Where the Bodies Were Buried Read Free Page B

aside theBulger case to reveal a broader sewer of criminal complicity on the part of many cops, federal agents, prosecutors, and other centurions of the U.S. Department of Justice.
    The strategy that followed would play out over the next decade and a half. Certain journalists and book writers were cultivated as purveyors of information, and the cult of Bulger began to take shape. Flemmi and other former members of Whitey’s inner circle began to give their versions of various murders and other crimes; this information was leaked to well-placed print, TV, and radio journalists in Boston, a city crawling with hungry and talented reporters. The Bulger legend took flight.
    There were some who felt that the FBI and other representatives of the Justice Department had no real interest in finding Bulger. The speculation was that with all that Whitey knew, he could bring the system to its knees. Nonetheless, the Justice Department did take part in a wide-ranging public relations campaign to catch Whitey. Over the years, he was profiled nearly two dozens times on various television programs such as America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries; he was the subject of documentaries on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. His reputation expanded to become part of popular American culture, culminating in his exploits being used as the basis for a character memorably played by actor Jack Nicholson in the movie The Departed . Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie was a huge popular success and, in 2007, received the Academy Award for Best Picture.
    Upon Bulger’s capture, the media spotlight heated up once again. Only now, there would be a new element added to the saga: Whitey himself. Video images of Bulger, now in his eighties, handcuffed, in an orange prison jumpsuit, being brought back to Boston to face the music was all the populace needed to be drawn back into the Age of Whitey.
    The prosecutors handling the case were the same men who had been pursuing Bulger since the early 1990s. Fred Wyshak and Brian Kelly were eager young prosecutors, both in their thirties, when they first began to build their case against Bulger, Flemmi, and others. That case, which had originally revolved around assorted illegal gambling charges, had grown over the years to include thirty-two criminal counts, including conspiracy, various racketeering charges, and nineteen murders. It would be aclassic case under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in which Bulger would be charged as the leader of a racketeering enterprise. Those aligned to testify against Bulger included many former rank-and-file members of his organization, as well as three of his closest associates, including Steve Flemmi.
    And yet, with all the evidence, testimony, and prosecutorial firepower accumulated over twenty years, the Bulger case remained a hot potato for the Boston U.S. attorney’s office and a special challenge for Wyshak and Kelly. Though a lot of the pretrial machinations and publicity revolved around exalting Bulger’s nefarious reputation as a psychopath and criminal mastermind, the prosecutors were never able to fully escape the nagging history of the case. Bulger’s court-appointed attorney, J. W. Carney, sought to capitalize on this history by suggesting, on a number of occasions, that his client was going to take the stand and, for the first time, “tell his side of the story.” The implication was that Whitey Bulger was going to blow the lid off forty years of dirt and deceit in the criminal justice system all the way from New England to Washington, D.C.
    The central tension of the Bulger saga remained, and would continue throughout the trial. Was the Bulger story about one very crafty psychopath who had corrupted the system? Or was it about a preexisting corrupt system into which one very wily gangster insinuated himself and then played it for all it was worth?
    For the prosecutors, this was the deluge