Whitey Bulger Part I

 

James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. (/ˈbʌldʒər/; September 3, 1929 – October 30, 2018) was an American organized crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city directly northwest of Boston. On December 23, 1994, Bulger fled the Boston area and went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. Bulger remained at large for sixteen years. After his 2011 arrest, federal prosecutors tried Bulger for nineteen murders based on grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates.

Although Bulger adamantly denied it, the FBI revealed that he had served as an informant for several years starting in 1975. Bulger provided information about the inner workings of the Patriarca crime family, his Italian-American Mafia rivals based in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. In return, Connolly, as Bulger's FBI handler, ensured that the Winter Hill Gang was effectively ignored. Beginning in 1997, press reports exposed various instances of criminal misconduct by federal, state, and local officials with ties to Bulger, causing embarrassment to several government agencies, especially to the FBI.

Bulger became a fugitive in 1994 and was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1999, and was considered the most wanted person on the list behind Osama bin Laden. He was apprehended along with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, outside an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California, on June 22, 2011. By then he was 81 years old. Bulger and Greig were then extradited to Boston and taken to court under heavy guard. In June 2012, Greig pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud, and conspiracy to commit identity fraud, receiving a sentence of eight years in prison. Bulger declined to seek bail and remained in custody.

Bulger's trial began in June 2013. He was tried on thirty-two counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion and weapons charges, including complicity in nineteen murders. On August 12, Bulger was found guilty on 31 counts, including both racketeering charges, and was found to have been involved in eleven murders. On November 14, he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years by U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper. Bulger was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Florida.

Bulger was transferred to several facilities in October 2018; first to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma and then to the United States Penitentiary, Hazelton, near Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. Bulger, who was in a wheelchair, was beaten to death by inmates on October 30, 2018, within hours of his arrival at Hazelton. In 2022, Fotios Geas, Paul DeCologero and Sean McKinnon were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Bulger's death.

Early life

Whitey Bulger's father, James Joseph Bulger Sr., was from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, hailing from Irish parents. After settling in Everett, Massachusetts, James Sr. married Jane Veronica "Jean" McCarthy, a first-generation Irish immigrant. Their first child, James Joseph Bulger Jr., was born in 1929.

Bulger's father worked as a union laborer and occasional longshoreman; he lost his arm in an industrial accident  and the family was reduced to poverty.  In May 1938, the Mary Ellen McCormack Housing Project was opened in the neighborhood of South Boston. The Bulger family moved in and the children grew up there. While his younger siblings, William Bulger and John P. Bulger, excelled at school; James Bulger Jr. became drawn into street life.

Early in his criminal career, local police gave Bulger the nickname "Whitey" because of his blond hair. Bulger hated the name; he preferred to be called "Jim", "Jimmy", or even "Boots". The last nickname came from his habit of wearing cowboy boots, in which he used to hide a switchblade.

Early criminal career

Bulger developed a reputation as a thief and street fighter fiercely loyal to South Boston. This led to him meeting more experienced criminals and finding more lucrative opportunities. In 1943, 14-year-old Bulger was arrested and charged with larceny. By then he had joined a street gang known as the "Shamrocks" and would eventually be arrested for assault, forgery and armed robbery. Bulger was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for these offenses.

Shortly after his release in April 1948, Bulger joined the United States Air Force where he earned his high school diploma and trained as a mechanic. Despite the regimented military life, he had not reformed. He spent time in the military prison for several assaults and was later arrested by Air Force police in 1950 for going absent without leave. Nevertheless, he received an honorable discharge in 1952 and returned to Massachusetts.

Prison

In 1956, Bulger served his first term in federal prison at Atlanta Penitentiary for armed robbery and truck hijacking. He later told mobster Kevin Weeks that while there, he was used as a human subject in the CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA program. Bulger later complained that the inmates had been "recruited by deception" and were told they were helping to find "a cure for schizophrenia", when in fact they were being used to research mind control. Evidence of the experiments were later confirmed as CIA documentation emerged.

