Whitey Bulger America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him To Justice (44 page)

Aside from the unusually well-stocked library of books about the Boston underworld, there were few clues in the apartment to the true identity of the couple who lived there. It was, in most respects, a deeply ordinary place, though a visitor might find it odd how little the couple had done to make it their own. Mirrors and framed prints of works by famous artists decorated the walls, but they were the same ones there when the fugitives moved in.
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There were no pictures of the two of them or of any friends or relatives. Instead, the animal lovers kept photos of dogs and cats, including Nikki and Gigi, the two French poodles Greig had left behind with her sister in Southie. In his bedroom, Whitey tacked up a map of the world on the wall and propped a framed print of the American flag on top of a bookshelf, emblazoned with the words “God Bless America.” A decorative pillow in his bedroom read, “Give a man an inch and he thinks he’s a ruler.” The apartment décor was similarly austere, with wall-to-wall gray carpet in most of the rooms, an oversized blue chair in the living room, and a green couch. Only a few people who lived or worked in the building were ever invited inside the apartment, and those visits were brief and rare. On one occasion Farinelli visited, she said, “Oh my goodness, it’s so dark in here.”
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“He kind of likes to rest and have the television on,” said Greig, gesturing toward Whitey, who appeared to be dozing in the blue chair in the middle of the afternoon. Whitey typically stayed up into the early morning hours watching TV and rarely ventured out during the day. Greig covered for him by telling neighbors that her husband had emphysema and only went out mornings and evenings, when there was less smog. “Charlie’s sleeping. He can’t breathe,” Greig would say sweetly if anyone dropped by asking for him. “Don’t bother him.”
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Mostly, Whitey and Greig’s life centered on the mundane, and the distribution of labor between them was decidedly old-school. Greig kept a weekly planner, listing doctors’ appointments, department store sales, and when it was time to change the sheets on their beds. She kept the apartment spotless and did all of the household chores. Whitey accompanied her to the basement laundry room, standing protectively by her side as she moved their clothes from the washer to the dryer, then helping her carry the laundry upstairs. When Enrique Sanchez, the maintenance supervisor, walked into the laundry room one day, Greig couldn’t resist a dig at Whitey’s old-fashioned views on the division of domestic labor. “Enrique, why don’t you teach him how to do laundry?” Greig joked. “I don’t want to learn how to do that,” Whitey shot back. “That’s why I have you.”
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Greig ran all the couple’s errands, and she paid their utility bills with money orders. They lived off the cash Whitey had hidden in the walls of their apartment. Knowing it might have to last for many years, they were frugal.
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Greig shopped for bargains at the 99 Cents store and T.J. Maxx. She used coupons and bought household items like mouthwash and detergent in bulk. She made some purchases through mail catalogues, including the Vermont Country Store, which sells flannel nightgowns and New England jellies. She bought castile soap by the case from a Kentucky company and ordered Whitey’s $103 New Balance sneakers from Road Runner Sports. Twice a week, she shopped at the farmers’ market at the Third Street Promenade, pulling a metal cart down the street filled with her purchases and munching on dried apricots and nectarines she bought at one of the stands. Whitey had made millions in his years as a mobster, but now they lived on a fixed income like most other retirees. This was doubtless a matter of strategy—flamboyant spending would only attract curiosity—but also a by-product of Greig’s simple tastes. The fugitives even joined the American Association of Retired Persons, through which they received the AARP magazine and, more importantly, senior discounts.

