Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down (33 page)

“That is absolutely untrue,” Ahearn insisted in response to a question from the
Boston Globe
about the FBI’s relationship with Whitey Bulger. “We specifically deny that there has been special treatment of this individual.”

But if all this remained a constant source of frustration for me, the results of another case in court left me with an added sense of vindication. In August of 2009 the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (the same court that upheld Judge Lindsay’s decision) upheld a lower-court judgment ordering the FBI to pay $102 million in a wrongful conviction suit filed by the families of Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone, and Joseph Salvati.

They were the four scapegoats railroaded by FBI agents Paul Rico and Dennis Condon on manufactured evidence for killing Teddy Deegan in 1965, a murder actually committed by their FBI snitch, Joseph “the Animal” Barboza. Barboza, though, was deemed too valuable to the FBI’s cause to be imprisoned, just as Bulger was deemed too valuable to be closed. Different names bred of the same culture of corruption that survived and thrived from one era to the next.

In this latter case, the district court was hardly random in coming up with that $102 million judgment; the figure was arrived at by essentially billing the government one million dollars for each of the years the falsely convicted four men spent in prison. Since both Tameleo and Greco died behind bars, they weren’t in any position to enjoy the money. Salvatti and Limone, while still alive, lost their youth and the better part of their lives to an attitude and philosophy that spawned the Bulger era. And on April 30, 2010, the federal government, through U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, elected not to appeal the decision by simply letting the deadline pass, meaning that $102 million judgment is sure to stand.

There was more.

“Judge Admits He Was Too Harsh on Mother of Whitey Bulger Victim,” proclaimed a November 5, 2009, headline in the
Boston Herald.

That victim was Debra Davis, strangled by her friend Whitey Bulger in 1981 after he grew jealous of her infatuation with Steve Flemmi. Her remains were found along with John McIntyre’s and Bucky Barrett’s in that makeshift grave back in the winter of 2000. I testified in that trial, filed on behalf of several Bulger murder victims, including Davis, Deborah Hussey, and an ex-bookie named Louis Litif who sought monetary damages on the grounds that the FBI was complicit in their deaths. Litif had been an informant for Connolly. Davis and Hussey were both young, attractive women linked sexually to Bulger. Their contention was that the FBI was responsible for the slayings because they knew Bulger and Flemmi were killers, but protected them anyway from prosecution because they were also informants. The Justice Department’s response was that the FBI wasn’t obligated to control Bulger and Flemmi.

There were several moments during my testimony before Judge William Young that caused a stir. The government attorneys, still smarting, took a couple of swipes at me, calling my integrity into question, raising the Cape Cod shooting incident yet again, and alluding to the cover-up Greenleaf had accused me of. They were intimating that I had gotten censured over it.

“They are lying,” I told the judge.

Judge Young simply posed to me the same questions that the government attorneys had. “Let me ask you, then,” he said. “Did you get in trouble over your actions regarding this incident?”

“No, Your Honor, absolutely not,” I replied, to which the judge stated simply, “Fine,” and resumed the trial.

My testimony, as in the McIntyre case, was centered on my efforts to close Bulger as an FBI informant being curtailed and waylaid at every juncture. In the end, an everfrustrated Judge Young agreed. At one point, he said, “I’m prepared to find there is a massive and widespread cover-up going on here.”

In May 2009, Judge Young also awarded an $8.5 million judgment to the families of Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue since the FBI had turned a blind eye to their murders at the hands of Whitey Bulger in 1982. (The case was later overturned on appeal based on a procedural technicality—the family of Michael Donahue had waited too long to file.) A month later Judge Young awarded $6.25 million to the family of Richie Castucci. Young was assigned both cases after Judge Lindsay, who’d presided over the McIntyre trial, died in March of that year. But, as in the McIntyre trial, Lindsay had already issued his rulings, leaving it to Young only to determine how much the government should pay up.

There were other cases filed, including one by the widow of John Callahan, and many are still winding their way through a system of justice that has failed so many at every other juncture. But the Connolly, Salvati, and McIntyre decisions shed light at last on my claims that had for so long remained in the dark. In that sense, my life has come full circle: from a young boy listening to
This Is Your FBI,
to a twenty-year-plus career with the Bureau, to never letting go of my convictions after my departure, to finally seeing those convictions rewarded. I take great pride and comfort, even solace, in that sense of closure, but not pleasure. There’s no pleasure, because none of the trials that have been or will be should ever have happened.

Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity
 …

If the FBI had just stuck to its motto, this never would’ve happened. If the agents had stuck to their oath, things would have been different.

The vindication achieved in these court findings restored at least a measure of my dream to me. And sometimes, once in a great while, I awaken to the reverie of soft murmurs of voices acting out the night’s episode of
This Is Your FBI.
The words of my boyhood heroes sift down the hall into my bedroom, just as they did at the Mount, until they slowly dissipate, leaving a smile on my face as I drift back to sleep.

