【英语语言学习】波士顿最臭名昭著的恶棍
时间：2019-02-16 作者：英语课 分类：英语语言学习
英语课
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Whitey Bulger, the Boston criminal that inspired Jack 1 Nicholson's character in the Martin Scorsese film "The Departed," was captured in 2011 after 16 years on the run as one of the FBI's most wanted men. Two years after his capture, he's facing federal racketeering charges, including charges that he participated in 19 murders. The trial begins next week.
Whitey Bulger's story is extraordinary in many ways. While he was becoming one of Boston's most notorious criminals, his brother Bill was becoming one of the most powerful men in the Massachusetts legislature. Whitey ran guns for the IRA, once fire-bombed JFK's birthplace to protest school busing in Boston and repeatedly took LSD in prison as part of a CIA-sponsored experiment.
What made Bulger's criminal career even more remarkable 3 was his close collaboration 4 with FBI agents who used him as an informant. Journalists Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, veteran reporters for the Boston Globe, say this relationship became corrupt 5 and that several agents protected Bulger from other investigators 6 looking into multiple murders he's now charged with.
Kevin Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and Shelley Murphy is a recipient 7 of the George Polk Award. They're the authors of "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster 8 and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." I spoke 9 with them in February. Kevin Cullen, Shelley Murphy, welcome to FRESH AIR.
KEVIN CULLEN: This book is just a great read, I have to tell you, so many terrific, amazing stories in here. It's a story of, you know, a remarkable career criminal and a shameful 10 episode in the history of the FBI but also a story of a city and a neighborhood. Tell us a little bit about South Boston and the Bulger family.
Well South Boston is literally 11 a peninsula and figuratively an island. It's a place set apart from Boston, in Boston. It's sort of always thought of itself - we talk about American exceptionalism, well, there was Southie exceptionalism because folks that live in that neighborhood, and that included me for a big chunk 12 of my life, thought of themselves as living in the best part of the city.
It's not unusual for people to refer to it as God's country, and it's a place - like I said, it's set apart, both figuratively and literally, from the city, and as a result, people have their own ways.
DAVIES: So it's a tight-knit community, row houses, primarily Irish back in those days or no?
CULLEN: It was - well, it was heavily Irish, but it was just very ethnic 13. There were a lot of people, a lot of Poles there. There were people from Lithuania. There were Italians. It was a mix. But certainly the - it's not only predominately Irish, it's Irish in ethos.
If you're there, you're almost Irish by osmosis in South Boston because even in the public schools, kids would learn Irish songs. That's the kind of Irish ethos that ran through South Boston. And even the unofficial mascot 14 of the town, as natives refer to that neighborhood, it's the Fighting Irish, the leprechaun in sort of a boxing pose, the belligerent 15 boxing pose with his fists up.
And it's a tough part of town, and it always was. And Whitey grew up in a time when it was particularly blue collar and particularly rough around the edges, and where he grew up it was particularly rough around the edges: It was a housing project.
DAVIES: All right, so let's talk about Whitey Bulger. His name was James, right, belonged to a big family. Did he get into crime early?
SHELLEY MURPHY: He did get into crime early. His first arrest was at age 13. He started, you know, with stealing, tailgating, you know, hanging out down by the waterfront where they would, you know, steal products off the back of trucks.
CULLEN: Yeah, one thing that struck, that we found out in one of the letters that we reviewed, Whitey talked about when he was 16 years old, he was in the back of a precinct house in South Boston. And he said a police officer jammed a gun in his mouth, and the police officer was leaning so close to him that he could smell the liquor on his breath. It was a really dramatic scene.
But even at that tender age of 16, Whitey was, you know, clearly in the fast life and in the criminal life. And I think that sort of began that sort of confrontational 16 attitude he had with authority, right there. I mean, he was somebody who was going to have situations like that.
DAVIES: So Whitey picks his profession early, and he certainly stays with it. Bill, his brother, goes a different direction. One of you tell us about Bill.
CULLEN: Just the - I mean, they call Bill The Bean because they could see - from the street below, they'd see him studying in his room above. And Bill decided 17 at a very early age, when he was in ninth grade, he decided to - if he was going to get out of South Boston - or not even get out of South Boston, but if he was going to make something of himself, he was going to go to Boston College High School.
And he more or less got himself in there. It showed incredible gumption 18. And Bill, you know, in our town you'd call somebody who's gone to Boston College High School, Boston College and then Boston College Law School, a triple eagle. And Billy Bulger was a triple eagle.
DAVIES: And he went into politics successfully.
CULLEN: Yeah, not unusual in that part of town. That's the other thing about Southie. The Irish learned very - the Irish were not particularly liked when they arrived in Boston in the latter half of the 19th century, and they realized the way to really seize power was to take political power. And nowhere - and in South Boston, that ethos was stronger than anyplace else.
The politicians were routinely considered the most important people in South Boston, and it was a great profession to get into.
MURPHY: Another thing that was very interesting about the Bulger household growing up is their father had lost his arm in an accident. And so he had difficulty finding work. So not only were they living in the projects, but that money, you know, money was tight.
And it seems, you know, according to interviews that we conducted, that Whitey, you know, he wanted things, and he wasn't - you know, the way he got them was not legally. And he was frustrated 19 at being poor. He didn't like being poor. Billy describes his childhood in very, sort of, nostalgic terms.
He talks about, you know, the good parts of Southie, all these, you know, wonderful memories of families, you know, gathered out in the courtyard of the project in games of tag. Whitey talks about, you know, being beat by his father and always trying to escape to something better.
DAVIES: All right, so as Whitey becomes a prominent criminal, Billy does very well and eventually becomes one of the most powerful people in the Massachusetts legislature. But let's go back to in Whitey's criminal career. He becomes a bank robber, gets caught, and at age 26 gets a lengthy 21 prison sentence, ends up doing part of it at Alcatraz.
He gets paroled in 1965 and finds his way back to South Boston. And you write about there had been some - a series of gang wars among the Irish criminals in the neighborhood, and peace was made. And Whitey gets out and ends up becoming one of the most important criminals in Boston - Irish criminals in the area.
He ends up establishing quite a place for himself, him and a longtime associate named Steve Flemmi. They became important criminals in the city. How did he make his money then? What did they do?
CULLEN: Well, you know, timing 22 is everything, and when you look at it, Whitey was able to emerge from prison to a very depleted 23 underworld. There were over 60 people killed, mostly Irish gangsters 24, while he was away in prison. And so he was able to rise very quickly.
And he asserted himself, you know, he had told everybody, and a lot of people believed him, that he was going to go straight. But we found in our research that, you know, he dove pretty quickly back into the underworld. And he became an enforcer for a group called the Killeen Brothers. They were the pre-eminent gangsters in South Boston at the time, and they had a massive, extensive bookmaking operation.