Occasionally, however, they did splurge, dining at Michael’s, a high-end restaurant two blocks from their apartment. They always asked to be seated at Table 23, nestled in a quiet corner of the restaurant’s outdoor courtyard, with trees and bushes behind it.
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Besides being intimate, the table afforded a view of the whole courtyard, allowing Whitey to keep an eye on everything. They always paid in cash and left a 20 percent tip—just enough to seem considerate, not so much as to stand out. The month Whitey turned eighty—September 2009—he and Greig ate well at Michael’s, enjoying a foie gras appetizer, lobster out of the shell, a ten-ounce dry-aged New York strip steak with pommes frites, and Grey Goose cocktails and Patz & Hall chardonnay.
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Initially, Whitey and Greig kept such an extraordinarily low profile that neighbors sometimes wouldn’t see them for days or even weeks. But as the years went by and the fugitives became more comfortable, they settled into a familiar routine and became more visible. They took long walks together twice a day, around 6:30 a.m. and before sunset. They canvassed the neighborhood, strolling to Santa Monica pier, Palisades Park, or past the upscale shops on Montana Avenue, where it was not unusual to spot celebrities. At Palisades Park, they had a favorite bench, a peaceful spot where they sat with their backs to the ocean, overlooking the Rose Garden.
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Often they headed to the Third Street Promenade, wandering the outdoor mall’s designer clothing stores, high-end gift shops, gourmet restaurants, and top-shelf bars. Street performers danced and sang; fortune-tellers enticed passersby. Whitey and Greig liked to sit on the benches, people watching. They seemed unconcerned about surveillance cameras or that they had made their home just four miles from the Los Angeles office of the FBI. They were hiding in plain sight, and it was working.

Some neighbors considered the Gaskos a “darling” retired couple; the two were sometimes seen holding hands during their daily walks. But a few women who knew them said that they rarely showed affection, and that Charlie seemed controlling and unappreciative of his wife. “I never thought he treated her so well,” said Barbara Gluck, a photographer who lived down the hall from the Gaskos and knew them for more than ten years. “I thought she was a very kind person. . . . She was young and she looked very pretty. He was old and grizzled. I kept thinking to myself, ‘What are they doing together?’” But for Greig the Santa Monica years were more like a dream, long-deferred, now come true. After years of having to share Whitey with Teresa Stanley, she relished her role as sole caretaker. She was devoted to him, according to neighbors, almost to an extreme. Janus Goodwin, a minister who lived three doors down from the Gaskos, said that when she talked to her in the hallway, Greig would frequently end their conversations abruptly to rush back to Whitey “like he was God.”
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Greig would often smile broadly and say in an exaggerated voice: “Someone needs me. I’m needed!”

If Cathy Greig handled
most of the household chores, Whitey took charge of a key task: making sure they didn’t get caught. He was obsessed with always having a stock of working aliases in hand. He had had to scramble after Teresa Stanley told the FBI about the Tom Baxter alias in 1996, and he wasn’t going to get caught short again. Once in Santa Monica, he and Greig began assembling an array of phony names and IDs. Their daily walks had a utilitarian purpose beyond exercise and neighborly appearances. They trolled Venice Beach and the oceanfront walk in Santa Monica, where the homeless gathered. They bought driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, and other identification documents from at least a half-dozen alcoholics, drug addicts, and mentally ill people who willingly sold them for cash. They reserved the Gasko name for people they met in their Santa Monica neighborhood but used other aliases when visiting doctors and dentists or when making trips across town or even out of state—a strategy aimed at preventing anyone from tracking them to their apartment.

One day they were walking in Palisades Park, just a few blocks from their apartment, when Whitey noticed a man sitting alone on a bench who looked perfect for a proposition he had in mind.
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James William Lawlor, as he introduced himself, was well dressed, but Whitey sensed vulnerability. Most important, Lawlor looked an awful lot like Whitey: the same white beard, the same balding head, the same ruddy complexion. Whitey sat down and struck up a conversation. Lawlor confided that he was originally from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, that he had lost his wife, and that he had no contact with his family. He didn’t have to say he drank too much. Whitey knew that look well, and he saw it in his face.