Bulger and eighteen other inmates, all of whom had volunteered in return for reduced sentences, were given LSD and other drugs over an eighteen-month period. He described his experience as "nightmarish" and said it took him "to the depths of insanity", writing in his notebooks that he heard voices and feared being "committed for life" if he admitted this to anyone.

In 1959, Bulger was briefly transferred to maximum security at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in California. During his time at Alcatraz, he kept in shape through weightlifting and took advantage of educational opportunities afforded to inmates. He completed various correspondence courses including typing, bookkeeping, and business law. He also became a voracious reader devouring numerous books on poetry, politics, and military history. Later in his sentence, he was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and, in 1963, to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. Bulger's third petition for parole, in 1965, was granted after he had served nine years in prison. He would not be arrested again for forty-six years.

Killeen–Mullen War

After his release, Bulger worked as a janitor and construction worker before becoming a bookmaker and loan shark under mobster Donald Killeen, whose gang, The Killeens, had dominated South Boston for over twenty years. The Killeens were led by three brothers—Donnie, Kenny and Eddie—along with Billy O'Sullivan and Jack Curran. Their base was the Transit Café in South Boston, which later became Whitey's Triple O's.

In 1971, Killeen's younger brother Kenny allegedly shot and mauled Michael "Mickey" Dwyer, a member of the rival Mullen Gang, during a brawl at the Transit Café. A gang war resulted, leading to a string of killings throughout Boston and the surrounding suburbs. The Killeens quickly found themselves outgunned and outmaneuvered by the younger Mullens. It was during the war that Bulger set out to commit what Weeks describes as Bulger's first murder, of Mullen member Paul McGonagle. However, Bulger instead executed McGonagle's law-abiding brother Donald in a case of mistaken identity.

Although [McGonagle] never did anything, he kept on stirring everything up with his mouth. So Jimmy decided to kill him. ... Jimmy shot him right between the eyes. Only ... it wasn't Paulie. It was Donald. ... Jimmy drove straight to his mentor Billy O'Sullivan's house on Savin Hill Avenue and told O'Sullivan ... 'I shot the wrong one. I shot Donald.' Billy ... said, 'Don't worry about it. He wasn't healthy anyway. He smoked. He would have gotten lung cancer.'

According to former Mullen boss Patrick "Pat" Nee, McGonagle ambushed and murdered O'Sullivan on the assumption he was the one responsible for his brother's killing. Bulger, realizing he was on the losing side, secretly approached Howie Winter, the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, and claimed he could end the war by murdering the Killeen leadership. Shortly thereafter, on May 13, 1972, Donald Killeen was gunned down outside his home in the suburb of Framingham. Nee disputes this, claiming that Killeen was murdered by Mullen enforcers James Mantville and Tommy King, not Bulger.

Bulger and the Killeens fled Boston, fearing they would be next. Nee arranged for the dispute to be mediated by Winter and Joseph Russo, caporegime of the Patriarca crime family in Rhode Island. In a sit-down at Chandler's nightclub in Boston's South End, the Mullens were represented by Nee and King, and the Killeens by Bulger. The two gangs joined forces, with Winter as overall boss. Soon after, Donald's sole surviving brother, Kenny, was jogging in Boston's City Point neighborhood when Bulger called him over to a car and said, "It's over. You're out of business. No more warnings."  Kenny would later testify that Winter Hill enforcers Stephen Flemmi and John Martorano were in the car with Bulger.

Winter Hill Gang

Stephen Flemmi

After the 1972 truce, Bulger and the Mullens were in control of South Boston's criminal underworld. FBI Special Agent Dennis Condon noted in his log in September 1973 that Bulger and Nee had been heavily shaking down the neighborhood's bookmakers and loan sharks. Over the years that followed, Bulger began to remove opposition by persuading Winter to sanction the killings of those who "stepped out of line". In a 2004 interview, Winter recalled that the highly intelligent Bulger "could teach the devil tricks". During this era, Bulger's victims included Mullen veterans McGonagle, King, and James "Spike" O'Toole.

