Whitey Bulger To Be Sentenced, Faces Life Behind Bars

James “Whitey” Bulger will be sentenced Thursday for his role in 11 murders. The Boston mobster was arrested just over two years ago in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run. In court, he faced the families of his victims. They used words like “rat,” “punk” and “coward” to describe him.

CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman told the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts that “theoretically” the impact statements of the victims’ families should not affect how much time Bulger will spend in prison. She explained that, because of sentencing guidelines, the judge will sentence Bulger later Thursday to “life, perhaps from an after-life, plus five years.”

“The statements of the families were really a catharsis for them, and they were powerful and emotional, indeed,” she said. “There were moments in the courtroom, as well as in the media room, where people took a breath, that they cried. That they heard from people like Steve Davis, whose death of his sister Debra was not even proven, that they couldn’t find a finding that he had done it.”

One of the major questions in the case was whether Bulger, himself, would take the stand to make a statement. He has not so far, and Klieman told the co-hosts that she thinks he will not speak out.

“One of the people we heard from yesterday was the son of Roger Wheeler, who was a legitimate businessman out of Tulsa, Okla.,” she said, “and when his son got up to speak, as he held a picture – held it up – of his father and wanted to hear so much from Whitey Bulger because Mr. Wheeler holds the FBI and the Department of Justice just as responsible for his father’s death, Whitey Bulger refused to even look at these victims.”

Klieman said that Bulger kept his head down even when one victim’s relative begged the mobster to look at her.

Source: CBS news

Key Witness In ‘Whitey’ Bulger Gangster Trial Found Dead

A body found near Lincoln, Mass., has been identified as  Stephen “Stippo” Rakes, who was to be a key  witness in the trial of notorious South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Rakes was scheduled to testify that he was forced at gunpoint to turn over his liquor store to Bulger 29 years ago.

A law enforcement official confirming Rakes death to USA TODAY says authorities are investigating that he may have died of natural causes. The body of Rakes, 59, was found Wednesday afternoon.

The official said there is “no obvious sign” that he was murdered. ABC News reported that police told  Rakes’ family that the death appeared to be a suicide. No phone or wallet was found on the body.

A close friend of Rakes, Steve Davis, tells ABC News, however, that he would not have killed himself and “was looking forward to taking the stand.” Davis said Rakes had planned to deliver a “big bombshell” on the witness stand.

Rakes has been attending Bulger’s federal racketeering trial in South Boston regularly over the past six weeks.

ABC says that Rakes was a particularly angry and determined victim of Bulger’s gangland tactics.

He was apparently supposed to testify that Bulger, 83, a member of his Winter Hill gang, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi,  threatened his daughter at gunpoint and forced him to turn over his South Boston liquor store. The building later became Bulger’s headquarters.

Bulger, a much-feared South Boston gangster for decades, fled the city in 1994 ahead of his arrest. He was captured in California two years ago after 16 years on the run.

Bulger has pleaded not guilty to 48 charges, including 19 counts of murder, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury, narcotics distribution, and weapons violations.

We Used To Be G’s: ‘Whitey’ Bulger’s Once Feared Pals Now Geriatric Gangsters

The Boston courtroom for the murder trial of James “Whitey” Bulger has resembled a nursing home at times.

Bookmaker Dick O’Brien, 84, was wheeled into federal court in a wheelchair.

Another bookie, James Katz, 73, brought his oxygen tank.

James Martorano, 72, testified using phrases that could have come from a dime-store crime novel — back when there were dime stores.

One elderly witness, an admitted former drug dealer, was so used to prison time he brought a plastic bag with him to court with socks and underwear “in case he got locked back up for what he said on the stand,” a court official told ABC News.

At the center of this ring of geriatric mobsters is Bulger, 83, a still fierce figure despite the liver spots on his hands. Bulger  is on trial in federal court for a string of crimes including 19 murders. Prosecutors say that some of his victims were strangled with those arthritic hands.

