Hitman

by Howie Carr

  A Boston judge who refused to hire another crony of Bulger’s had his staff slashed and “is now holding court in a Winnebago,” as one of Billy’s senate stooges joked, openly, at Billy’s televised St. Patrick’s Day breakfast.

  The politically connected audience cracked up.

  Jackie Bulger was the youngest Bulger brother. He’d graduated from high school and gone to work at a fish market in Roslindale. Eventually Billy got him a job at the courthouse, but the clerk’s job Jackie wanted was occupied. No problem—the clerk was appointed to a judgeship, and Jackie became the clerk of the Boston Juvenile Court.

  Jackie’s ex-wife, too, got a job in the courts. His daughter went to work for her uncle Billy at the State House. Both Jackie’s son and son-in-law got jobs with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. It was the same for everyone in the Bulger family. They all had state jobs—everyone except Whitey.

  Soon Whitey, too, was feeling his oats. After the murder of Louie Litif, a reporter for the Herald American named Paul Corsetti began poking around, looking for a story. Whitey called the reporter anonymously, leading him on with tidbits of information. He offered Corsetti the whole story of Litif’s slaying if he would meet him in a bar at Quincy Market. Whitey was waiting when Corsetti arrived. He introduced himself by saying, “I’m Jimmy Bulger, motherfucker.” Then Whitey read the reporter a list of addresses where he lived and worked and where his young daughter attended day care. Finally he told the reporter the makes, models, and license plates of the cars he and his wife drove. Then Whitey abruptly got off his barstool and walked out without a word.

  The next day Corsetti arrived in the city room wearing a holster on his hip, with a .38. Word traveled fast. Suddenly there was a lot less coverage of organized crime—in the Globe as well as the Herald American.

  Billy demanded one of the state’s coveted three-digit license plates. The Registry of Motor Vehicles gave him one, then when a relative of the original holder demanded its return, Billy was given an even lower three-digit plate—“to ease the pain,” the Registry admitted.

  Zip Connolly would now take new agents in the office to the State House to meet the man he described, accurately, as “the most powerful man in Massachusetts politics.” The message was clear: when you retire, you’ll have a job waiting for you—if you play ball with the Bulgers, both of them.

  On his retirement from the FBI, Condon was hired by Governor Mike Dukakis, who more and more did whatever Billy Bulger told him to do. Also hired by the state was an ex-agent named Bob Sheehan, who once offered a gangster in his custody a machine gun and the keys to the Dog House, so that he could wipe out the Angiulos. Obviously, Sheehan was Good People. He transferred to a new agency, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA), which Bulger had set up to rebuild the Hynes Convention Center on Boylston Street.

  To run the new MCCA, Billy engineered the hiring of the tin-whistle player in his Irish band, a former postman. It was a “nationwide search,” explained the MCCA chairman, Billy’s close friend, state treasurer Bob Crane. Next Whitey’s stepdaughter got a job at the MCCA. At the garage run by the MCCA, one of Stevie Flemmi’s old gangland associates from Roxbury was kept on, along with his brother, both of whom would soon be arrested for stealing cash. The suspicions of even Billy Bulger’s tin-whistle player were aroused when the brothers both bought new Cadillacs on their $12-an-hour salaries.

  Billy Bulger controlled the MCCA—whenever treasurer Crane had to do something for him, he would roll his eyes upward, toward the fourth floor of the State House, where the senate met, and Bulger had his offices.

  “This is for the little man upstairs,” Crane would say.

  My daughter Lisa needed a job. We knew they were hiring. So an approach was made to the Bulgers to see if they could put her on the MCCA payroll like they’d done for everybody else. But they refused. Somebody, I don’t remember who, told us it would look really bad if Johnny Martorano’s daughter got hired by Whitey Bulger’s brother.

  But Billy wasn’t the only pol at the State House. The House Speaker was Tommy McGee, from Lynn. He controlled one of the seats on the board—his appointee was Nick Rizzo, a big fundraiser for Paul Tsongas. Later on Rizzo went to prison for embezzling money from Tsongas’s campaign when he ran for president against Clinton in ’92.

