Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  The exchange of words between the two old rivals was like having salt rubbed in a wound that had never really healed. Bulger knew that his prized bodyguard Kevin Weeks was making trips into Charlestown with Nee, and he didn’t like it. Feelings of jealousy that Bulger had harbored ever since the two became karate partners left a bad taste in his mouth.

  One day, Bulger and Weeks were making the rounds in Whitey’s Chevy Malibu. Whitey asked, “When you’re with Pat, what do you guys do?”

  Kevin described to Bulger how, on those occasions when he met Nee at his house on I Street, they often sat in the kitchen and had tea.

  “Does he ever turn his back on you?” asked his boss.

  “Yeah, when he’s at the stove making tea, his back is to me.”

  Bulger thought about it and said, “Well, next time he turns his back on you, put two in his head.”

  Sitting in the backyard in Malden at a Fourth of July barbecue, Weeks’s story seemed incongruous, even lighthearted, but he wasn’t joking. “That’s when I realized how cheap life is,” he said.

  “He came to me and told me about it the next day,” said Pat. “He said, ‘Hey, you better watch your back. Whitey’s looking to do away with you.’”

  This touched off a line of discussion I’d had on other occasions with Nee: did you consider taking Bulger out before he got you? The same response as always: not as easy as it sounded. Bulger was connected on so many levels: his brother, the FBI, business partners in the underworld. Killing Whitey would have brought down a load of shit; it would have been an act of suicide.

  “But after that I never met him unless I was strapped,” said Nee. “And I never met him alone, one-on-one. It always had to be in a semipublic setting, with other people around. I didn’t trust the cocksucker.”

  I asked Kevin why he had warned Pat, which could be viewed as an act of insubordination. “I was in tight with Jim. I gave him complete loyalty on most things. But that didn’t mean I was going to start killing my own friends for no reason. Because then you start to worry, Gee, maybe I’m next.”

  As we spoke, one of the kids kicked a ball that hit the picnic table and knocked over some plates of food. “Hey,” said Kevin, “be careful”—more an observation than a command—“somebody might get hurt.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, on Monday, July 8, Kevin Weeks showed up to testify at the Moakley Courthouse. There was a media frenzy in front of the building as he was escorted by a couple of U.S. marshals through the front door. The entourage of onlookers surrounding Weeks grew in size as he passed through security, entered an elevator, and disembarked on the fifth floor. By the time he’d been led into the courtroom and seated on the stand, interested spectators and media people had hunkered down, both in the courtroom and in the media room two floors below, in expectation of what promised to be one of the trial’s most significant encounters.

  On the stand, Weeks still looked formidable and relatively youthful, a reminder that thirty years earlier, when he first started working for the neighborhood mob boss, he was a young man in his early twenties. At the time, he had a day job with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Boston’s transit system, as a trackman. At night he worked as a bouncer at a bar on Commonwealth Avenue called Flix. In 1980, Weeks was hired by the O’Neill brothers to work as a bouncer at Triple O’s, a job that would change the course of not only his career, but his life.

  It is a common dictum in the underworld that as a mob boss gets older, he becomes vulnerable. Southie, in particular, was ruled by the belief that you distinguished yourself as a leader in the streets with your fists. Bulger was revered and feared by some because he was known to be a guy who would not hesitate to do what needed to be done: if someone crossed him, that person would be killed. Bulger was a master at physical intimidation. But he was not known to be a fighter, and by the time he brought Weeks into the fold, he was in his fifties. Yes, he was a physical fitness buff; he looked fit and was menacing. But the laws of the jungle dictated that someone who was younger, faster, and stronger might seek to challenge Bulger. And so having someone like Weeks became a necessity.

  Kevin was athletic, and he seemed to enjoy punching people. Bulger tested him out right away; he had Weeks beat up not only people who had crossed him in areas of criminal business, but also those who had violated the neighborhood’s code of ethics. Someone who disrespected a woman, or someone who had received complaints for playing their music loud and still continued to do so, or someone who was generally drunk and disorderly might find themselves on the receiving end of a beating by Weeks, as ordered by Bulger. Occasionally these beatings took place in the upstairs function room at Triple O’s.