Bulger’s trial has entered its third week with a series of senior citizens describing the criminal havoc and reign of fear his Winter Hill Gang wreaked all over Boston with the help of corrupt FBI officials

Bulger trial is not just about organized crime and FBI corruption. It is also a glimpse into three decades of Boston’s old-school organized crime figures who controlled the rackets from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Read more about Whitey’s trial here

SOURCE: ABC News

Former Drug Dealers Testify They Paided Tribute To Whitey Bulger To Sell Drugs In South Boston

A convicted drug dealer from South Boston told a US District Court jury today that James “Whitey” Bulger ordered him to pay $100,000 in tribute in the 1980s, and that he only agreed to pay the money to the South Boston gangster after his 17-year-old brother was shot.

Anthony Attardo, 55, a retired Marine who manages The Sports Connection in South Boston, said Bulger showed up at his house the day after his brother was shot and told him “you’re next” if he did not pay the $100,000.

Bulger was never charged in the shooting, but Attardo said he believes he was involved. He had other siblings, so he agreed to pay. The teen survived the shooting.

“I grew up in Southie all my life…everybody knew his reputation,” Attardo said. “Very dangerous. He meant what he said.”

Attardo said he was selling 25 kilos of cocaine and making $35,000 a month in the 1980s – with cocaine he bought in Florida – but Bulger’s crew was angry he wasn’t buying from them.

Attardo said he gave Bulger $80,000 after the visit at his home, and that the gangster told him, “You can do what you want now.”

Henry B. Brennan, an attorney for Bulger, suggested through cross examination that Attardo has a history of lying on the witness stand, including about his own crimes. Attardo agreed he has lied before and tried to protect Kevin Weeks, one of Bulger’s cohorts who later cooperated in the case against Bulger.

Attardo was sentenced to eight years in prison in 1998 for trafficking prescription medication. He was also involved in a scheme to extort money from drug dealers from the Dominican Republic who were operating in South Boston. The dealers were really undercover law enforcement officers.

Earlier today, another former drug dealer from South Boston told the jury in Bulger’s racketeering trial that he sold drugs and paid rent to because he feared he would “get hurt.”

“He was the boss,” Paul Moore told jurors.

Read more on the trial here

SOURCE: Boston

Whitey Bulger Is Not A Rat: Mobsters Lawyers Fight Hard To Prove He’s Not An Informant

James “Whitey” Bulger is charged with a litany of crimes — including participating in 19 murders — during what prosecutors describe as a decadeslong reign of “murder and mayhem.”

But Bulger’s lawyers have spent much of their energy defending their client against something he doesn’t face criminal charges for: being a longtime FBI informant.

The defense has vehemently denied the prosecution’s claim that Bulger was an informant, going so far as to say his Irish heritage would prohibit such a thing.

They’ve also spent hours trying to discredit a 700-page FBI file that prosecutors say shows Bulger ratted on everyone from mobsters in the Italian Mafia to members of his own gang.

The defense strategy may be coming from Bulger himself.

In “Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought him to Justice,” a book published this year, Boston Globe reporters Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen include excerpts from letters Bulger wrote to a friend from jail saying he wants to show the world that he did not kill women and he was not a rat.

“I never put one person in prison in my life,” he wrote in one of his letters.

During his opening statement to the jury, Bulger’s lead attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., referring to Bulger’s Irish descent, said becoming an informant was “the worst thing an Irish person could consider doing” because of the history of The Troubles, a violent 30-year conflict in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants that left more than 3,600 people dead.

“James Bulger never ever — the evidence will show — was an informant,” Carney said. Instead, he said, Bulger paid FBI agents to protect him from being prosecuted.

Another Bulger attorney, Hank Brennan, has focused on Bulger’s informant file, suggesting it was fabricated by former FBI Agent John Connolly, who was convicted of racketeering and second-degree murder for leaking information to Bulger and his partner, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

Brennan spent hours last week questioning former FBI Agent John Morris about reports from other FBI informants that appeared strikingly similar to reports on information Connolly attributed to Bulger. He suggested that Morris and Connolly said Bulger gave them the information to advance their own careers at a time when cultivating informants who could help bring down the Mafia was a national priority for the FBI.

But investigators who spent years trying to build a case against Bulger say there is overwhelming evidence that Bulger spent 15 years as an informant — 1975 to 1990 —  providing the FBI with information on local Mafia leaders, drug dealers and even criminals in his own South Boston neighborhood.

