Yesterday brought the news that Whitey Bulger is dead. The plot twist here is that an 89-year-old man with heart disease didn’t die of natural causes. No, he was killed in prison, and a fellow inmate with Mafia connections is being investigated for this crime. Guess it takes a psychopathic P.O.S. to kill a psychopathic P.O.S.
For decades, Whitey was on the scene, running the Irish chapter of the Boston mob. His crimes – extortion, racketeering, theft, murder – were often overlooked or covered out by the local FBI, some of who found their fellow Irish-American a useful informant against the “Eyties” – the Italians who comprised the city’s Mafia.
Then FBI agent John Connolly, Whitey’s fellow South Boston native and Whitey’s FBI handler, tipped Whitey that his luck was about to run out. He was finally going to be arrested. So Whitey went on the lam with his girlfriend. And managed to stay under the radar for 16 years before the long arm of the law finally reached out and grabbed h8im by the neck.
Since then, Whitey’s been in the stir. He had been in his new prison location in West Virginia for less than a day when someone got to him. It’s been reported that he was beaten to death.
I’ve been in Boston a long time, and for much of that time, Whitey’s presence in this city was almost palpable. The myth was that if Whitey did anything criminal, the good he did – a local Robin Hood handing out turkeys to widows and orphans etc. – outweighed the bad. And besides, the myth went, the evil that he did was done elsewhere, not on A Street, not on B Street, not along Old Colony Boulevard or Dot Ave. Whitey, they said, protected his home turf, kept it safe, kept out drugs. This myth was just that: a preposterous crock of utter nonsense.
He killed people in cold blood. Not just fellow hoods, but those on the periphery: his partner’s girlfriend, her daughter. And the most innocent of bystanders: a fellow who was giving a lift to someone he’d grown up with, a someone who Whitey wanted done away with. Michael Donahue had nothing to do with Whitey and his ilk. Collateral damage.
The myth about Bulger keeping the drugs out of Boston was put to rest by Southie writer Michael Patrick MacDonald. MacDonald grew up rough, in the Southie projects, and lost a couple of sibs to the drugs that Whitey, indeed, brought into the neighborhood he was supposedly so protective of. McDonald exploded the Myth of Whitey in his brilliant 2007 memoir, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. Tomorrow, on the Catholic calendar, is All Souls Day. Fitting.
I never to my knowledge laid eyes on Whitey Bulger. But it was hard to miss his brother Billy.
In a story which, if presented as fiction, would have people’s eyes rolling, Billy was the altar boy. The straight-A, Latin-spoutingTriple Eagle (graduate of Boston College High School, BC, and BC Law) who, as President of the Massachusetts State Senate, was arguably the most powerful pol in the state. He then got set up a cush retirement job as head of the University of Massachusetts system, a post that I believe Governor Mitt Romney – to his credit – removed Billy B from. I met Bill Bulger in passing a couple of times. He gave off a combined nasty-smarmy pol vibe. My niece Molly was a pre-school classmate of one of his grandkids. This is a small town. No one’s more than one degree of separation from anyone else.
The world is a better place without Whitey Bulger in it.
Do I wish he’d just dropped dead, rather than be beaten to death? Yes. Even a psycho P.O.S. doesn’t deserve to die that way. Especially a frail 89 year old psycho P.O.S. But no great loss.
I’ll give the semi-final word to the widow of the poor bastard who died while giving a buddy from the old neighborhood a ride home and just got caught in the crossfire. I heard Patricia Donahue on the news, and here’s what she had to say: “There’s one less scumbag on this earth.”
So long, Whitey. As we used to say in Worcester, good riddance to bad rubbish.
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