And there was a lot of money to be made in that. And so Whitey became a protector for them. You know, he would have been a strong-arm guy. He would have been going around forcing people to pay their debts. And he had to do what he had to do to protect the Killeens.
Now he kind of knew Flemmi because when he got out of prison, one of the first things he did, he went to this after-hours club in The Roxbury section of Boston outside of South Boston, and he tried to basically get himself back in that life.
DAVIES: There's this fascinating episode when a federal court ordered the integration 25 of the Boston school system, which meant, you know, busing kids to achieve racial balance from one community to another, and it meant some African-American kids being bused into South Boston. Whitey Bulger really got involved here. How did he react to this?
MURPHY: Well, he was furious. And, you know, there was a feeling in South Boston that they were - people were unfairly labeled as racists if they were - opposed busing. And it was really this anger that a judge, a federal judge, was telling them that your children will be bused out of the neighborhood, across town, to a neighborhood that's higher in crime, with schools that a federal judge has already found were inferior.
So there was this feeling of being put upon. And so while Billy Bulger became one of the most outspoken 26, you know, political opponents of busing, Whitey was working behind the scenes, his own little campaign to stir up trouble. And what we found from talking to some of his former associates is that one of the things he did is drive over to Brookline, to President John F. Kennedy's birthplace, and fire bomb his birthplace.
And part of the motivation was that Ted 2 Kennedy, at the time was, you know, a very outspoken proponent 27 of the need to desegregate the schools. He was very outspoken about it. And, you know, Whitey went over, and he wrote in chalk, spray-painted on the sidewalk, bus Teddy.
DAVIES: I want to ask one other question about this: Did he use his special talents as a criminal to help his brother's political career?
CULLEN: Well, one thing we found in researching the book is that Whitey took great interest in his brother's political career and was thrilled. He was actually in Alcatraz when Billy was first elected to the state legislature.
We found that there was one case that, when a fellow challenged Billy for the open Senate seat out of South Boston, Whitey went after the guy and really, you know, lit into him, at least verbally. And Billy, supposedly, told him to back off.
But throughout his career as a criminal, Billy - I mean Whitey was very often working behind the scenes to target anybody that would be perceived as a political enemy of his brother Bill. One example would be Frank Bellotti, who was the attorney general of Massachusetts. And he actually ran for governor, and he pitted himself against John Silber - then the president of Boston University - and a very close friend of Bill Bulger's.
And so Whitey and his henchmen were going around town tearing down Bellotti's signs, his political signs, and they actually were spray-painting stuff on buildings and walls, reminding people of the very controversial case when a fellow that had been targeted for prosecution 28 by Frank Bellotti actually killed himself. And so that's the level that Whitey - I mean, Whitey was - like he did during busing, this was all stealth, but it was very, very pointed 29.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, both veteran reporters whose new book about the veteran Boston criminal is called "Whitey Bulger." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with veteran reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. They've collaborated 30 on a new biography of Whitey Bulger. It's called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice."
Whitey becomes a very successful criminal. He makes a ton of money. He's a violent guy. But his personal habits are also really fascinating, you know, his diet, his drinking, his physical fitness obsession 31.
MURPHY: Well, even from the time when he was a young man, before he went to prison for bank robbery, he was a physical fitness buff. He had a gym, you know, that he worked out on before they became popular. He liked to run. He liked to keep in shape. And when he came out of prison and hooked up with his friend Stephen Flemmi, one thing the two of them had in common is that they did not drink.
They took care of themselves. They saw drinking as a weakness, a vulnerability. They did not do drugs. They were very careful. They prided themselves on being very smart. They read books. They were intellectuals, as much as a guy in that line of business can be an intellectual.
But they were very, very concerned about being fit and being perceived as a threat. They were very intimidating 32, physically 33 and, you know, and with their reputations, what they were willing to do.
DAVIES: And then there's his remarkable relationships with the women in his life.
CULLEN: Yeah, that was - I think Shelley and I both agree that one of the things we really learned by peeling these onions back, is that Whitey had this - it was sort of - like a lot of things in Whitey's life, there's a contradiction because he was always seeking this domestic bliss 34, and yet he kept two households.
And so he - and when he came out of prison in 1965, he very soon got involved with a woman named Theresa Stanley, a single mother with four kids. And Whitey insisted that - you know, he more or less became a surrogate father to these children.
And he insisted that they have a sit-down family dinner every night. And he would sit there, and it was almost like "Father Knows Best" or "Ozzie and Harriet." And Whitey would just lecture the kids about how they needed to stay in school, and study hard, and save their money, and stay in great physical shape and stay away from bad influences.
And after that, he would, you know, wipe his mouth with the napkin, he would leave and go out and do crime for a few hours, and then he would retire to the bosom 35 of his other mistress, a woman named Cathy Greig.
And the other thing that was interesting about this sort of love triangle is that while Cathy Greig obviously knew about Theresa Stanley and that domestic side of Whitey's life, Theresa Stanley was completely in the dark about the relationship that Whitey had with Cathy Greig.
And she only became aware of it in a very dramatic scene that we have in the book is when Cathy Greig called her out of the blue and said we need to talk. And this was...
DAVIES: And this is after decades of him doing this.
MURPHY: Yeah, and he had been with Theresa Stanley for nearly 30 years, and he had been with Cathy for about - almost 20 of those years. And Theresa was a very kind, lovely woman. She lived in South Boston. And Whitey was very careful to keep her away from Cathy Greig, who had also grown up in South Boston.
And the two women couldn't have been more different. Theresa was very sort of traditional, stay-at-home mom, you know, raising the kids. Cathy was very - you know, she was very career-oriented. She had attended Northeastern University. She was working in the dental school there, teaching students, and had, you know, planned on having a career.
But she met Whitey when she was very young, and she basically gave up her career to take care of him. And he would come to her house at, like, two, three in the morning, and she would be there all made up, dinner on the table and very - both women very, very much crazy about him. And I think both were in complete denial that he was doing, you know, the things he's accused of doing.
DAVIES: All right, so Whitey Bulger becomes a successful, dangerous, intimidating and money-earning criminal. But this is a fascinating story in its connection to the FBI. There's this Agent, John Connolly, who has a long, close relationship with Whitey Bulger. Tell us about him. How did he know the Bulger family?
CULLEN: Well, it goes right back to that housing project where it all began, Dave. It's - you know, John Connolly grew up in the same housing project. And they grew up in this place in South Boston where loyalty 36 was everything: loyalty to your family, loyalty to your neighborhood, loyalty to your neighbors.
And so Connolly actually - you know, one of the important influences on his life when he was growing up, was Billy Bulger because Billy Bulger he saw as, you know, that's what I want to be. I want to study, I want to get ahead. And Bill Bulger was, you know, instrumental in pointing the right way for John Connolly. Go to school, you know, go to college.
And so John Connolly went to Boston College, and then John Connolly became an FBI agent. And when John Connolly was transferred back, after a few years on the road, to the Boston office, one of the first things he decided to do was seek out Whitey Bulger as an informant.