According to Weeks:

"As a criminal, he made a point of only preying upon criminals... And when things couldn't be worked out to his satisfaction with these people, after all the other options had been explored, he wouldn't hesitate to use violence. ... Tommy King, in 1975, was one example. ... Tommy's problems began when he and Jimmy had worked in Triple O's. Tommy, who was a Mullins, made a fist. And Jimmy saw it. ... A week later, Tommy was dead. Tommy's second and last mistake had been getting into the car with Jimmy, Stevie, and Johnny Martorano. ... Later that same night, Jimmy killed Buddy Leonard and left him in Tommy's car on Pilsudski Way in the Old Colony projects to confuse the authorities."

In 1979, Winter was arrested, along with many members of his inner circle, on charges of fixing horse races. Bulger and Flemmi were left out of the indictments. They stepped into the power vacuum and took over the leadership of the Winter Hill Gang, transferring its headquarters to the Lancaster Street Garage in Boston's West End, near the Boston Garden.

Anti-busing attacks

In late August or early September 1974, Bulger and an accomplice reportedly set fire to an elementary school in Wellesley to intimidate U.S. District Court Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. over his mandated plan to desegregate schools in the city of Boston by means of busing. One year later, on September 8, 1975, Bulger and an unidentified person tossed a Molotov cocktail into the John F. Kennedy birthplace in Brookline in retaliation for Senator Ted Kennedy's vocal support for Boston school desegregation. Bulger then used black spray paint to scrawl "Bus Teddy" on the sidewalk outside of the national historic site.

FBI informant

In 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) approached Bulger and attempted to recruit him as an informant as part of their effort against the Patriarca crime family. FBI Special Agent John Connolly was assigned to make the pitch. However, Connolly failed to win Bulger's trust.  Three years later, Bulger partnered with Flemmi, an Italian-American mobster who had been an FBI informant since 1965.

Although it is a documented fact that Bulger soon followed Flemmi's example, exactly how and why continues to be debated. Connolly frequently boasted to his fellow agents about how he had recruited Bulger at a late-night meeting at Wollaston Beach inside an FBI-issue car. Connolly allegedly said that the FBI could help in Bulger's feud with Patriarca underboss Gennaro Angiulo. After listening to the pitch, Bulger is said to have responded, "Alright, if they want to play checkers, we'll play chess. Fuck 'em."

Weeks considers it more likely that Flemmi had betrayed Bulger to the FBI, given the choice to supply information to the Bureau or return to prison.  In 1997, shortly after The Boston Globe disclosed that Bulger and Flemmi had been informants, Weeks met with Connolly, who showed him a photocopy of Bulger's FBI informant file. In order to explain Bulger and Flemmi's status as informants, Connolly said, "The Mafia was going against Jimmy and Stevie, so Jimmy and Stevie went against them."  In a 2011 interview, Flemmi recalled, "Me and Whitey gave [the Feds] shit, and they gave us gold."

According to Weeks:

...Connolly kept telling me that 90 percent of the information in the files came from Stevie. ... But, Connolly told me, he had to put Jimmy's name on the files to keep his file active. As long as Jimmy was an active informant, Connolly said, he could justify meeting with Jimmy and giving him valuable information. Even after he retired, Connolly still had friends in the FBI, and he and Jimmy kept meeting to let each other know what was going on. ...I could see that a lot of the reports were not just against the Italians. There were more and more names of Polish and Irish guys; of people we had done business with, of friends of mine. ... I would see, over and over again, that some of these people had been arrested for crimes that were mentioned in these reports. ...it had been bullshit when Connolly told me that the files hadn't been disseminated, that they had been for his own personal use. ... If there was some investigation going on and his supervisor said, 'Let me take a look at that,' what was Connolly going to do? He had to give it up. And he obviously had.

FBI Agent John Morris was put in charge of the Organized Crime Squad at the FBI's Boston field office in December 1977.  Morris not only proved himself unable to rein in Connolly's protection of Bulger, but even began assisting him. By 1982, Morris was "thoroughly compromised", having had Bulger buy plane tickets for his then-girlfriend Debbie Noseworthy to visit him in Georgia while he was being trained for drug investigations. Even after 1983, when Morris was transferred to head up the Boston FBI's anti-drug task force, he remained an accomplice to Connolly and Bulger.