  On the stand, Weeks delved into his early years with Whitey with an easy familiarity. This was the fifth legal proceeding at which he had been called to testify since he began cooperating in 1999.

  Brian Kelly handled the presentation of Weeks’s direct testimony. As he had with other witnesses, he delivered his questions in a hurry, as if he had a train to catch.

  “Initially, what did working for James Bulger involve?” asked Kelly.

  “Basically, we just rode around. Sometimes I beat somebody up. Or picked up some envelopes from bookmakers.”

  “When you say ‘envelopes,’ what would be in the envelopes? Mail?”

  Weeks smiled at that and answered, “Money.”

  “Did you have any sort of routine about your association with Bulger?”

  “Well, in the beginning, when I was working for the MBTA, I’d leave work, I’d meet Jim at the furniture store in the afternoon around four. We’d ride around South Boston doing various things, and then I’d meet him later on at night. Eventually, I quit the MBTA and I was with him all the time. But Jim would usually come out between three or three thirty in the afternoon. We’d go around, take care of business, whatever was up for the day, and go to dinner. And then I’d meet him later that night.”

  “Did you have any rules about where you could talk about crime?”

  “We never talked in enclosed areas, houses, cars, never talked on the phone. We were afraid of being intercepted by wiretaps, bugs.”

  “So you would go outside and walk on occasion to avoid detection?”

  “Well, Jim liked to walk for fresh air and the exercise, and, yeah, we could talk about what we had to talk about for the day. . . . Usually we went down to Castle Island; sometimes we’d walk through the projects.”

  At this point, Kelly entered into evidence a series of law enforcement surveillance photos that showed Bulger and Weeks on their many strolls, Bulger wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and Kevin with his bulging muscles. The photos were familiar to anyone who had followed the Bulger story over the years; they had been used on television programs like America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries, and by the FBI in its official media campaign in search of Bulger the fugitive.

  After having Weeks identify each of the photos and give a brief narration of where they were taken, Kelly asked, “Now, sir, do you see James Bulger anywhere in the courtroom today?”

  “Yes,” said Kevin.

  “Would you please point to him and identify him?”

  “He’s right in front of me,” said the witness, pointing a finger at the defendant. Whitey gave the appearance that he was jotting notes on a legal pad and paid no attention to his former right-hand man.

  Weeks was on the stand to detail his involvement in a number of activities crucial to the daily running of the Bulger organization. He had been a guardian of the gang’s arsenal of weapons, which were, over the years, moved around to various locations in the neighborhood until they found a home at the “screen house,” the cabana or shed that had been built behind the home of Steve Flemmi’s mother. Weeks was also a player in the organization’s loan-sharking, gambling, and drug operations. These rackets were crucial ongoing moneymakers, the financial backbone of the enterprise, and Kevin was given the task of organizing the many bookies and drug dealers w
ho worked under the umbrella of the Bulger gang. He picked up payments and kept tabs on who was or was not up to speed. If some form of punishment was necessary for those who did not fulfill their obligations or stepped out of line, that decision was made by Bulger, but Kevin Weeks was often the administrator of “street justice.”

  Shakedowns and extortions were another crucial aspect of the gang’s income stream. Whitey alone was often enough to strike fear in the hearts of anyone the gang was seeking to bleed dry, but having young Weeks standing behind the boss, a hulking presence with a wicked gleam in his eye, was an added motivator that inevitably helped seal the deal.

  The irony was that unlike Bulger, Flemmi, Martorano, or even Pat Nee—men who had become professional desperados and gangsters early in their lives—Kevin Weeks never set out to be in the Mob. He had two older brothers who graduated from Harvard University. Kevin had himself been a decent student. He attended college for one year before dropping out to pursue an interest in boxing. He had been a Golden Gloves champion. Kevin was a tough guy, but he was not a killer. He had grown up hard, but he hadn’t grown up interacting with people who killed other human beings for a living. Even after he became Bulger’s attack dog, a dispenser of threats and beatings, he remained a bridesmaid and never a bride when it came to stabbing people to death, strangling them with your bare hands, or shooting them in the head.