And the reason he did that is while Whitey was by this time one of the pre-eminent Irish gangsters in Boston, at this time the mafia was the national priority of the FBI. The FBI didn't take into account regional differences. They wouldn't look at Boston and say, well, geez, the Irish guys are just as bad as the Italians, we'd better take them both out. That wasn't what was going on.
And so Connolly approached Jimmy Bulger, as he would call him, Whitey, and recruited him as an informant, ostensibly to help the FBI take on the mafia. One problem with that approach is that Whitey Bulger didn't know much about the mafia, how he could - the difference is Steve Flemmi, his criminal partner, really did know a lot.
So they became, you know, two for the price of one. The FBI actually put them together. So they were a tag team. The two real main conditions other than he said he didn't want his brother Bill to know this, is Whitey said he would never give up his friends, and he would never give up the Irish Republican Army.
And as soon as Whitey agreed to become an informant for the FBI, he realized what a deal this was, because he immediately went out and killed a guy that he had been wanting to kill probably for a long time and then went to see his handler and give him the report that - you know, and he would implicate 37 somebody else in the killing 38.
And then the other thing he did right after he became an informant, he really stepped up his involvement with the IRA, sending them weapons, and that culminated 39 with a - the biggest shipment ever sent from America to the IRA in 1984, which he had a huge role in.
DAVIES: You said that he killed a guy he'd been after for a while and then reported that to Connolly?
CULLEN: Yeah, one of the first things he did after he made his deal with Connelly and agreed to provide information, is he set about going to kill a guy named Tommy King, who had been part of a rival gang, the Mullens, but then had become, ostensibly, part of Whitey's gang.
But Whitey always, always wanted to kill him. And now that he had the cover of the FBI, he was able to do that. And not only was he able to do that, he was able to throw the trail off him, off himself, after he did the killing. So what he did was first he killed Tommy King, then he killed another rival in the Mullens' gang, a guy named Buddy 40 Leonard.
And then he went and sat - after he did these killings 41 - he left Buddy Leonard in the back of a car, but he secretly buried Tommy King so they couldn't find his body. And then he sat down with John Connolly, his FBI handler, and said: Hey, I hear that Tommy King killed Buddy Leonard.
And so Connolly writes that report up, and that report is disseminated 42 to people in law enforcement, including the Boston police, who are supposedly out there trying to find out who killed Buddy Leonard.
And then a few weeks go by, and then, you know, Whitey meets with Connolly again, and now the story is uh-oh, you know, I heard that the - somebody's going to kill Tommy King because of this, he brought too much heat on everybody. And then three weeks go by, and then he sits down with Connolly again, and now the third story is that, well, Tommy King's dead, they got rid of him.
So Whitey realized, very soon in this relationship, that he could use it to his advantage, that not only could he settle scores and not worry about the FBI coming after him, but that the FBI would become active partners in his disinformation campaign.
DAVIES: Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy will be back in the second half of the show. Their book is "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." Bulger's federal racketeering trial begins next week in Boston. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Our guests, veteran Boston reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy have written a book about the career of legendary 43 Boston criminal, Whitey Bulger, who was captured in Santa Monica, California two years ago, after 16 years on the run. Their book, called "Whitey Bulger," details his close relationship with FBI agents who used him as an informant and at times protected him from investigators looking into murders Bulger is now charged with. He's about to go on trial on charges he was involved in 19 killings. Jury selection begins next week.
Bulger's closest criminal associate was a man name Steve Flemmi, who was also an FBI informant. Fleming is expected to be called to the stand to testify against Bulger.
There's a woman named Debra Davis who was killed. I mean there are too many murders for us to go into detail, but this is an interesting one. She was a girlfriend of Steve Flemmi, right?
MURPHY: Yes. She was a young girl. She was only a teenager working in a jewelry 44 store when he walked in and she caught his eye. Beautiful, gorgeous, young girl who looked a lot like a young Farrah Fawcett. He started dating her. At the time he, like Whitey, had various women in his life. He already, you know, was living with another woman and had children by her. But he started dating Debra and this relationship lasted for about nine years. He was buying her jewelry, and Jaguars 45, and Mercedes and she was very happy for a while with that life. But at some point she wanted marriage. She wanted kids. She wanted a family. And he didn't want any of that. She went on a vacation that he had paid for to Acapulco and met this wealthy businessman and fell in love. She came back and tried to break it off with Steve Flemmi. By this time she was 26 years old, but unfortunately for her, she knew about his relationship with the FBI. She knew that he had been having meetings with John Connolly. And Whitey and Steve Flemmi, according to testimony 46 in court, decided that she was a liability, that she knew too much to be able to walk away.
So the way that Steve Flemmi tells the story, is he told her that he wanted her to see a home that he had just purchased for his parents. Now this house happened to be right next door to Bill Bulger's home in South Boston. And on a night in September of 1981, 26-year-old Debra Davis walks into this home. And according to Flemmi, Whitey is waiting and strangles her, and Flemmi kisses her on the forehead and says you're going to a better place. They buried her body along the banks of the Neponset River just south of South Boston in Quincy. And her remains 47 weren't found for years, but it's one of the 19 murders that Whitey's charged with and one of two women he's accused of killing.
DAVIES: Right. And you make a point in the book that Whitey denies ever having killed a woman. But Flemmi says he was there and did this. Now the important thing about her is this: her mother, Debra Davis, the victim's mother, believes that Flemmi was behind it all along and told the FBI this, right? And how did they respond?
MURPHY: Well, it was at a the time in the Boston office when they were starting to be some suspicion about the relationship, by some agents, about the relationship between, Connolly and Whitey and Flemmi. And two agents interview Debra Davis's mother, Olga, and she talks about, you know, my daughter vanished. I believe that Flemmi is responsible. But the agents did not compile any reports. Now later they said they were concerned about leaving any sort of a paper trail. But it's very strange how this whole thing played out. You have this notorious gangster. He's dating this woman. She vanishes without a trace. And they did put a report in the FBI, you know, national computer database listing her as a missing person. And then mysteriously, suddenly there's an update to that report that oh, she's no longer missing. She's been, you know, spotted 48 somewhere in Texas, which was a complete lie. So, you know, someone in the FBI went into that database and altered the report. So her mother, you know was really afraid. She didn't really trust Flemmi. And now Flemmi's hanging around the house, taking up with younger sister, buying her a car, and so, you know, I think it put the mother in kind of a tough place and nobody really investigated.
DAVIES: Right.
