me or whack me, either one.”

“By ‘whack' you, what does that mean?”

“Well, I don't come out of the cellar. If I come up, I'm gone.

“So, this is the first time—I've always feared him a little bit, because I know he's smart and clever—but this is the first time I really focused on him, like if he makes a move, you're going with me. That's basically the state of my mind at the time. Jim, you make a move on me, you're gone. And, of course, I know I'm gone if Stevie shows up at the stairs.”

“So how did the conversation conclude?”

“He surprised me. We talked back and forth. He mentioned something—trust. That's what I remember. Don't forget, I'm down there, you know, my heart's beating a little bit. I'm focusing on him, but I'm very nervous. I know there's other people with him. I know that if it went bad, I'd be gone. I'd be left there.

“So, he mentioned trust. I couldn't think right away what he meant by
trust. Is he thinking I'll be a loose end? Is that what he's worried about? Because there's no other reason. He's not greedy. I pointed out that he would be getting a big piece of the pie. So it isn't greed. If it was greed, he'd say, ‘See you later, Bill.' So it had to be trust.”

“Trust as to what?”

“A loose end. Maybe I knew too much. You know, the knowledge of the years in the business. I don't know, I can't speak for him. Only he can speak for himself.”

“So what happened?”

“All of a sudden, he relaxed. The tension came out of his face. . . . He turned and he said, ‘Let's get the hell out of here.' And we walked up the steps.”

“Did he invite you back to his car?”

“You know, as a matter of fact, he did. It was over then. I was relieved. I was very nervous, but then we were talking and walking back out to the car, where Kevin and Stevie was, and he asked if I wanted a ride. I said, ‘No, I can walk.'”

After that, Billy Shea was out of the drug business. Bulger never bothered him. It was years before he ever saw the mob boss again, and that was a random encounter with Bulger one day near the Old Colony housing project. Billy was with his son, who was four years old at the time.

“Did you ever see him again after that?” asked the prosecutor.

“No. Not until today.”

Kelly told Judge Casper that he had no more questions.

Defense attorney Carney stood and announced that they had no cross-examination of the witness.

Billy Shea was dismissed.

The entire inhabitants of the courtroom, including the jury, the lawyers, the judge, the guards, and the spectators, had been lost in a near-mystical state of fascination. The intimacy of Billy's testimony, the emotional and physical details, the softness of his delivery: it was as if Shea had cast a spell over his listeners.

ON THE AFTERNOON
of July 2, after Billy Shea completed his testimony, it was time for the trial to adjourn for the Fourth of July holiday. Before releasing the jury for the long weekend, the judge called the legal representatives from both sides over to the bench for a sidebar. She asked Wyshak and Kelly for an assessment of how many more witnesses the government would call to the stand, and how much longer their case would take.

“We continue to make great progress with our schedule,” Brian Kelly informed the judge. “We anticipate being done with our case by the end of July.”

Jay Carney tried to throw water on the notion that the end was near. He reiterated to the judge that the defense had a substantial list of witnesses they wanted to call to the stand. “Our plan now, based on our witness list, is to go into September.”

Unsurprisingly, the two sides were at cross purposes, with different versions of reality.

Judge Casper first gave the eighteen people seated in the jury box an assessment, based on what she'd just been told by the lawyers, of how much longer the trial was likely to continue. Then she gave them the standard admonition: “As you leave for the weekend, please keep all of my cautionary instructions in mind. . . . Don't discuss the case with anyone. Don't let anyone discuss it with you. Avoid any media coverage of the case. Don't do any research of any kind on your own about the case. Have a great afternoon, and a great holiday. Thank you.”

The jury was dismissed.

Janet Uhlar had been planning on spending the Fourth of July weekend with her mother in Quincy. But she felt so overloaded by the trial—the
sheer volume of evidence and also the unseemly nature of much of the testimony—that she decided to stay at her place in Cape Cod. One thing about living on the Cape: you don't need to go anywhere for a vacation. The summer weather is nice and the beach is inviting. On the Fourth of July weekend, tourists traditionally flood into the area from around New England, the United States, and even the world. In July and August, the population of the Cape doubles in size, making it difficult to get around due to traffic. Mostly, throughout the long mini-vacation, Janet stayed indoors and away from the throngs of people.