In the summer of 1983, tensions between the Winter Hill Gang and the Patriarca family escalated to an all-time high. An employee for Coin-O-Matic, a cash laundering vending machine company owned by the Patriarcas, was kidnapped on the job. The Boston Police Department, operating on a tip, raided a butcher shop in South Boston co-owned by Bulger and two other Winter Hill members. Police officers found the employee hanging from a beef rack, having been severely tortured and held for more than six days. The victim never testified, and all law enforcement documents were redacted of his full name; law enforcement had hoped he would cooperate fully and then go into witness protection. People familiar with Coin-O-Matic knew exactly who the employee was, but the code of silence was still very strong in South Boston. In the next few months, three low-level Winter Hill Gang members were executed, mostly believed to be in retribution for the kidnapping. This bloody mob war shined a large spotlight on Morris and triggered an internal investigation within the FBI.

In 1988, Bulger's status as an FBI informant was revealed publicly when the Globe's "Spotlight" team, led by journalist Gerard O'Neill, published a story detailing his work with the Bureau while still actively committing crimes. Rumors had abounded long before then, since it was unheard of for a criminal of Bulger's stature to go for years without even an arrest.

In 1995, Bulger and Flemmi were indicted on racketeering charges along with two Boston mafiosi, Frank Salemme and Bobby DeLuca. During the discovery phase, Salemme and DeLuca were listening to a tape from a roving bug, which is normally authorized when the FBI has no advance knowledge of where criminal activity will take place. They overheard two of the agents who were listening in on the bug mention that they should have told one of their informants to give "a list of questions" to the other wise guys. When their lawyer, Tony Cardinale, learned about this, he realized that the FBI had lied about the basis for the bug in order to protect an informant. Suspecting that this was not the first time this had happened, Cardinale sought to force prosecutors to reveal the identities of any informants used in connection with the case. Federal judge Mark L. Wolf granted Cardinale's motion on May 22, 1997. On June 3, Paul E. Coffey, the head of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Department of Justice, gave a sworn statement admitting that Bulger had been an FBI informant. Coffey stated that since Bulger was accused of "leading a criminal enterprise" while working as an informant and was also now a fugitive, he had "forfeited any reasonable expectation" that his identity would be protected.

On September 5, 2006, federal judge Reginald C. Lindsay ruled that the mishandling of Bulger and Flemmi caused the 1984 murder of informant John McIntyre, awarding his family $3.1 million in damages. Lindsay stated the FBI failed to properly supervise Connolly and "stuck its head in the sand" regarding numerous allegations that Bulger and Flemmi were involved in drug trafficking, murder and other crimes for decades.

Criminal activities in South Boston

Consolidating power

In February 1979, federal prosecutors indicted numerous members of the Winter Hill Gang, including boss Howie Winter, for fixing horse races. Bulger and Flemmi were originally going to be part of this indictment, but Connolly and Morris were able to persuade prosecutor Jeremiah T. O'Sullivan to drop the charges against them at the last minute. Bulger and Flemmi were instead named as unindicted co-conspirators.

Bulger and Flemmi then took over the remnants of the Winter Hill Gang and used their status as informants to eliminate competition. The information they supplied to the FBI in subsequent years was responsible for the imprisonment of several of Bulger's associates whom Bulger viewed as threats; however, the main victim of their relationship with the federal government was the Patriarca family, which was based in Boston's North End and in Federal Hill, Providence, Rhode Island. After the 1986 RICO indictment of Angiulo and his associates, the Patriarca family's Boston operations were in a shambles. Bulger and Flemmi stepped into the ensuing vacuum to take control of organized crime in the Boston area.

The murder of Louis Litif

In 1980, Bulger was approached in Triple O's by Louis Litif, a Lebanese-American neighborhood bookmaker. Weeks, a bouncer at the bar, said, "He wasn't a big guy, maybe five seven and 185 pounds. Of Arab descent, he had a mustache like Saddam Hussein. ... That night, as always, he was talking in his obnoxious loud voice. Even when there were 400 people in the bar, you always knew Louie was there."