CULLEN: Dave, you know, it's very important the timing of this, because the Debra Davis killing was one of several that followed in the next few years in which the FBI not only looked the other way, but they actually thwarted 49 the attempts of honest law enforcement officers to hold Whitey and Stevie Flemmi accountable for these killings. That is the most egregious 50 act you will find in that book - in our book. I mean, it's appalling 51 the way this was handled. Because the reason the FBI was so afraid of doing the right thing then is because Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi were used as confidential 52 informants to obtain the probable cause that allowed the FBI to plant bugs 53 in the headquarters of the Mafia in Boston. And so they're looking at these guys as assets. So here's the FBI on one hand, they're about to - in Boston - they're about to make the most important prosecution in the history of the office of the FBI, taking out the leadership of La Cosa Nostra in Boston, and the guys that helped them get this case are involved, are implicated 54 in a whole series of murders. So they didn't just look the other way, they made sure that nothing happened to Steve Flemmi and Whitey Bulger.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. Their new book is called "Whitey Bulger."
We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with veteran reporters Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen. Their new book about one of Boston's most notorious criminals is called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice."
This is an amazing situation where you have, you know, these two guys, Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi committing murders and the FBI covering up for them, misleading other authorities who are onto these murders, while these same two criminals are getting at least at least two of these FBI agents gifts and cash, and the bureau's, kind of, engaged in protecting them. And you write in 19 - the late '80s, the Boston Globe got onto this and started writing a story about Whitey, about his brother who was at this point a powerful man in the Massachusetts law legislature and about Whitey's relationship with this FBI agent John Connolly.
And Kevin Cullen, you write that you were visited by an FBI agent while you were working on the story. Tell us about that.
CULLEN: Well, I actually got a phone call.
DAVIES: OK.
CULLEN: Here's the background. John Connolly was my best FBI source. I mean John Connolly knew my family. It goes back to the Southy again. And he did things and said things that made me very uncomfortable. He just get praising Whitey and telling me how wonderful he is and, you know, and then my cousins are telling me that Whitey is killing people and that he's pushing drugs all over the town. So it really bothered me, so I went to our editors in, you know, I think it would've been'87 or '88 when we first started planning the series. I just said I think Whitey is a rat. There's no other explanation for why he would be allowed to be out there. The FBI should have been going after him years ago. And so we began that process and we found law enforcement people who were able to corroborate 55 that, in fact, Whitey was an informant.
And about two months before we went with this series, it was part of - it's called the Spotlight 56 Team, it's our investigative unit at the Globe; I got a call from an FBI agent named Tom Daly. He said that he had heard from one of his informants who was now in the witness protection program, that we were going to do this story and that we were going to name Whitey Bulger as an informant. The agent told me that it's not true and he said that if you report something that's not true Whitey will not live with that. And he said he would think nothing of clipping you, Kevin, and you know, you live there. So I lived in South Boston and I would be, I would have been seen among our team as being the most vulnerable.
We actually huddled 57, as a team, after that. Obviously, I was a little disturbed by the phone call, and we, kind of, decided that if the FBI was serious about this there would have been a formal notification process. That said, you know, I was shaken enough to that I would talk to other law enforcement people that I really trusted and believed in, in the Massachusetts State Police and the DEA, and let them know what the FBI said. So they would know. We wanted that on the record. And we ended up going with the series, but as a precaution, the Globe decided to put my wife and I up in a hotel outside of the city. And I told my wife that the concern was that maybe somebody wouldn't like the series or the stories and then throw rocks through our window. I wasn't totally honest with my wife at the time. But...
DAVIES: You didn't tell her about the FBI call? Yeah.
CULLEN: I didn't tell her about that until much later after that. But, you know, we had a very nice week in a very fine hotel. And the state police had worked their informants during that week to see what Whitey's reaction would have been to the series. And the only thing that came back from the state police informants is that Whitey didn't like one section of the series in which we reported that he beat up a wino in front of Teresa Stanley's house. He said that that was no wino. Apparently 58, he thought that made him look like a bully 59 if he beat up a wino. But he didn't say anything about the informant part of it. Now obviously, he was furious about it, but he actually told the FBI, after this was revealed in the Boston Globe, that nobody would believe it, that they would see it as just an attempt to get back at his brother.
DAVIES: Which is kind of what happened, right?
CULLEN: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's...
DAVIES: I mean people didn't believe he was an informant, right? Criminals.
CULLEN: Well, you know, one of the most incredible things that you see in the book, Dave, we ask Anthony Cardinale, a very, you know, a very well-respected lawyer who has represented some of the most senior Mafia figures in the country, including John Gotti, Tony Salerno and Jerry Angiulo here in Boston. And Tony asked them all, separately, how come you, why didn't anybody make a move on Bulger after the Globe put that in the paper. And they all said the same thing, they said they didn't believe that the FBI would get into bed with somebody as vicious and as venal 60 as Whitey Bulger. So the Mafia actually had a higher view of the FBI than it deserved. I think it was both.
DAVIES: So it wasn't that the FBI was concerned about your safety.
CULLEN: No.
DAVIES: It's that they wanted to muscle you off the story?
(LAUGHTER)
CULLEN: They weren't concerned about my safety. They weren't concerned about anybody safety when it came to Whitey Bulger. So no, they weren't concerned about my safety, just the opposite. I mean this actually became a point of contention 61 during Judge Mark Wolf's long evidentiary hearing. By this time I was the London bureau chief for the Boston Globe and I got subpoenaed 62 and had to come back and testify about this. And I spent three hours on the stand asserting what happened. And we had contemporaneous notes of that period. Because as soon as I got off the phone with - the threat - my editor Jerry O'Neil said write this memo 20 and agent daily never took the stand. They said he was going to but after I testified he never took the stand. And Judge Wolf in his findings made it clear that that spoke volumes, that Agent Daily would not get up and refute my testimony.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. Their new book is called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice."
Well, let's move the story toward its conclusion here. I mean, you know, eventually the state police and the Drug Enforcement Administration make a case against Whitey and his associates, not for the murders, but for some other crimes. Whitey gets tipped off by his FBI friend, John Connolly, and goes on the lam where he is at large for 16 years. And then his associates start cooperating. They realize they're in trouble and so details of these murders come out, one by one. But there's an interesting chapter in this tale about how the FBI's complicity with Whitey Bulger and his criminal friend Steve Flemmi, how that story comes out, and it involves this federal Judge Mark Wolf. Tell us about that.
MURPHY: When John Connolly warns Bulger's associate that an indictments 64 about to come down, he says they should flee. But Flemmi does not take that advice, he hangs around and he's caught. Now he's sitting in jail and he decides his best defense 65 is to claim that they were informants and they had immunity 66 from prosecution. And at that time, they were charged with just gambling 67 and loan sharking and shaking down drug dealers 68. And the defense is that the FBI gave us immunity from prosecution with the caveat 69 that we not kill anyone. Judge Wolf held hearings that lasted throughout the year, and as some of their codefendants are sitting there listening to, you know, the fact that Whitey and Steve Flemmi were informants, they're furious and they can see the writing on the wall. They're afraid that if Flemmi decides to, now, you know, cooperate that they'll all be implicated in murders. And they - it's basically a race to be the first one to cooperate.
