Where the Bodies Were Buried (36 page)

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.”

“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.”

Bucky Barrett had done well for himself as a freelance criminal. Everyone knew that he had been a party to the Depositors Trust bank robbery, which had netted millions. Bulger and Flemmi had already tried to shake down Barrett, insisting that they deserved a cut of the heist simply because they were in charge now, and any major score that occurred in the greater Boston area was within their domain. Not only had Barrett resisted the shakedown, but he went to Frankie Salemme, Steve Flemmi's old partner from the time of the Boston gang wars in the 1960s. As Weeks explained it, “Frankie basically said that [Bucky] was with him, he was an earner, so [Bulger and Flemmi] backed away.”

Bulger let it slide, but he never forgot how Bucky had finagled his way out of the shakedown. It was now a number of years later, and Whitey had ascended in the underworld; he had gone from being a hustler to being a predator. With his powerful political brother, and his secret relationship with the FBI, Bulger believed he was untouchable. And so part of his modus operandi became feeding off other criminals in the area, luring them into scams and extortions, knowing that, unlike him, they had nowhere to turn.

Said Weeks, “A plan was devised to suck Bucky in, to shake him down. . . . There was a fellow who had a lot of hot diamonds. The plan was that Bucky was going to meet this fellow and buy diamonds off him.”

“Who was this fellow?” asked the prosecutor.

“Well, it was myself.”

Barrett was brought to the house on Third Street to meet the diamond dealer. He was brought by Jim Martorano, Johnny's brother. Bucky had known Jimmy Martorano for years; he trusted him.

“Bucky came in the house. . . . We shook hands, and I grabbed him by the hand and held him. Jim Bulger stepped out of the kitchen with a Mac-10 nine-millimeter, and he said, ‘Bucky Barrett, freeze!' He then took possession of him. . . . Barrett was taken to the kitchen and chained and manacled, you know, handcuffed to a chair. . . . Jim told Jimmy Martorano
to take off, which he did immediately. It was now Steve Flemmi, myself, and Jim Bulger.”

The interrogation of Bucky Barrett lasted nearly all day. With him chained to a chair, a machine gun pointed at his chest, Bulger and Flemmi grilled Bucky about all the money they believed he had hidden away from his many successful scores. Eventually Barrett began to wear down; he admitted that he had money hidden in his house. The gangsters made Barrett call home to his wife. The conversation was on speakerphone, so they could hear everything that was said. Barrett told his wife to leave the house. She was worried and wanted to know what was going on. Bucky told her to do as she was told, not to worry, everything would be okay.

The plan was for Bulger and Flemmi to go over to the house and take the money.

At some point, Pat Nee came by the house. His brother Michael, the proprietor of the house, was on vacation in Florida. Pat had allowed Bulger and Flemmi access to the house. They wanted to use it because it was conveniently located a half block away from the home of Steve Flemmi's mother and also the screen house where the gang stored its arsenal of weapons.

While Bulger and Flemmi headed over to the home of Bucky Barrett, Weeks and Nee were assigned the task of keeping an eye on Bucky. He remained strapped to a kitchen chair. At one point, Bucky took out a wallet-size photo of his newborn daughter and began to pray.

Bulger and Flemmi returned with forty-seven thousand dollars in cash they had retrieved from Barrett's house. But that wasn't enough. Bulger told Bucky they wanted more. Bucky told them that he had ten thousand dollars over at Rascal's, a popular bar and restaurant located at Faneuil Hall, the city's famous historic site and tourist mall. Weeks was told to drive over there and pick up the money, which he did. Then he returned to the house. By the time he returned, Pat Nee was no longer there.

They had now extorted $57,000 out of Bucky, but they wanted more. They came up with a plan for Bucky to call Joe Murray in Charlestown. They knew that Bucky had made money as a partner of Murray in the cocaine and marijuana business. They told him to call Murray and inform him that he was leaving town and wanted to cash out his end of the cocaine business. If Murray didn't go along with it, Bucky was to tell him he would rat out everybody.

By now, Bucky Barrett was a beaten man. He was bartering to save his life and was willing to do whatever Bulger and Flemmi ordered him to do. He called Murray and made his demands, according to the script. Over the speakerphone, Murray cursed at Bucky and said, “You always were a rat. Fuck off!” Then Joe Murray hung up.

Well, it had been a long day, and they had apparently squeezed all they could out of Bucky Barrett. So Bucky, still manacled and in chains, was led down towards the basement, where Whitey Bulger shot him in the back of the head.

Said Weeks, “Bucky tumbled down to the bottom of the stairs, where Stevie grabbed his body and dragged him over to the side. . . . Stevie had me go get a plastic container with water. He wanted cold water. He explained to me that the cold water helps congeal the blood; it's easier for the cleanup. He was talking to me, kind of teaching as he went. We cleaned up all the blood and everything, and then [Stevie] went over and proceeded to take out Bucky's teeth.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was down there with him. I started digging the hole.”

“Who helped you digging the hole?”

“Originally, [it was me], then Pat Nee came back. He came downstairs. He was a little upset because it was his brother's house. It was supposed to be a shakedown; we weren't supposed to be killing anybody. So he was mad that [Bucky] got murdered in his brother's house. Then we were digging the hole, he didn't like it. He said, ‘I feel like I'm digging my own hole.' I said, ‘What do you want to do?' He said, ‘There's nothing we can do. They got the guns.' So we continued digging the hole. Stevie prepared the body; we took it over, put it in the hole, put lime on it, and covered it over.”

For Kevin Weeks, the murder and burial of Bucky Barrett was a disorienting initiation into the more macabre aspects of the Bulger organization, but he had made his commitment to the gang. In for a penny, in for a pound. He left the house on Third Street that night hoping that nothing like that ever happened again. Which made it all the more unnerving when, just fifteen months later, he found himself in the midst of a similar situation.