Where the Bodies Were Buried Read Online Free PDF Page A

journalist since Bulger’s apprehension in Santa Monica. The article appeared under the headline “The Scapegoat” and created a stir. The U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts was livid that Connolly had been publicly interviewed and allowed to make statements that were not beneficial to their case against Bulger. A spokesperson for the district attorney in Miami-Dade County publicly condemned the article. Prison authorities in Chipley were not pleased that Connolly had used the opportunity to call his murder conviction into question. Connolly was punished, thrown in “the hole” for fifty-one days of solitary confinement.
    The incident reaffirmed something I had learned since I began writing about the government’s various criminal prosecutions in relation to the Bulger fiasco. Any attempt to present a broader narrative of culpability that stretched above and beyond Bulger, Connolly, and the usual suspectswould be met with resistance, if not outright malice, by representatives of the criminal justice system in the U.S. District of Massachusetts. 2
    THE BOOK YOU hold in your hand is an account of the trial of Whitey Bulger from a particular point of view. Like many reporters who have followed the Bulger story over the years, my conclusions are my own but have been shaped by the interviews I have done with people who were close to the events that led directly to Bulger’s rise and fall.
    As with other writers, I came to the trial with an “agenda” of sorts. It was my hope that the People of the United States v. James J. Bulger would be a final accounting of the entire Bulger scandal, not only laying out the full cast of characters that had enabled Bulger—all the way up the chain of command to Washington, D.C.—but also delving into the historical antecedents that had helped create Bulger in the first place. Even with all the articles, published memoirs, and many nonfiction books, television documentaries, and feature films based on the Bulger story, many important facts remained unknown. The trial represented an opportunity—perhaps a final opportunity—for a more complete picture of the Bulger scandal to finally be revealed.
    From early June 2013 to mid-August, with a brief return in November, I attended every minute of every day of the trial and sentencing. Under federal law, cameras were prohibited from recording events in the courtroom, so the demand for seats was high for media people and spectators who hoped to view the proceedings live and in person. Some days I took in the proceedings from the actual courtroom where the trial took place, but mostly I watched from the media “overflow room,” a separate room on a different floor in the courthouse.
    Over the course of eight weeks, the trial unfolded like a casting callof characters from the Boston underworld spanning four decades. Along with the now-familiar turncoat trio of Flemmi, John Martorano, and Kevin Weeks, who had testified at many Bulger-related hearings and trials over the previous decade and a half, the supporting cast included assorted hoods who had never before been heard from in public. Though their testimony may not have shed much light on the central conspiracy of Bulger’s informant relationship with the Justice Department, it did offer many pungent anecdotes and insights into one of the most rambunctious criminal underworlds in the United States over the latter half of the twentieth century.
    In the pages that follow, wherever testimony from the trial is reproduced it is derived directly from the court transcript. Other events from inside the courtroom are re-created from my own notes and memory. Whenever possible, these events were further enhanced by follow-up conversations with the participants involved.
    Seventy-one witnesses took the stand at the trial (see Appendix A). As far-reaching and devastating as the testimony appeared to be, it became clear as the proceedings