Litif had been stealing money from his partners in the bookmaking operation and using the money to traffic cocaine, and had not only refused to pay Bulger a cut of his drug profits but committed two murders without Bulger's permission.  Litif told an outraged Bulger he was also going to kill his partner, "Joe the Barber", whom he accused of stealing from the bookmaking operation. Bulger refused to sanction this, but Litif vowed to proceed. Bulger replied, "You've stepped over the line. You're no longer just a bookmaker." Litif responded that, as Bulger was his friend, he had nothing to worry about. Bulger coldly responded, "We're not friends anymore, Louie."

At the time, Weeks was about to get married, and shortly before the wedding he informed Bulger that he was having difficulty finding a seat for Litif at the reception. "Don't worry about it", Bulger responded. "He probably won't show."  "[Louie] had always been a major moneymaker for Jimmy. ... And now he wanted to kill a friend of Jimmy. There was no way that would be allowed. Shortly after that, a week or so before my wedding, Louie was found stuffed into a garbage bag in the trunk of his car, which had been dumped in the South End. He had been stabbed with an ice pick and shot. 'He was color coordinated,' Jimmy told me. 'He was wearing green underwear and was in a green garbage bag.'"

According to Weeks,

Strangely enough, Jimmy told me, 'Louie's last words to me were a lie.' Apparently, Louie had insisted that he'd come by himself and that nobody had driven him over. It was hard to figure out why Louie lied to Jimmy that night. If he'd told Jimmy that someone had driven him, he might have gotten a pass. But it wouldn't have lasted long, since Jimmy had no intention of letting Louie run wild.

Halloran and Donahue murders

In 1982, a South Boston cocaine dealer named Edward Brian Halloran, known on the streets as "Balloonhead", approached the FBI and stated that he had witnessed Bulger and Flemmi murdering Litif. Connolly kept Bulger and Flemmi closely briefed on what Halloran was saying, specifically his claims, false according to Weeks, to having participated in the Tulsa, Oklahoma murder of businessman Roger Wheeler.  Connolly reported that Halloran was shopping this information to the FBI for a chance for him and his family to be placed in the Witness Protection Program.  Soon after, on May 11, 1982, Bulger, Flemmi, and Weeks were tipped off that Halloran had returned to South Boston. After arriving at the scene, Weeks staked out the Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant, where Halloran was dining. Michael Donahue, a friend of Halloran's from Dorchester, incidentally ran into him at the restaurant. In a decision that would prove costly to him, Donahue offered Halloran a ride home.

As Donahue and Halloran drove out of the parking lot, Weeks signaled Bulger by stating, "The balloon is in the air" over a walkie-talkie. Bulger drove up with another man armed with a silenced MAC-10; Bulger himself carried a .30 Carbine. Bulger and the other gunman, both disguised, opened fire and sprayed Halloran and Donahue's car with bullets. Donahue was shot in the head and killed instantly. Halloran lived long enough to identify his attacker as Bulger associate James Flynn, who was later tried and acquitted. Flynn remained the prime suspect until 1999, when Weeks agreed to cooperate with investigators and identified Bulger as one of the shooters. Flemmi has identified the second shooter as Patrick Nee, who has denied the allegation and has yet to be charged.

Donahue was survived by his wife and three sons. His family and Halloran's eventually filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. government after learning that Connolly had informed Bulger of Halloran's informant status. Both families were awarded several million dollars in damages. However, the verdict was overturned on appeal due to the late filing of the claims. Thomas Donahue, who was eight years old when his father was murdered, has become a spokesman for the families of those allegedly murdered by the Winter Hill Gang.

Peak years

Throughout the 1980s, Bulger, Flemmi, and Weeks operated rackets throughout eastern Massachusetts including loansharking, bookmaking, truck hijacking, arms trafficking, and extortion. State and federal agencies were repeatedly stymied in their attempts to build cases against Bulger and his inner circle. This was caused by several factors. Among them was the trio's fear of wiretaps and policy of never discussing their business over the telephone or in vehicles. Other reasons included South Boston's code of silence and corruption within the FBI, the Boston Police Department, and the Massachusetts State Police. Although Connolly was Bulger's most infamous source inside law enforcement, Weeks has stated that Massachusetts State Police Lt. Richard J. Schneiderhan, the crew's only source inside that agency, was valued more highly.