  So it was McGee and his guy Rizzo who got Lisa the job with the MCCA. Contrary to what you hear, the Bulgers had nothing to do with it.

  Life went on in Florida. Johnny was driving a conversion van—customized inside, with more space in the back for hanging out in style than for hauling equipment. One day the van was stolen. It was finally recovered down in Miami, and “Richard Aucoin” had to go down to the police lot to retrieve it. He walked past one surveillance camera after another, rode down an elevator with several uniformed sergeants, and then had to have his photo taken by yet another camera before he could reclaim possession of his van. No one realized the resemblance between Richard Aucoin and the guy on the wanted poster, John Vincent Martorano.

  Another time, on an interstate in a different southern state, Johnny Martorano was headed down an incline when he saw a massive roadblock at the bottom of the hill. He had no choice but to keep driving toward it. When he reached the roadblock, he casually rolled down the window and the cop leaned in.

  “What’s happening, officer?” Johnny asked.

  “We’re looking for a fugitive,” the cop said, explaining that they were searching for escapees from a nearby prison.

  “Well,” Johnny said, “if you want to have a look, go right ahead.”

  Joe Mac, meanwhile, was hanging out in Fort Lauderdale with another Boston-area fugitive who was still involved in various small-time criminal activities in South Florida.

  I never trusted this guy Joe was hanging with, he was from Peabody. I kept telling Joe, stay the fuck away from him, and whatever you do, please don’t ever mention my name to him. I don’t know why, I just thought he was trouble. Anyway, at one point, I don’t hear from Joe for a while, and then suddenly he turns back up. He tells me, you’ll never believe what happened to me.

  He says this friend of his from Peabody got in some beef with some hoods up in Atlanta, and he needed some backup, and can Joe help him out? Of course Joe says sure, but something happened—these Georgia guys got the drop on them, and they locked them up in a closet for a few days. Had them both tied up, I don’t know what for. Joe thought for sure he was dead, but somehow he got loose. I told Joe, What did I tell you? That guy is no fuckin’ good.

  Johnny and Patty were settling into a routine. They met some people from Montreal, and began visiting them occasionally. It was no problem getting back and forth across the Canadian border. Another family tradition became their annual trip to Hawaii, in February, right around the time of the Pro Bowl.

  When I was in jail in Plymouth in 1978, I was playing softball and I met a guy. I’ll call him Joe. He said as soon as he got out he was moving to Hawaii. His wife and kids were already out there. He said, if you’re ever out there, give me a call, my number’s in the book. So I kept in touch with him, and we started going out there every winter. His son was a good football player—played in the NFL for a while. He’s moved back out there to the islands and is coaching now.

  Anyway, “Joe” would make reservations for me every winter on Waikiki Beach. I used to stay at the Ilikai Hotel, and every morning, I’d go for a walk, just like I did in Florida. One day I’m walking along a big boat dock near the hotel, and I see that they’re filming Magnum P.I. You remember that TV show, with Tom Selleck?

  So they were between scenes, and I’m walking by, slowly, taking it all in, and all of a sudden, Tom Selleck yells over at me, “Hey you, you wanna be a walk-on?” It was just a casual, spur of the moment thing. I smiled and said, “No thanks, Tom,” and I kept on walking. And he’s just standing there for a few seconds, until he finally he yells at me again, and he runs up to me and gives me this look. And Tom Selleck says, “Y
ou know, you’re the first guy who ever said no thanks, who didn’t want to be on the show.” I smiled and said, “Is that right?” and I kept walking.

  Things had never been quite the same for Johnny’s father, Andy, after Luigi’s was padlocked in the wake of Margie Sylvester’s murder there in 1964. Always self-employed, Andy ended up working as a restaurant-equipment salesman.

  In 1980, Johnny got the word that his father was at the South Shore Hospital, and that he was dying. He couldn’t go home to say good-bye, but Johnny did call him a few days before he died.