It should have been a time for Uhlar to forget about the trial and return to normal life, but she couldn't. The testimony of John Morris had been a kind of tipping point. Morris was creepy, for sure, and obsequious in his corruption, but what she found more disturbing was the fact that he not only functioned but flourished within the law enforcement bureaucracy. Each year, he received the highest possible commendations from his superiors. As long as he played the good company man, dotting his
i
's and crossing his
t
's, the system seemed incapable of recognizing this con man in its midst.

Morris was depraved, but that wasn't what bothered Uhlar most of all. What really had her shaking her head was that, as with John Martorano, Morris had parlayed his career as a corrupt federal agent into the deal of a lifetime. Here was a man who could and should have been in prison for the rest of his life, and he was still free and collecting a government pension for his years of “service.”

Why?

Because the government wanted Whitey Bulger, that's why. And they had made unconscionable deals with men as bad as Bulger—or worse—in the interest of “justice.”

For Uhlar, who had spent much of her adult life studying the Revolutionary War, justice as defined in the U.S. Constitution was something she took seriously. Both of the historical novels she had written were a consequence of this fascination. One of those books told the story of Joseph Warren, one of the original Sons of Liberty who united the First Continental Congress. Another of her novels delved into the life of Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary War commander who first
petitioned Congress for a Declaration of Independence. These were men who devoted their lives to the concept that personal liberty had to be protected under the U.S. Constitution. They had fought in battle partly to help pave the way for a system of justice that was fair and above reproach. Central to that ideal was the notion of due process, a fundamental principle of fairness in all matters of law, criminal and civil.

The universal guarantee of due process is in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Inherent in that edict is the requirement that the law be applied fairly, without manipulation, selective prosecution, perjury, the withholding of evidence, and many other legal tactics that can lead to the overturning of verdicts and censure by judges representing the appellate court system.

Through her research as a writer and historian, and through her personal belief system, Janet Uhlar believed that the concept of due process, as spelled out in the Constitution, was sacrosanct. She believed that even a man who had committed as many reprehensible acts as James Bulger, who had begun his trial by admitting to many of the acts in the indictment, was deserving of due process.

In the Bulger trial, Uhlar was developing a nagging feeling that due process was being trampled upon. Part of this, she would admit, had to do with her own lack of awareness of criminal procedures, especially those relating to organized crime prosecutions. She was not a mob aficionado. Most people who do follow mob prosecutions know that cases against mobsters are frequently constructed on evidence provided by informants and testimony put forth by “rats” or “snitches,” criminals who have often engaged in activities as bad as anything for which the defendant has been charged. When it comes to mob prosecutions, making sweetheart deals with hardened criminals is the name of the game.

Call it naïveté, perhaps, but Uhlar was shocked by what she had seen so far. It was bad enough that the justice system was willing to use people like Joe Barboza, Steve Flemmi, and Bulger as informants and witnesses, to make cases by manipulating criminals while they were out on the street. But to then have men like John Martorano and John
Morris, after they have been caught, walking free because they were able to bargain with federal authorities—it was like
Let's Make a Deal,
with the notion of justice merely the result of whoever could best pull one over on the system.

Throughout the entire long weekend, Uhlar did very little. Normally she would have been celebrating with family, but she felt mildly depressed. She felt as though she were in mourning. She made a point of avoiding the holiday revelers, families with young children communing together in honor of the birth of a nation. Most days before noon, she was alone in the garden, watering plants, pulling weeds. In the afternoons, she caught up on her reading. None of this made it any easier for her to stop thinking about the trial.

Most evenings, after preparing and eating a light meal, she wrote in her journal, as she did on the evening of the Fourth:

For juror number twelve, the Bulger trial had become a personal crisis. She wanted it to be over. But she knew that before it was over, she and her fellow jurors would have to reach a verdict.

It should have been simple. Bulger was a bad man; he had admitted to a life of crime. But the men who were being used to make the case against him were worse, and the manner in which the government was using these men was sleazy, and it undermined her faith in the case. Uhlar was beginning to wonder how she would ever be able to reach a verdict.

I HADN'T SEEN
Kevin Weeks in a while. Not since the beginning of the trial, at Mirisola's restaurant in Southie. Since then, Kevin's name had become a mainstay at the trial, with references to his being involved in, among other things, extortions and body disposals with Bulger. I knew there was much more to come. Unlike with many of the other witnesses at the trial, Weeks's relationship with Bulger had been singular. As Whitey's right-hand man, Kevin had stories to tell that no one else could tell, because much of his time with the mob boss was spent one-on-one.