And so the first one is a hit man, John Martorano, who tells about murders that happened in the '60s and '70s. And then later, much later, you know, another associate - a longtime associate of Whitey Bulger's cooperates and he leads them to the secret graves. And what's happening behind the scenes is, you know, the state police and the DEA are seeing this case, sort of, unravel 70. I mean, the idea that, you know, how could - the original indictment 63 was that, you know, the head of the New England Mafia at the time, and Bulger and Flemmi, were controlling the rackets around the city that they were dividing up, you know territory. But now that case was falling apart. How could there be, you know, a conspiracy 71 that involved the Mafia and Whitey Bulger being partners when a Whitey was an informant against the Mafia? So seeing the case fall apart really spurred the DEA and the state police to go out and start, you know, trying to gather new evidence. You know, they cut some deals that were very controversial, men who had admitted to murders and got these unbelievable deals.
I mean they served time in prison and now are free. But what they gave is they gave the story of the FBI's, you know, what was happening behind the scenes, the secret graves which led to this new murder indictment.
DAVIES: Right. And so this judge, I mean he bores into it - as these people talk, he bores into this story about the murders and the FBI's relationship with Whitey Bulger and then writes, what, a 600-some-odd page report?
CULLEN: It was an opus - 661 pages. I think what Judge Wolf did more than anything was to challenge the Justice Department's self-serving narrative 72 that this was just the - a scandal that involved a rogue 73 agent and his rogue supervisor 74.
I think if you read the book you will see that the conspiracy involved many people in the FBI. It's been very convenient for the FBI with the connivance 75 of the Justice Department to spin this as, you know, John Connolly did this and John Morris let him get away with it.
I have a certain sympathy for John Connolly in the sense that he did everything the FBI told him to and everything that the FBI rewarded him for. And that was making informants. But he is now the - he's the guy holding the bag. He's the guy doing 40 years in prison now for helping 76 Whitey Bulger kill somebody.
DAVIES: Right. But they didn't tell him to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
CULLEN: Obviously.
DAVIES: Which he did.
CULLEN: Obviously. Yeah, yeah.
DAVIES: You know...
MURPHY: Well, I think the...
DAVIES: Go ahead.
MURPHY: I think that what's important here is, you know, there's been overwhelming evidence that John Connolly crossed the line, but I think the point here is that he wasn't the only one who crossed the line. And there have been civil proceedings 77, you know, based on wrongful death suits filed by the families of some of these victims where the judges have found that the FBI as an institution was liable.
That there was evidence of, you know, deliberately 78 sticking its head in the sand and not doing what it should have done and that was not a case of just a couple of rogue agents. That this couldn't have happened without approval at very high levels of the FBI and the Justice Department.
CULLEN: After John Connolly was convicted, the special prosecutor 79, John Durham, said that he would release a report that would identify the misconduct and criminal activity, if they found it, of all the other FBI officials involved in this. That report - we're still waiting for it.
MURPHY: And that was 11 years ago.
CULLEN: And Mr. Durham has moved on to the CIA case. So we're still waiting.
DAVIES: Our time is short so we're not going to have time to go over the fascinating tale of Whitey Bulger's 16 years at large and whether the FBI really pursued him as much as they should have, and how he was caught. That's all in the book. But I do want to ask you whether you feel you get this guy.
I mean I just made notes of character - things that you wrote about Whitey. I mean, his physical discipline. You know, his penchant 80 for healthy living and exercise. His ability - his propensity 81 to take a nap right after a murder. His fear of needles and germs. Do you feel like you get this guy?
CULLEN: I guess we get him a lot better than we did before we set out to write the book. But he is a man of so many contradictions. But the one thing I really took away from it, and when we got these letters that he's written from jail and went through, I thought it was striking that he went at great length to say that, you know, he offered his life up for Cathy Grieg, the woman that he spent 16 years on the run with and described as the great love of his life.
That, you know, he was willing to submit himself to execution for murders he is charged with in Oklahoma and Florida if only they would release her or at least show leniency 82 to her. And that's a wonderful - it plays right into Whitey's, you know, selfless view of himself. But the flipside is that if he really wanted to help Cathy, all he had to do was to tell his lawyer to tell her lawyers, tell the feds anything they want.
Give me up. I'm going to die in prison. This is how I save you. So even in that case, in which he really portrays 83 himself as this noble person who would die for the woman he loved, it's mythmaking. And he's engaged in mythmaking from the day he was a young teenager stealing things and being polite to his neighbors and offering them rides home in a car that he could only afford because he was a criminal.
DAVIES: He cares about what the world thinks of him.
MURPHY: Oh, he definitely - to Whitey Bulger, reputation is everything. Everything. And he is now writing letters saying I was never an FBI informant. And, I mean, there's a very hefty FBI file on him that refutes that, you know, filled with things that only could have come from him. But he clings to this, you know, reputation.
He's built this reputation and I just don't think he can bear it, sitting in jail, that he's no longer the powerful guy, you know, out there controlling everything. He's insulted. They're now calling him things like King Rat.
DAVIES: Shelley Murphy, Kevin Cullen, thanks so much for speaking with us.
CULLEN: Thanks for having us.
MURPHY: Thank you.
DAVIES: Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy's book is "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." We spoke last February. Jury selection in Whitey Bulger's trial begins next week in Boston. He's charged with participating in 19 murders.
Whitey Bulger's story is extraordinary in many ways. While he was becoming one of Boston's most notorious criminals, his brother Bill was becoming one of the most powerful men in the Massachusetts legislature. Whitey ran guns for the IRA, once fire-bombed JFK's birthplace to protest school busing in Boston and repeatedly took LSD in prison as part of a CIA-sponsored experiment.
What made Bulger's criminal career even more remarkable 3 was his close collaboration 4 with FBI agents who used him as an informant. Journalists Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, veteran reporters for the Boston Globe, say this relationship became corrupt 5 and that several agents protected Bulger from other investigators 6 looking into multiple murders he's now charged with.
Kevin Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and Shelley Murphy is a recipient 7 of the George Polk Award. They're the authors of "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster 8 and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." I spoke 9 with them in February. Kevin Cullen, Shelley Murphy, welcome to FRESH AIR.
KEVIN CULLEN: This book is just a great read, I have to tell you, so many terrific, amazing stories in here. It's a story of, you know, a remarkable career criminal and a shameful 10 episode in the history of the FBI but also a story of a city and a neighborhood. Tell us a little bit about South Boston and the Bulger family.
Well South Boston is literally 11 a peninsula and figuratively an island. It's a place set apart from Boston, in Boston. It's sort of always thought of itself - we talk about American exceptionalism, well, there was Southie exceptionalism because folks that live in that neighborhood, and that included me for a big chunk 12 of my life, thought of themselves as living in the best part of the city.
It's not unusual for people to refer to it as God's country, and it's a place - like I said, it's set apart, both figuratively and literally, from the city, and as a result, people have their own ways.