  He told me he loved me—he’d never said that to me before. It meant so much to me to hear him say that. Then I remembered what Billy Vaughn said to me once. You remember Vaughn, he owned that real dive, McCarthy & Vaughn, on Dover Street. I was talking to Billy once, and he told me, Do you know how proud your dad is of you, Johnny? He told Billy, “Johnny is a man. He will help you or he will hurt you.” Being a man, that was the only thing that mattered to Andy.

  After Andy died, I got a call from Whitey. He said he wanted to express his condolences, but the real reason he called was to tell me that from now on, I should do all my communicating with Stevie. He said talking to Stevie was like talking to him. He said: Don’t take it personally, I just don’t like telephones. I’d already figured that out.

  It wasn’t the best time of Johnny Martorano’s life. He’d have preferred to be back in Boston. But overall things could have been worse. There were no really pressing life-and-death issues he had to deal with down in South Florida.

  But then Brian Halloran shot a guy in the head in Chinatown.

  11

  The Last Hit

  BRIAN HALLORAN KNEW he was in trouble one morning in September 1981 when he walked out of his apartment in Quincy and someone took a shot at him. He knew too much, and he knew he knew too much. About Louie Litif, about Roger Wheeler—about everything. So Halloran did what he always did, whatever his mood. He drank, and he drank some more, and then he snorted cocaine. This time, he didn’t sober up.

  A few weeks later, in the midst of his latest bender, “Balloonhead” found himself sitting in a restaurant in Chinatown after last call, with Frank Salemme’s younger brother Jackie and a drug dealer named George Pappas. When Pappas got up from the booth to make a phone call, Halloran suddenly stood up himself. He pulled out a gun and shot Pappas in the head, killing him instantly. Salemme immediately dove under the table, and as the other customers scrambled for cover, Halloran calmly stood up and walked out of the restaurant, leaving behind his car keys and his trademark scally cap.

  Now Halloran really would have to go. Somehow he made bail, and as soon as Brian Halloran hit the street, he started playing let’s make a deal. Whitey knew he had to get to him before he started dropping names. There was no alternative. But at least Halloran had done Whitey a favor, by committing the murder in front of Salemme. Jackie Salemme was with In Town, and now he was going to be a witness for the prosecution. Jerry Angiulo, still on the street as the FBI transcribed the Dog House wiretaps, didn’t need Jackie cross-examined in open court.

  The Mafia’s need to eliminate Halloran wasn’t nearly as pressing as Whitey’s, but now, with the help of his G-man amanuensis, Zip Connolly, Bulger could lay the groundwork for what he had to do. On October 2, 1981, Zip filed the first of his many reports about the impending death of Brian Halloran: “Source advised that the Mafia want Brian Halloran ‘hit in the head’ to shut him up as a potential witness.”

  Halloran, meanwhile, had started talking to the FBI.

  * * *

  STEVIE FLEMMI was having girlfriend problems. Things just weren’t working out with Debbie Davis, the beautiful blonde Johnny Martorano had introduced him to after his return from Montreal in 1974.

  Debbie took up with a Mexican, or at least that was Stevie’s story later. If she did, she should have known better, because one young man she’d flirted with a few years earlier had ended up shot in the head, his body dumped in the Blue Hills.

  One night Stevie took Debbie out to the Bay Tower Room, at the top of 60 State Street near Quincy Market. They were bickering, and when the maitre d’ came over to whisper in Stevie’s ear that Mr. Flemmi had a call, Debbie sneered and then asked him who he had to talk to. Stevie was so angry that he told her—it was Zip Connolly, he said, an FBI agent he and Jimmy Bulger did business with.

  Debbie soon began telling people about Zip. When word reached Whitey, he was beyond angry. It got worse. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1981, Debbie Davis’s jailbird brother Ronnie was stabbed to death at MCI-Walpole. When Stevie showed up at the Davis home, Debbie began screaming at him, in front of at least one of her siblings: “Use your FBI friends and find out who killed my brother!”

  Debbie Davis didn’t have long to live.