  Nonetheless, in the eyes of the law, a bridesmaid is most definitely guilty by association, and so Weeks was currently seated across from his former boss to explain his role as accomplice in no less than five murders perpetrated by the organization.

  The first was the double killing of Brian Halloran and the hapless Michael Donahue.

  By now, the jury was familiar with the saga of Halloran, after having heard testimony from Martorano, Morris, and others on how the Southie gangster’s ongoing role as FBI snitch had become the worst-kept secret in all of Boston. Specifically, Halloran had been titillating his FBI handlers with information about the murders of Roger Wheeler in Oklahoma and John Callahan in Miami, two far-flung hits that had allegedly been put in motion by Bulger and Flemmi and carried out by Martorano.

  After leading the witness through a quick overview of who Halloran was and how he had run afoul of the gang, prosecutor Kelly got right to the actual day of the killing—May 11, 1982. “Tell us how it happened,” he said to Weeks.

  Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, I came home from work, the MBTA. I went to the furniture store on West Broadway. I was there talking with Jim, and John Hurley came in. . . . Hurley was an old Winter Hill member. He’s from Charlestown. He came in and told Jim that he’d just spotted Brian Halloran down the waterfront on a pay phone.”

  The entire South Boston underworld had been looking for Halloran. Supposedly, the FBI had him at a safe house out on the Cape. Nobody could find him. But now here he was like a nice fat chicken nestled in his coop, just a few miles away, ready to be plucked.

  “So Jim turned to me and said, ‘I’ll meet you down at the club,’ meaning the Mullens’ club down at O and Third streets.” The old hangout of the Mullens gang, which had been vanquished by Bulger, survived as a no-frills, nondescript meeting location for neighborhood gangsters. In the days before cell phones and text messaging, it was necessary to have a regular meeting place. “I drove down there. He drove down there. He was looking for people—Steve Flemmi, Pat Nee, anyone that was around. Nothing. There was no one there.” Bulger had Weeks drive him over to the house he shared with Teresa Stanley and drop him off. He told Weeks to go back to the Mullens’ club and wait there for instructions, which his underling did without questions.

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes later, Jim Bulger showed up back at the club. He was in the tow truck. That was a boiler hit car that we had. We used to use the code name ‘tow truck,’ so if anyone heard us talking about it, they’d just think it was a tow truck. . . . It was a ’75 Malibu. It was all souped up, equipped with a smoke screen, an oil slick we could lay down. You could drive it at night with the rear lights out. It was a hit car.”

  The first thing Weeks noticed when Bulger drove up was that he was wearing a disguise—a sandy-blond, curly-haired wig and a floppy mustache.

  Bulger told Weeks to drive down to Jimmy’s Harborside bar, near where Brian Halloran had been spotted, and wait for him there. Weeks did as he was told. It was a short ten-minute drive down to the waterfront. Kevin backed his car into a parking space in the lot outside Jimmy’s Harborside, which was located near Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant, a popular seafood place at the end of the pier. A few minutes later, Bulger pulled into the parking lot in the familiar Chevy Malibu. He eased into the parking space next to Weeks.

  “Was he still alone?” prosecutor Kelly asked the witness.

  “No. There was a person in the backseat with a ski mask on. He was kind of lying down. He leaned up and waved at me.”

  “Did you have any idea who it was?”

  “No. I thought it was, you know, Steve Flemmi at first. Thought it might be Pat Nee.”

  Bulger got out of the car and handed Weeks a police-issue walkie-talkie, a type the gang frequently used in the commission of a crime. Bulger told Weeks, “Our target is sitting in the Pier restaurant. Go down there and watch him. Let me know when he’s coming out.” The code name they used to identify Brian Halloran was “Balloon Head.”

  Asked Brain Kelly, “Why was he nicknamed Balloon Head?”