DAVIES: So it's a tight-knit community, row houses, primarily Irish back in those days or no?
CULLEN: It was - well, it was heavily Irish, but it was just very ethnic 13. There were a lot of people, a lot of Poles there. There were people from Lithuania. There were Italians. It was a mix. But certainly the - it's not only predominately Irish, it's Irish in ethos.
If you're there, you're almost Irish by osmosis in South Boston because even in the public schools, kids would learn Irish songs. That's the kind of Irish ethos that ran through South Boston. And even the unofficial mascot 14 of the town, as natives refer to that neighborhood, it's the Fighting Irish, the leprechaun in sort of a boxing pose, the belligerent 15 boxing pose with his fists up.
And it's a tough part of town, and it always was. And Whitey grew up in a time when it was particularly blue collar and particularly rough around the edges, and where he grew up it was particularly rough around the edges: It was a housing project.
DAVIES: All right, so let's talk about Whitey Bulger. His name was James, right, belonged to a big family. Did he get into crime early?
SHELLEY MURPHY: He did get into crime early. His first arrest was at age 13. He started, you know, with stealing, tailgating, you know, hanging out down by the waterfront where they would, you know, steal products off the back of trucks.
CULLEN: Yeah, one thing that struck, that we found out in one of the letters that we reviewed, Whitey talked about when he was 16 years old, he was in the back of a precinct house in South Boston. And he said a police officer jammed a gun in his mouth, and the police officer was leaning so close to him that he could smell the liquor on his breath. It was a really dramatic scene.
But even at that tender age of 16, Whitey was, you know, clearly in the fast life and in the criminal life. And I think that sort of began that sort of confrontational 16 attitude he had with authority, right there. I mean, he was somebody who was going to have situations like that.
DAVIES: So Whitey picks his profession early, and he certainly stays with it. Bill, his brother, goes a different direction. One of you tell us about Bill.
CULLEN: Just the - I mean, they call Bill The Bean because they could see - from the street below, they'd see him studying in his room above. And Bill decided 17 at a very early age, when he was in ninth grade, he decided to - if he was going to get out of South Boston - or not even get out of South Boston, but if he was going to make something of himself, he was going to go to Boston College High School.
And he more or less got himself in there. It showed incredible gumption 18. And Bill, you know, in our town you'd call somebody who's gone to Boston College High School, Boston College and then Boston College Law School, a triple eagle. And Billy Bulger was a triple eagle.
DAVIES: And he went into politics successfully.
CULLEN: Yeah, not unusual in that part of town. That's the other thing about Southie. The Irish learned very - the Irish were not particularly liked when they arrived in Boston in the latter half of the 19th century, and they realized the way to really seize power was to take political power. And nowhere - and in South Boston, that ethos was stronger than anyplace else.
The politicians were routinely considered the most important people in South Boston, and it was a great profession to get into.
MURPHY: Another thing that was very interesting about the Bulger household growing up is their father had lost his arm in an accident. And so he had difficulty finding work. So not only were they living in the projects, but that money, you know, money was tight.
And it seems, you know, according to interviews that we conducted, that Whitey, you know, he wanted things, and he wasn't - you know, the way he got them was not legally. And he was frustrated 19 at being poor. He didn't like being poor. Billy describes his childhood in very, sort of, nostalgic terms.
He talks about, you know, the good parts of Southie, all these, you know, wonderful memories of families, you know, gathered out in the courtyard of the project in games of tag. Whitey talks about, you know, being beat by his father and always trying to escape to something better.
DAVIES: All right, so as Whitey becomes a prominent criminal, Billy does very well and eventually becomes one of the most powerful people in the Massachusetts legislature. But let's go back to in Whitey's criminal career. He becomes a bank robber, gets caught, and at age 26 gets a lengthy 21 prison sentence, ends up doing part of it at Alcatraz.
He gets paroled in 1965 and finds his way back to South Boston. And you write about there had been some - a series of gang wars among the Irish criminals in the neighborhood, and peace was made. And Whitey gets out and ends up becoming one of the most important criminals in Boston - Irish criminals in the area.
He ends up establishing quite a place for himself, him and a longtime associate named Steve Flemmi. They became important criminals in the city. How did he make his money then? What did they do?
CULLEN: Well, you know, timing 22 is everything, and when you look at it, Whitey was able to emerge from prison to a very depleted 23 underworld. There were over 60 people killed, mostly Irish gangsters 24, while he was away in prison. And so he was able to rise very quickly.
And he asserted himself, you know, he had told everybody, and a lot of people believed him, that he was going to go straight. But we found in our research that, you know, he dove pretty quickly back into the underworld. And he became an enforcer for a group called the Killeen Brothers. They were the pre-eminent gangsters in South Boston at the time, and they had a massive, extensive bookmaking operation.
And there was a lot of money to be made in that. And so Whitey became a protector for them. You know, he would have been a strong-arm guy. He would have been going around forcing people to pay their debts. And he had to do what he had to do to protect the Killeens.
Now he kind of knew Flemmi because when he got out of prison, one of the first things he did, he went to this after-hours club in The Roxbury section of Boston outside of South Boston, and he tried to basically get himself back in that life.
DAVIES: There's this fascinating episode when a federal court ordered the integration 25 of the Boston school system, which meant, you know, busing kids to achieve racial balance from one community to another, and it meant some African-American kids being bused into South Boston. Whitey Bulger really got involved here. How did he react to this?
MURPHY: Well, he was furious. And, you know, there was a feeling in South Boston that they were - people were unfairly labeled as racists if they were - opposed busing. And it was really this anger that a judge, a federal judge, was telling them that your children will be bused out of the neighborhood, across town, to a neighborhood that's higher in crime, with schools that a federal judge has already found were inferior.
So there was this feeling of being put upon. And so while Billy Bulger became one of the most outspoken 26, you know, political opponents of busing, Whitey was working behind the scenes, his own little campaign to stir up trouble. And what we found from talking to some of his former associates is that one of the things he did is drive over to Brookline, to President John F. Kennedy's birthplace, and fire bomb his birthplace.
And part of the motivation was that Ted 2 Kennedy, at the time was, you know, a very outspoken proponent 27 of the need to desegregate the schools. He was very outspoken about it. And, you know, Whitey went over, and he wrote in chalk, spray-painted on the sidewalk, bus Teddy.
DAVIES: I want to ask one other question about this: Did he use his special talents as a criminal to help his brother's political career?
CULLEN: Well, one thing we found in researching the book is that Whitey took great interest in his brother's political career and was thrilled. He was actually in Alcatraz when Billy was first elected to the state legislature.
We found that there was one case that, when a fellow challenged Billy for the open Senate seat out of South Boston, Whitey went after the guy and really, you know, lit into him, at least verbally. And Billy, supposedly, told him to back off.