  On September 17, 1981, Stevie made sure his parents were out of the new house he’d bought for them in Southie, next to Billy Bulger’s. Then on some pretext, Stevie drove Debbie Davis to Southie, and got her onto the sunporch where he and Whitey now stored the gang’s arsenal. According to Flemmi’s later story to prosecutors, Whitey was waiting with a rope, and he jumped on top of Debbie Davis, strangling her as Stevie watched. Then they stripped off her clothes and cut off her fingertips to prevent identification. Stevie used a pair of pliers to pull out her teeth, to prevent any identification based on dental records. Finally, they wrapped her body in a large sheet of plastic.

  Even after she was buried, toothless, Whitey was obsessed with Debbie Davis’s teeth. He ordered Stevie to get her dental records, and Stevie assigned the task to George Kaufman, who lived in Brookline near her dentist. Somehow Kaufman got them and gave them to Stevie, who then burned the records—with Whitey watching.

  As the years have gone by, the stories about the circumstances of Debbie Davis’s death at the age of twenty-six have grown ever more lurid. In a wrongful-death trial against the U.S. government in 2009, a lawyer for the Davis family quoted from a deposition given by Stevie Flemmi. Flemmi testified that before he and Whitey strangled her, they had tied her to a chair with duct tape, and that as Whitey waited behind her with a rope, Stevie “pulled her back, gave her a kiss, and told her she was going to a better place.”

  Actually, she was going down to the Neponset River marshes. They buried her next to where they had dumped Tommy King’s body back in 1975. Stevie told her mother Olga that she had run off to Houston under an assumed name. Then he started crying, and Olga ended up consoling him.

  I hear from George Kaufman, Debbie Davis is missing. So the next time I was talking to Stevie on the phone, I asked him where she was, if he knew what had happened to her. He says, she’s gone, she won’t be coming back. He said they’d had an argument, and he started strangling her, and it was an accident. I said, “How can an accident like that happen?” What a shame. What really happened I don’t know, but later on he comes up with this other story for the cops about how Whitey was the one who strangled her. Who’s going to contradict him? Debbie’s not around anymore, and neither is Whitey.

  What I do know is that Stevie had a tough time pulling her teeth with the pliers. So Whitey bought him a set of surgical dental tooth removers—probably had Catherine Greig get them, through the dental office she worked at. I guess it was kind of an inside joke between Whitey and Stevie, but from then on they did use the dental tools whenever they had to kill somebody and wanted the bodies to disappear. Stevie told me about it later.

  Catherine Greig, Whitey’s dental-hygienist girlfriend, who could have obtained a professional dental tooth-extraction kit for Stevie to use in later murders instead of pliers.

  * * *

  BRIAN HALLORAN had sense enough not to go anywhere near the feds’ organized-crime unit. He knew what Zip Connolly and John Morris were. Instead, he reached out to a couple of agents he knew from the labor-racketeering unit. He told them who had murdered Louie Litif—he was an eyewitness to that one.

  Then there was Roger Wheeler. Callahan had told him
about the Wheeler hit one night when they were out drinking at one of those Irish pubs in Quincy Market where they both spent so much time getting wasted. Halloran mentioned his earlier meeting with John Callahan and Whitey Bulger in the apartment above the Rusty Scupper. The agents from the labor-racketeering unit were impressed by the detail and consistency in Halloran’s stories, and they started moving him from one safe house to another. But any decision to formally shield him, in the Witness Protection Program, was a decision that would have to be made by Jeremiah O’Sullivan, the head of the Justice Department’s organized-crime task force.

  He’d cut Whitey and Stevie out of the race-fixing indictment, and he’d kept them on as informants to protect them during the Dog House bugging. Now O’Sullivan did them yet another huge favor—he vetoed Halloran’s entrance into the Witness Protection Program.

  Of course, O’Sullivan could rationalize his decision. He was preoccupied with the pending Angiulo indictments. Halloran was a junkie charged with first-degree murder, who could provide only uncorroborated testimony. Still, everyone in the Boston FBI office knew exactly what cutting Halloran loose would mean.

  Whitey dictated another report to Zip on April 23, 1982, saying, “The ‘outfit’ continues to be interested in having Halloran killed. Source advised that the ‘outfit’ consider Halloran to be a weak person and are concerned that he may make a deal with the DA’s office to give up Salemme.”