Dick Lehr - Whitey: The Life of Americas Most Notorious Mob Boss

Whitey is the definitive word on the whole sordid saga of the Bulger mob. Expertly crafted, beautifully told.

Dennis Lehane, author of Live by Night

Having first uncovered the terrible Bulger story, Gerard ONeill and Dick Lehr have now brought it full circlea true circle of hell. Exemplary journalism, high drama, and, for Bulgers victims, an ongoing tragedy: rarely has a book mattered more.

James Carroll, author of An American Requiem

Black Mass, also by Lehr and ONeill, was the definitive book on the corrupt relationship of the Boston office of the FBI and the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger. Whitey will stand right next to it as the most in-depth portrayal yet of the life of the man who ruled the South Boston underworld by terror and duplicity. In this groundbreaking, intimately researched work, we learn how he became the person who was feared by so many. Once you start reading, you wont want to put it down.

Bill Bratton, former Boston and NYPD police commissioner and LAPD police chief

Lehr and ONeill have outdone themselves. Whitey isnt just a chilling biography of a monsterits also a vivid portrait of Southie, a blood-spattered history of Boston mob wars, and a searing indictment of the corrupt FBI agents who literally gave Whitey Bulger a license to kill. Full of new information about Whiteys prison stint as a young man and his life as an elderly fugitive, this is the definitive account of one of weirdest and most sordid chapters in the history of American crime.

Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers

Whitey is a masterpiece of investigative reporting that unravels a tension-filled tale of murder, treachery, and abuse of power.

Ronald Kessler, author of The Secrets of the FBI and In the Presidents Secret Service

Dennis Lehane and Martin Scorsese: take a seat. Nobody knows the twisted saga of Whitey Bulger and his gang, covered this story of criminal savagery and official corruption with more courage, or tells the tale now with such lan as Gerard ONeill and Dick Lehr.

John Farrell, author of Tip ONeill and the Democratic Century

So much has been written about Whitey Bulger, including by Lehr and ONeill, but this book is different. It is comprehensive in its scope, tracing Bulgers family, his own journey from Southie, to Europe, from Leavenworth, and, finally, to the Princess Eugenia Apartment in Santa Monica, California. Lehr and ONeill have culled material far and widetranscripts, old prison records, official documents, interviews, books, and clippings. But best of all, theyve woven it all in a narrative that is extraordinary, compelling, and impossible to put down.

Nancy Gertner (Retired, U.S.District Court judge), author of In Defense of Women

Black Mass

The Underboss

ALSO BY DICK LEHR

The Fence

Judgment Ridge (with Mitchell Zuckoff)

ALSO BY GERARD O NEILL

Rogues and Redeemers

Copyright 2013 by Dick Lehr and Gerard ONeill

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-307-98654-2

Jacket design by Kristen Haff
Jacket photographs: Inmate case file AZ-1428 (The National Archives at San Francisco)

v3.1

To my wife, Karin; my sons, Nick and Christian; and my daughters, Holly and Dana.

Nothing happens without them.

Dick Lehr

To my steadfast wife, Janet ONeill; my sons, Brian and Shane, who make me proud; my prized daughter-in-law, Patty; and my grandchildren, Kylie and Jack.

Gerard ONeill

CONTENTS

NOTE TO THE READER

T he arrest of James J. Whitey Bulger in June 2011 gave us the opportunity to reunite to write Whiteys life storymaking Whitey the final part of our trilogy about Whitey Bulger, the Boston Mafia, and the FBI.

The Underboss, the first book in the trilogy, reconstructed the 1981 FBI bugging of Boston Mafia boss Gennaro Angiulo in the citys North End, an operation that crippled the Angiulo crime family.

Then came Whitey Bulgerwho has long overshadowed the Mafia. Whiteys harnessing of a corrupt FBI Organized Crime Squad for nearly twenty years resulted in the reign of terror that we chronicled in Black Mass.

Now, in Whitey, we are able to place that unholy alliance into the context of his long life, from the streets of South Boston to the sunsets in Santa Monica, California. Whitey is a full accounting of the damage done as well as an excavation into the past to uncover the making of Americas most notorious mob boss.

Dick Lehr and Gerard ONeill
Boston, January 2013

Debra Davis ()

A t mid-afternoon on a dying late summer day, the stunningly beautiful Debra Davis climbed into the snazzy, two-seat Mercedes convertible that her boyfriend had bought for her and drove away from the home they shared in the suburb of Randolph, Massachusetts. She headed north, her destination South BostonEast Third Street, to be exact, to a house located on the eastern side of the compact neighborhood shaped like a finger sticking out into Boston Harbor.

Her boyfriend, Stevie Flemmi, wanted to show her somethingat least thats what hed said on the telephone. He wanted to give her a tour of the Cape-style house hed bought for his parents. The closing was earlier that very same day, and Stevie had paid the full purchase price of eighty thousand dollars, an act of generosity so that his parents would not be saddled with a mortgage.

Debbie exited the interstate. She began snaking her way through the streets of a community known as mostly Irish-American, insular and famous for its Southie Pride. While she was familiar with the neighborhood, able to navigate the grid of narrow streets, many of which were one-way and dizzying to outsiders, if Stevie had been at the wheel he would have been able to make his way blindfolded. Stevie Flemmi had grown up in another part of Boston but Southie was now a key venue for his business interestsever since 1974, when he signed on with a gathering force in the citys underworld: the legendary boss of Southies Irish mob.

Debbie and Stevie had been together for that long, too. She was a teenager in late 1974 working behind the counter at a jewelry store on Beacon Street in Brookline when hed spotted her. Stevie was significantly older: Debbie was nineteen; he was forty. Stevie had liked what he sawthe flowing blond hair, the blue eyes, the glamour of a ravishing young thingand decided she was for him. He paid for her divorce from a brief mistake of a marriage, and the two were off and running. But at her age seven years was a long time to be in a relationship. Debbie had met someone else and wanted out. Stevie didnt think so; he wanted in, now and forevermore. An unmistakable tension had surfaced between the two.