But throughout his career as a criminal, Billy - I mean Whitey was very often working behind the scenes to target anybody that would be perceived as a political enemy of his brother Bill. One example would be Frank Bellotti, who was the attorney general of Massachusetts. And he actually ran for governor, and he pitted himself against John Silber - then the president of Boston University - and a very close friend of Bill Bulger's.
And so Whitey and his henchmen were going around town tearing down Bellotti's signs, his political signs, and they actually were spray-painting stuff on buildings and walls, reminding people of the very controversial case when a fellow that had been targeted for prosecution 28 by Frank Bellotti actually killed himself. And so that's the level that Whitey - I mean, Whitey was - like he did during busing, this was all stealth, but it was very, very pointed 29.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, both veteran reporters whose new book about the veteran Boston criminal is called "Whitey Bulger." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with veteran reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. They've collaborated 30 on a new biography of Whitey Bulger. It's called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice."
Whitey becomes a very successful criminal. He makes a ton of money. He's a violent guy. But his personal habits are also really fascinating, you know, his diet, his drinking, his physical fitness obsession 31.
MURPHY: Well, even from the time when he was a young man, before he went to prison for bank robbery, he was a physical fitness buff. He had a gym, you know, that he worked out on before they became popular. He liked to run. He liked to keep in shape. And when he came out of prison and hooked up with his friend Stephen Flemmi, one thing the two of them had in common is that they did not drink.
They took care of themselves. They saw drinking as a weakness, a vulnerability. They did not do drugs. They were very careful. They prided themselves on being very smart. They read books. They were intellectuals, as much as a guy in that line of business can be an intellectual.
But they were very, very concerned about being fit and being perceived as a threat. They were very intimidating 32, physically 33 and, you know, and with their reputations, what they were willing to do.
DAVIES: And then there's his remarkable relationships with the women in his life.
CULLEN: Yeah, that was - I think Shelley and I both agree that one of the things we really learned by peeling these onions back, is that Whitey had this - it was sort of - like a lot of things in Whitey's life, there's a contradiction because he was always seeking this domestic bliss 34, and yet he kept two households.
And so he - and when he came out of prison in 1965, he very soon got involved with a woman named Theresa Stanley, a single mother with four kids. And Whitey insisted that - you know, he more or less became a surrogate father to these children.
And he insisted that they have a sit-down family dinner every night. And he would sit there, and it was almost like "Father Knows Best" or "Ozzie and Harriet." And Whitey would just lecture the kids about how they needed to stay in school, and study hard, and save their money, and stay in great physical shape and stay away from bad influences.
And after that, he would, you know, wipe his mouth with the napkin, he would leave and go out and do crime for a few hours, and then he would retire to the bosom 35 of his other mistress, a woman named Cathy Greig.
And the other thing that was interesting about this sort of love triangle is that while Cathy Greig obviously knew about Theresa Stanley and that domestic side of Whitey's life, Theresa Stanley was completely in the dark about the relationship that Whitey had with Cathy Greig.
And she only became aware of it in a very dramatic scene that we have in the book is when Cathy Greig called her out of the blue and said we need to talk. And this was...
DAVIES: And this is after decades of him doing this.
MURPHY: Yeah, and he had been with Theresa Stanley for nearly 30 years, and he had been with Cathy for about - almost 20 of those years. And Theresa was a very kind, lovely woman. She lived in South Boston. And Whitey was very careful to keep her away from Cathy Greig, who had also grown up in South Boston.
And the two women couldn't have been more different. Theresa was very sort of traditional, stay-at-home mom, you know, raising the kids. Cathy was very - you know, she was very career-oriented. She had attended Northeastern University. She was working in the dental school there, teaching students, and had, you know, planned on having a career.
But she met Whitey when she was very young, and she basically gave up her career to take care of him. And he would come to her house at, like, two, three in the morning, and she would be there all made up, dinner on the table and very - both women very, very much crazy about him. And I think both were in complete denial that he was doing, you know, the things he's accused of doing.
DAVIES: All right, so Whitey Bulger becomes a successful, dangerous, intimidating and money-earning criminal. But this is a fascinating story in its connection to the FBI. There's this Agent, John Connolly, who has a long, close relationship with Whitey Bulger. Tell us about him. How did he know the Bulger family?
CULLEN: Well, it goes right back to that housing project where it all began, Dave. It's - you know, John Connolly grew up in the same housing project. And they grew up in this place in South Boston where loyalty 36 was everything: loyalty to your family, loyalty to your neighborhood, loyalty to your neighbors.
And so Connolly actually - you know, one of the important influences on his life when he was growing up, was Billy Bulger because Billy Bulger he saw as, you know, that's what I want to be. I want to study, I want to get ahead. And Bill Bulger was, you know, instrumental in pointing the right way for John Connolly. Go to school, you know, go to college.
And so John Connolly went to Boston College, and then John Connolly became an FBI agent. And when John Connolly was transferred back, after a few years on the road, to the Boston office, one of the first things he decided to do was seek out Whitey Bulger as an informant.
And the reason he did that is while Whitey was by this time one of the pre-eminent Irish gangsters in Boston, at this time the mafia was the national priority of the FBI. The FBI didn't take into account regional differences. They wouldn't look at Boston and say, well, geez, the Irish guys are just as bad as the Italians, we'd better take them both out. That wasn't what was going on.
And so Connolly approached Jimmy Bulger, as he would call him, Whitey, and recruited him as an informant, ostensibly to help the FBI take on the mafia. One problem with that approach is that Whitey Bulger didn't know much about the mafia, how he could - the difference is Steve Flemmi, his criminal partner, really did know a lot.
So they became, you know, two for the price of one. The FBI actually put them together. So they were a tag team. The two real main conditions other than he said he didn't want his brother Bill to know this, is Whitey said he would never give up his friends, and he would never give up the Irish Republican Army.
And as soon as Whitey agreed to become an informant for the FBI, he realized what a deal this was, because he immediately went out and killed a guy that he had been wanting to kill probably for a long time and then went to see his handler and give him the report that - you know, and he would implicate 37 somebody else in the killing 38.
And then the other thing he did right after he became an informant, he really stepped up his involvement with the IRA, sending them weapons, and that culminated 39 with a - the biggest shipment ever sent from America to the IRA in 1984, which he had a huge role in.
DAVIES: You said that he killed a guy he'd been after for a while and then reported that to Connolly?
CULLEN: Yeah, one of the first things he did after he made his deal with Connelly and agreed to provide information, is he set about going to kill a guy named Tommy King, who had been part of a rival gang, the Mullens, but then had become, ostensibly, part of Whitey's gang.
But Whitey always, always wanted to kill him. And now that he had the cover of the FBI, he was able to do that. And not only was he able to do that, he was able to throw the trail off him, off himself, after he did the killing. So what he did was first he killed Tommy King, then he killed another rival in the Mullens' gang, a guy named Buddy 40 Leonard.
And then he went and sat - after he did these killings 41 - he left Buddy Leonard in the back of a car, but he secretly buried Tommy King so they couldn't find his body. And then he sat down with John Connolly, his FBI handler, and said: Hey, I hear that Tommy King killed Buddy Leonard.