“I think clearly his attorney has marching orders from the defendant. He’s more obsessed with not being seen as an informant than as a mass killer, which is an absurdity,” said Thomas Duffy, a retired state police major who investigated Bulger.

“It doesn’t make any sense other than in his own mind. It just has to do with how he wants to be remembered.”

Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor who investigated several of Bulger’s associates, said it’s not surprising that Bulger’s trial strategy would focus on trying to deny his status as an informant.

“He’s had a good run for 83 years, and he realizes he’s not going to get out of prison. He’s not going to win the trial in terms of a guilty or innocent verdict. So he’ll try to win the trial in terms of settling scores or criticizing people he doesn’t like or making semantic distinctions on his ratting out his friends to the government,” Kendall said.

But others say the defense effort could be part of a larger strategy to highlight the unethical behavior of the FBI in the hope that the jury will be disgusted with the government and less likely to believe its case against Bulger.

“What they are doing is they are attacking the credibility of every single witness to show the breadth and the depth of the corruption within the FBI at the time he allegedly had a relationship with them,” said Suffolk University Law School professor Christopher Dearborn.

Before the trial, Carney was asked if he believes his client can receive a fair trial in Boston, where Bulger’s name and notorious reputation are so well known.

“Mr. Bulger believes that he will have a fair trial if he is able to present the whole truth concerning his relationship with the Department of Justice and FBI,” Carney responded in an email to The Associated Press, “including that he was never an informant.”

SOURCE: News 12

I’m No Rat: James ‘Whitey’ Bulger Erupts In Court After Being Labeled A Rat

He has shrugged off testimony that he’s a killer and a thief, but James  (Whitey) Bulger erupted at a disgraced FBI agent’s assertions that he was a  rat.

“You’re a f—ing liar,” Bulger, 83, snapped as former fed John Morris  described their years-long relationship on the witness stand Thursday.

“I know he spent his whole life trying to intimidate people,” prosecutor  Brian Kelly told the judge outside the jury’s presence, “but he should not be  doing that in federal court.”

Bulger is on trial for racketeering and extortion.

SOURCE: NY Daily News

 

Whitey’s Back:James ‘Whitey’ Bulger In South Boston Courthouse Where Opening Statements In Trial Are Set For Today

Led by a marked Massachusetts State Police cruiser with its siren blaring and lights flashing, a small caravan brought James “Whitey’’ Bulger to the federal courthouse in South Boston where his long-awaited trial on murder and racketeering charges will begin in earnest today.

A jury of eight men and four women, chosen Tuesday along with six alternates, are due at US District Court for the trial that is expected to last through September, with gangsters, extortion victims, and relatives of the dead expected to testify about a bygone era when the 83-year-old Bulger’s name evoked power and fear.

On Tuesday, US District Court Judge Denise J. Casper cleared the way for opening statements when she rejected a request by Bulger’s lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., to delay the start until Monday. He wanted time to conduct his own investigation of State Police handling of John Martorano, a hitman-turned-government witness who is poised to testify against Bulger. Casper found that the State Police had conducted an extensive investigation and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Boston Globe reporters are live blogging from the courthouse.

Bulger’s lead defense attorney, J.W. Carney, Jr., told reporters before he entered the courthouse that has mapped out what he will say during his opening statement.

“I think I’m going to be able to present a very good road map to the jury of where this case is going to go,’’ he said.

Carney always calls his client, James, and refuses to answers questions when someone uses Bulger’s nickname of “Whitey.’’

“I hope to give people a perspective of what Boston was like in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and how it was that James was able to operate with complete impunity, and also what happened when witnesses were taken into the government kitchen, prepared like you prepare a meal and I’ll explain what I mean by that during my opening,’’ he said. “I don’t think people appreciate the lengths to which federal prosecutors and the FBI will go to obtain a conviction.”

Bulger, who was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., two years ago after more than 16 years on the run, has called the trial “The Big Show” in letters to a friend from jail. Courthouse personnel are bracing for possible record crowds.

SOURCE: Boston