  The witness shrugged. “Because he had a big head.”

  Weeks drove closer to Anthony’s Pier 4 and parked. Using a set of binoculars, he scanned the large plate-glass windows that were so big they revealed nearly the entire interior of the restaurant. Weeks didn’t have to scan very long, because Brian Halloran was sitting in a booth right by the window. Not long after Weeks had spotted their target, Halloran got up to leave. Kevin raised the walkie-talkie and said, “The balloon is rising.” As soon as Halloran was outside he said, “The balloon is in the air.”

  Halloran was not alone. He was with a friend, Michael Donahue. By chance, they had run into each other at the restaurant, and Donahue offered to give Halloran a ride to wherever he was headed. The two men climbed into Donahue’s pale blue Datsun, with Halloran in the front passenger seat.

  By now, Bulger and the other gunman had driven up to Anthony’s Pier 4 and put themselves in a position to intercept the Datsun on its way out of the lot.

  Weeks had a ringside seat. He watched the entire episode unfold before his eyes. The Malibu pulled up alongside the Datsun, which was moving slowly toward the parking lot exit. Bulger leaned out the window and called out, “Brian!” Halloran looked over, and Whitey cut loose with a volley of machine-gun fire.

  “What did you see happening when he started shooting?”

  “Well, there was a lot of people there. They were diving [for cover] and running around. People were screaming. Eventually, the car that Michael Donahue was driving just drifted across the road and bumped into a restaurant, I think it was called the Port of Call, or something. It’s now the Whiskey Priest. Jim Bulger made a U-turn, came back around. Brian Halloran had exited the vehicle. He was still alive [though he had been hit]. He walked toward the rear of the vehicle; he actually walked right towards where Jim Bulger was parked in the street. And Jim Bulger just started shooting right at him. Brian Halloran went down, and Bulger kept shooting. [Halloran’s] body was bouncing off the ground. . . . Then Jim drove away in the car. . . . I waited a minute or two, then I pulled away from where I was parked. Drove by. As I was leaving, the cops were pulling up. I could see the bodies.”

  “Then where did you go?”

  Weeks said that Bulger had told him to meet afterward at Capital Market, on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. Kevin drove over there and was surprised that Bulger was nowhere to be seen. He beeped him, giving the number of a public phone outside the market. Bulger called back and said, “Where are you?”

  Kevin answered, “Capital Market, like you said.”
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  “Oh,” said Bulger. “I’m at Teresa’s having something to eat. Go get yourself some dinner. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  The gangland slaying of Halloran and Donahue was all over the news. It had been a highly public killing, just as Bulger had intended it to be. It was what is known in the trade as a “message killing.” Halloran was a rat. He had been used as an example to show what happens to rats.

  For Weeks, it was an initiation, of sorts, his first homicide on behalf of the organization. There would be others, as he described in vivid detail from his perch on the witness stand.

  “In August of 1983,” said the prosecutor, “did you know a man named Arthur ‘Bucky’ Barrett?”

  The spectators in the courtroom squirmed a bit in their seats. The name of Bucky Barrett, which had come up during Kelly’s opening statement and also elsewhere during the proceedings, meant that Weeks’s testimony was now going to take us to the house on Third Street—the Haunty—a chamber of horrors that had come to represent the dark core of Southie violence.

  The circumstances of Barrett’s murder may have been previously touched upon, but Kevin added firsthand details that brought the incident alive in the courtroom, starting with the fact that the horrific murder had begun with a chance encounter.

  “Jim Bulger and myself were over in Dorchester by the Puritan Mall, which is next to Lambert’s. Jim was going to a travel agency to make plans to go away on a vacation. As we were going up the stairs, Bucky Barrett came walking down the stairs. Jim saw him. He said, ‘Hey, Bucky, what are you doing over here?’ He said, ‘I got to see my PO.’ His probation officer, I guess, was in the same building. A quick conversation. Then we continued up the stairs and Jim went in the travel agency. After that, Jim got interested in Bucky again.”