Weeks was scheduled to take the stand as soon as the trial resumed on Monday, July 8. The day before, on Sunday afternoon, I saw Weeks at a backyard barbecue in Malden, a suburban town twenty miles outside Boston. I was invited to the gathering by Pat Nee.

The barbecue was held at the house of a Southie expatriate who had moved there with his wife and kids. Though the setting was suburban, miles removed from the city, it was most definitely a Southie gathering composed of people from the “old neighborhood,” some of whom had driven out for the occasion.

Even with all the demographic changes that have taken place in Southie, the spirit of the neighborhood remained strong among those who stay connected, either because they still live there or because once you have Southie in your bloodstream it never goes away, whether you want it to or not.

Both Weeks and Nee still live in Southie. Both had been sent away to do time in prison and returned to the neighborhood, because, even with all the bad memories and water under the bridge, Southie is where they felt they belonged.

On this particular post–Fourth of July afternoon, Southie had been transplanted to a bucolic suburban backyard miles from the city.

Weeks looked better than when I last saw him, when he had only recently suffered a shoulder injury and undergone surgery. He had lost weight, and his girlfriend had freshly dyed his hair in anticipation of all the public exposure he would receive when he showed up at court to testify. His time on the stand was expected to stretch over at least two full days.

I reached out to shake Kevin's hand, and I could see that he had not yet regained mobility in his right shoulder and arm. “It's better,” he said when
I asked how his recovery was progressing. “Physical therapy three times a week. The pain is gone, but I have a long ways to go before I'll be anywhere near one hundred percent.”

As with most gatherings of Southie folk, it was a social occasion: there was plenty of beer and barbecued meat and lively conversation. Some people brought their children; kids of varying ages ran around the yard, tossing a football and incessantly asking questions of the adults.

I sat off to one side with Weeks and, in anticipation of his testimony, peppered him with questions.

I knew from experience that over the years, since Kevin had been released from prison in 2006, he'd grown wary of commentary and queries about the Bulger years from outsiders. It seemed that everyone had an opinion based primarily on what they had read or seen on a TV report. Over a twelve-year period, Weeks spent nearly every day of his life in the company of Bulger; other than Steve Flemmi, there was no more central player in the Bulger organization. To listen to journalists and pundits pontificate about the Bulger years was, for Kevin, annoying at best and, at worst, downright nauseating.

Contrary to what I'd been told about Kevin's quick temper, my personal experience was that he listened carefully and thoughtfully to what I had to say. Which was good, because I had a theory I wanted to run by him that was a bit contrary to the accepted wisdom.

I had gotten my hands on a copy of Steve Flemmi's federal debriefing file, which contained dozens of DEA-6s, concise reports of information Flemmi had given to the authorities after he first began cooperating with Wyshak and Kelly in 1999. I was startled to see how involved Flemmi had been, back in the mid-1960s, with Special Agents Rico and Condon, aided primarily by the fact that his brother Vincent “the Bear” Flemmi was a Top Echelon Informant. It was because of the Bear that Steve Flemmi had been recruited and signed on as an informant, with Condon as his handler. Steve Flemmi established this relationship with the Boston FBI before he ever knew James Bulger. It was an alliance that made it possible for Stevie to commit murders and get away with it.

“Hear me out,” I said to Weeks. “What if Steve Flemmi was the key link between the Rico and Condon era and the Connolly and Morris era. What if he was the one who convinced Jim Bulger that becoming an informant
was the way to go, that it would be a virtual license to commit crimes. And Flemmi was acting, in part, at the behest of his contacts in the FBI. They used Flemmi as a way to bring Bulger into the fold. Sure, Connolly made the overture, but it was Flemmi who convinced Bulger by citing his own personal experience as an example of how advantageous it could be.”

Weeks said nothing; by his silence he was saying, Go ahead, I'm listening.

“Furthermore,” I continued, “by establishing this relationship with the FBI, Flemmi and Bulger solidified their partnership. Because up until then they were simply co-members of the Winter Hill Mob. But once they both signed on with John Connolly, they became a team. And this is crucial for Bulger. Because his arrangement with Connolly and the FBI is based on his ability to deliver the Italians to them. Bulger can't do that on his own; he knows that. He doesn't have the access. He needs Stevie Flemmi for that. Flemmi is his link to the Mafia.”

Weeks sipped his beer and mulled over what I'd been saying. “You know,” he said, “Jim Bulger used to always say about Stevie—if left to his own devices, he would self-destruct.”