He gave Lawlor some money, and he also gave him attention, which Lawlor seemed to appreciate just as much. The two men had some things in common. They both liked to read, and both were veterans. And they talked easily about their shared Irish heritage. Whitey especially admired the tattoo on Lawlor’s right arm: “US Army Irish.”
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After several meetings and much talk, Whitey convinced Lawlor that he was an illegal immigrant from Canada and needed a driver’s license to stay in the country and work. He paid Lawlor a thousand dollars for his California driver’s license, Social Security number, and birth certificate.
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He then opened a bank account in Lawlor’s name and used it to make small purchases. When Whitey needed to drive, pick up a prescription, dip into a bank account, or register a car, he often went as James Lawlor.
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There were some crucial differences between the two of them. Whitey was seven years older, but his clean living, and Lawlor’s rough life, narrowed the gap. At 5 foot 4, Lawlor was five inches shorter than Whitey and considerably heavier. And his eyes were hazel. Whitey addressed these discrepancies in 2003 by getting the California Department of Motor Vehicles to issue James Lawlor a senior citizen’s identification card by mail. It listed Lawlor’s height as four inches taller than he actually was, put his weight at only 170 pounds, and gave him blue eyes.
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In exchange for taking his new friend’s identity, Whitey gave Lawlor another twenty-five hundred dollars and paid the rent on Lawlor’s one-room apartment at the West End Hotel, a hostel on Sawtelle Boulevard in Los Angeles.

If Whitey exploited Lawlor’s vulnerability, as he surely did, he also seemed to have had some real affection for him. He maintained regular contact, paying Lawlor’s rent for ten years.
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He also tried to get him to quit drinking, but Lawlor was lonely and insisted he could not. He had never gotten over the death of his ex-wife and kept her ashes in an urn in his room. On August 3, 2007, the seventy-year-old went to the front office to pay his rent with cash Whitey had given him. He mentioned that he was tired and planned to go to bed. Five days later, tenants noticed a foul odor emanating from his room. The motel manager found Lawlor dead on the floor. The Los Angeles coroner listed the cause of death as heart disease. No one claimed the body. His remains were buried at Riverside National Cemetery, about sixty miles east of Los Angeles. The urn was buried with him. After not hearing from Lawlor for some time, Whitey had Greig call the motel to check on him. Whitey was shaken by the news about his friend but continued to use his name.
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Whitey’s attentiveness to Lawlor was, for him, an uncommon show of concern. He and Greig did not stay in touch with the other vulnerable people whose identities they bought, and they bought many. They were sitting on a bench in Palisades Park one day when Sidney Joe Terry walked by them. He was ten years younger than Whitey and, at 6 foot 1, considerably taller. But the two men resembled each other, and Whitey was desperate for more IDs. Terry, who had been abusing heroin and other drugs for years, looked desperate for money. Whitey made small talk with him and then made his pitch: two hundred dollars for his Nevada driver’s license.
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Terry was elated. He quickly made the exchange and offered to throw in his Social Security card and a Sam’s Club membership card for another fifty dollars.

A woman with a history of mental illness was pulling a broken suitcase along Venice Beach when Whitey and Greig—a couple she would remember as having nice white teeth—came to her rescue. They took her to a nearby store and bought her a new suitcase that cost forty dollars. They told her that they were from Canada and were looking for identification documents they could use to stay in the United States. The woman handed over her Social Security card and another piece of identification in exchange for two hundred dollars.
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Workable ID was essential for one of the couple’s occasional errands, the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Santa Monica to Mexico, where Whitey could buy medicine for his heart condition without a prescription.
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He would drive to the border with Greig, park in one of the massive lots on the US side, and walk into Tijuana. He had several driver’s licenses, including Lawlor’s and Terry’s, and used them one after another to pass through security; none of the people he was pretending to be passed border control so frequently as to attract notice. In Tijuana, he was able to purchase Atenolol, the drug he had been taking for years for chest pain and high blood pressure. Wanted posters for Whitey and Greig were circulated in English and Spanish at the Mexican border because there was speculation by the FBI—accurate, it turned out—that he traveled there to buy medicine. But no one ever spotted them; the border at Tijuana sees such steady traffic that the level of scrutiny for US citizens is low.

They were, however, likely on one of their Tijuana excursions when they stopped at the hair salon in Fountain Valley and Greig was recognized. After the FBI publicized the sighting, she stopped coloring her hair, reverting to gray. The couple saw no need to uproot themselves, however. Whitey, now facing nineteen murder charges and exposed as a longtime FBI informant, had no intention of reclaiming his old life—and, besides, he no longer bore much resemblance to the face on the FBI’s Most Wanted posters. He and Greig may also have taken comfort in the fact that, after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI made terrorism—not aging fugitives—its top priority.