EPILOGUE

In the middle of the night of June 23, 2011, I received a call from a major TV group informing me Whitey Bulger was apprehended in Santa Monica, California, with his girlfriend Catherine Greig. Bulger, now eighty-one, was arrested following a tip from a woman in Iceland. The media jumped on that revelation, finding it incredible that it took a woman from Iceland to finally bring to a close a drama that had been going on since Bulger’s disappearance in 1995. Over the years the FBI had battled the perception that it had not tried hard enough to find Bulger, despite listing him as the number two man on their Most Wanted list, just behind Osama Bin Laden. And in ironic counterpoint, he was captured just a few months following Bin Laden’s execution at the hands of Navy SEALs in Pakistan. Both fugitives hiding in plain sight.

The comparison does not end there. Lenin once wrote that the purpose of terror is to terrify, and there is no more apt description of Whitey Bulger than that. The man who tortured and murdered John McIntyre, the man who strangled Debra Davis, may have also terrified the FBI for the information he could reveal about his sordid relationship with the Bureau and the fact that he provided virtually nothing in exchange for the protection afforded him. Between the time I recommended Bulger be closed as an informant in March 1981 and the time of his disappearance in 1984, at least eight people fell to his murderous hand, three of them informants willing and able to testify against him. Their names, which bear repeating, were Roger Wheeler, Debra Davis, Arthur “Bucky” Barrett, Deborah Husey, Michael Donahue, Brian Halloran, John Callahan, and John McIntyre.

And now he’s been brought to justice, soon to stand trial before another in a long line of district court judges who have presided over cases in which the FBI’s complicity in Bulger’s murderous rise to criminal power first came to legal light. In the information-laden, explosive weeks after Bulger was captured I was contacted by a slew of media outlets, among them the
Boston Globe,
the
Boston Herald,
the
New York Times,
Fox, CBS, and NPR. All of them begging me to tell the truth no one wanted to hear during my tenure in Boston. I thought I’d achieved my vindication in the various trials that affirmed and corroborated so many of my claims that had fallen on deaf ears for so long.

I was wrong.

My true vindication has come now, in the court of public opinion, where the truth has finally come out. The
Boston Globe
ran an article entitled “Here’s to Honest Cops Who Made a Difference,” mentioning “Bob Fitzpatrick, a good FBI Agent who tried to save his agency from the rot that was Whitey Bulger.” NPR/WBUR ran a story called “The FBI Agent Who Really Wanted ‘Whitey’” that was broadcast across New England and proclaimed, “When Bob Fitzpatrick was brought into Boston as second in command of the FBI office in the early 1980s, it didn’t take him long to figure out something wasn’t right.”

I echoed the perspective of a lawyer with South Boston roots named Ray Jennings III who reflected on hearing tales of Whitey Bulger from both his father and grandfather. In a July 11, 2011,
Boston Globe
article, he rightfully credited Lehr and O’Neill’s
Black Mass
with finally exposing the truth behind the legend. Only one thing was missing.

“I hope we all have the opportunity to finally hear the ending,” he told reporter Nancy Harris.

*   *   *

A short time after things settled down, I visited Mount Loretto, perhaps for the last time. I was surprised to see how it had all changed. As I turned the street corner, there was no fear anymore; the Gothic cathedral was there, the administrative house was there, the huge playing fields, but little else. Appropriately enough, it was a misty, rainy day, with gentle drops enhancing my melancholy thoughts. The bridge to the dining hall was gone, along with the cottages that held us together as young lads. The steam pipes were gone, no more hissing and clanking, and no more little boys hanging from them for dear life.

The “stone child” raised in that orphanage was still rooted in my soul. Here I learned to fight the good fight and never stopped fighting. Now that another chapter of the story is out, some former FBI agents commend me for falling on my sword while others still turn a blind eye to the FBI’s complicity. New court appearances, more depositions, and additional trials await me, as well as other names from a past so long shrouded in darkness now finally assured of seeing the light.

This story has not ended, not even close.

I walked to the Mount cemetery, strewn with unmowed grass, and found Father Kenny’s grave site. He had made monsignor before his death, according to the simple headstone, but he’ll always be Father Kenny to me. I chatted silently with the good father and told him what had happened. He didn’t chide me for being scrupulous in this confession, even when I paraphrased his own words back to him, “There’s not a more honorable thing in this world to me than being an FBI agent.”

I knew in my heart I’d always done the honorable thing and I believe Father Kenny knows that, too. Maybe that’s what he meant all along. I try to hold on to him in my mind, as I feel memories of him and the Mount slipping away no matter how hard I try not to forget.

Sister Mary Assumpta is gone as well, along with her radio show,
This Is Your FBI
—a memory that, except for those occasional nights when I think I can still hear it, is fading, too.

APPENDIX CONTENTS