Extortion of drug dealers

During the mid-1980s, Bulger began to summon drug dealers from in and around Boston to his headquarters. Flanked by Weeks and Flemmi, Bulger would inform each dealer that he had been offered a substantial sum in return for that dealer's assassination. He would then demand a large cash payment as the price of not killing them. Eventually, however, the massive profits of drugs proved irresistible.

Most of South Boston's cocaine and marijuana trafficking was under the control of a crew led by mobster John Shea. According to Weeks, Bulger briefly considered killing Shea, but eventually decided to extort a weekly cut of his profits. Weeks also said that Bulger enforced strict rules over the dealers who operated on his territory,  strictly forbidding the use of PCP and selling drugs to children,  adding that those dealers who refused to play by his rules were violently driven out of his turf. In 1990, Shea and his associates were arrested at the end of an investigation by the DEA, the Boston Police, and the Massachusetts State Police. He quietly served a long prison sentence and refused to admit to having paid protection money to Bulger, Flemmi and Weeks. He repeatedly got in fights with other inmates who accused Bulger of being "a rat." This earned Shea a legendary reputation in South Boston. 

It was not until the 1999 cooperation of Weeks that Bulger, by then a fugitive, was conclusively linked to the drug trade by investigators. According to an interview conducted with Globe reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Weeks "estimated that Whitey made about thirty million dollars... most of it from shaking down drug dealers to let them do business on his turf."

Arms trafficking

During the most violent period of The Troubles, sympathy for Irish nationalism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was very common in South Boston, as were efforts to raise money and smuggle weapons for the IRA's campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. From the start of his involvement with the FBI, Bulger "insisted ... that he would never give up the IRA". Bulger had previously donated to NORAID and shipped weapons—"guns and a block of C-4 plastic explosives"—in a van to the IRA in the early 1980s. Bulger was annoyed when he learned that the IRA members he supplied had burned the van that contained the weapons.[citation needed] After meeting with IRA Chief of Staff Joe Cahill, Bulger and Nee raised $1 million (equivalent to $2.82 million in 2022) "by shaking down drug dealers in South Boston and Charlestown". This money was used to buy weapons for the IRA which would be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in the trawler Valhalla. Bulger also personally donated some of his own weapons.

On September 13, 1984, Bulger, Weeks and Nee supervised the loading of Valhalla. The final cache included "91 rifles, 8 submachine guns, 13 shotguns, 51 handguns, 11 bullet-proof vests, 70,000 rounds of ammunition, plus an array of hand grenades and rocket heads". Valhalla rendezvoused 120 nautical miles (220 km; 140 mi) off the west coast of Ireland with the Marita Ann, an IRA ship that had sailed from Tralee. During the return voyage, the Irish Navy stopped Marita Ann and seized the hidden arsenal, arresting IRA members Martin Ferris, Mike Browne, and John Crawley. The operation had been compromised by IRA member Sean O'Callaghan, who was an informant for the Irish National Police.[citation needed] The seizure marked the complete end of any major attempt by the IRA to smuggle guns out of the United States, which ended three years earlier with the arrest of the primary IRA's gunrunner George Harrison by the FBI.

When Valhalla crew member John McIntyre was arrested "for trying to visit his estranged wife", he confessed his role in the weapons smuggling to the Boston Police. McIntyre implicated Bulger in the botched smuggling to FBI agent Roderick Kennedy, but Kennedy "insisted that [Bulger's handler] Connolly overheard him ... talking about someone on the Valhalla cooperating". Connolly confirmed Bulger's suspicions of McIntyre, leading Bulger and Flemmi to consider murdering McIntyre for his betrayal.

According to Weeks, when Bulger met with McIntyre in a South Boston house, he hoped to avoid murdering the informant and offered to send him to South America with money and the understanding that he was never to contact his family or friends again. After interrogating McIntyre over several hours, however, Bulger decided that he did not have the discipline to cut ties with everyone. He then killed McIntyre and went upstairs to take a nap while Weeks and Flemmi removed the corpse's teeth with a pair of pliers and buried it in the basement.