And so Connolly writes that report up, and that report is disseminated 42 to people in law enforcement, including the Boston police, who are supposedly out there trying to find out who killed Buddy Leonard.
And then a few weeks go by, and then, you know, Whitey meets with Connolly again, and now the story is uh-oh, you know, I heard that the - somebody's going to kill Tommy King because of this, he brought too much heat on everybody. And then three weeks go by, and then he sits down with Connolly again, and now the third story is that, well, Tommy King's dead, they got rid of him.
So Whitey realized, very soon in this relationship, that he could use it to his advantage, that not only could he settle scores and not worry about the FBI coming after him, but that the FBI would become active partners in his disinformation campaign.
DAVIES: Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy will be back in the second half of the show. Their book is "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." Bulger's federal racketeering trial begins next week in Boston. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Our guests, veteran Boston reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy have written a book about the career of legendary 43 Boston criminal, Whitey Bulger, who was captured in Santa Monica, California two years ago, after 16 years on the run. Their book, called "Whitey Bulger," details his close relationship with FBI agents who used him as an informant and at times protected him from investigators looking into murders Bulger is now charged with. He's about to go on trial on charges he was involved in 19 killings. Jury selection begins next week.
Bulger's closest criminal associate was a man name Steve Flemmi, who was also an FBI informant. Fleming is expected to be called to the stand to testify against Bulger.
There's a woman named Debra Davis who was killed. I mean there are too many murders for us to go into detail, but this is an interesting one. She was a girlfriend of Steve Flemmi, right?
MURPHY: Yes. She was a young girl. She was only a teenager working in a jewelry 44 store when he walked in and she caught his eye. Beautiful, gorgeous, young girl who looked a lot like a young Farrah Fawcett. He started dating her. At the time he, like Whitey, had various women in his life. He already, you know, was living with another woman and had children by her. But he started dating Debra and this relationship lasted for about nine years. He was buying her jewelry, and Jaguars 45, and Mercedes and she was very happy for a while with that life. But at some point she wanted marriage. She wanted kids. She wanted a family. And he didn't want any of that. She went on a vacation that he had paid for to Acapulco and met this wealthy businessman and fell in love. She came back and tried to break it off with Steve Flemmi. By this time she was 26 years old, but unfortunately for her, she knew about his relationship with the FBI. She knew that he had been having meetings with John Connolly. And Whitey and Steve Flemmi, according to testimony 46 in court, decided that she was a liability, that she knew too much to be able to walk away.
So the way that Steve Flemmi tells the story, is he told her that he wanted her to see a home that he had just purchased for his parents. Now this house happened to be right next door to Bill Bulger's home in South Boston. And on a night in September of 1981, 26-year-old Debra Davis walks into this home. And according to Flemmi, Whitey is waiting and strangles her, and Flemmi kisses her on the forehead and says you're going to a better place. They buried her body along the banks of the Neponset River just south of South Boston in Quincy. And her remains 47 weren't found for years, but it's one of the 19 murders that Whitey's charged with and one of two women he's accused of killing.
DAVIES: Right. And you make a point in the book that Whitey denies ever having killed a woman. But Flemmi says he was there and did this. Now the important thing about her is this: her mother, Debra Davis, the victim's mother, believes that Flemmi was behind it all along and told the FBI this, right? And how did they respond?
MURPHY: Well, it was at a the time in the Boston office when they were starting to be some suspicion about the relationship, by some agents, about the relationship between, Connolly and Whitey and Flemmi. And two agents interview Debra Davis's mother, Olga, and she talks about, you know, my daughter vanished. I believe that Flemmi is responsible. But the agents did not compile any reports. Now later they said they were concerned about leaving any sort of a paper trail. But it's very strange how this whole thing played out. You have this notorious gangster. He's dating this woman. She vanishes without a trace. And they did put a report in the FBI, you know, national computer database listing her as a missing person. And then mysteriously, suddenly there's an update to that report that oh, she's no longer missing. She's been, you know, spotted 48 somewhere in Texas, which was a complete lie. So, you know, someone in the FBI went into that database and altered the report. So her mother, you know was really afraid. She didn't really trust Flemmi. And now Flemmi's hanging around the house, taking up with younger sister, buying her a car, and so, you know, I think it put the mother in kind of a tough place and nobody really investigated.
DAVIES: Right.
CULLEN: Dave, you know, it's very important the timing of this, because the Debra Davis killing was one of several that followed in the next few years in which the FBI not only looked the other way, but they actually thwarted 49 the attempts of honest law enforcement officers to hold Whitey and Stevie Flemmi accountable for these killings. That is the most egregious 50 act you will find in that book - in our book. I mean, it's appalling 51 the way this was handled. Because the reason the FBI was so afraid of doing the right thing then is because Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi were used as confidential 52 informants to obtain the probable cause that allowed the FBI to plant bugs 53 in the headquarters of the Mafia in Boston. And so they're looking at these guys as assets. So here's the FBI on one hand, they're about to - in Boston - they're about to make the most important prosecution in the history of the office of the FBI, taking out the leadership of La Cosa Nostra in Boston, and the guys that helped them get this case are involved, are implicated 54 in a whole series of murders. So they didn't just look the other way, they made sure that nothing happened to Steve Flemmi and Whitey Bulger.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. Their new book is called "Whitey Bulger."
We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with veteran reporters Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen. Their new book about one of Boston's most notorious criminals is called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice."
This is an amazing situation where you have, you know, these two guys, Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi committing murders and the FBI covering up for them, misleading other authorities who are onto these murders, while these same two criminals are getting at least at least two of these FBI agents gifts and cash, and the bureau's, kind of, engaged in protecting them. And you write in 19 - the late '80s, the Boston Globe got onto this and started writing a story about Whitey, about his brother who was at this point a powerful man in the Massachusetts law legislature and about Whitey's relationship with this FBI agent John Connolly.
And Kevin Cullen, you write that you were visited by an FBI agent while you were working on the story. Tell us about that.
CULLEN: Well, I actually got a phone call.
DAVIES: OK.
CULLEN: Here's the background. John Connolly was my best FBI source. I mean John Connolly knew my family. It goes back to the Southy again. And he did things and said things that made me very uncomfortable. He just get praising Whitey and telling me how wonderful he is and, you know, and then my cousins are telling me that Whitey is killing people and that he's pushing drugs all over the town. So it really bothered me, so I went to our editors in, you know, I think it would've been'87 or '88 when we first started planning the series. I just said I think Whitey is a rat. There's no other explanation for why he would be allowed to be out there. The FBI should have been going after him years ago. And so we began that process and we found law enforcement people who were able to corroborate 55 that, in fact, Whitey was an informant.
And about two months before we went with this series, it was part of - it's called the Spotlight 56 Team, it's our investigative unit at the Globe; I got a call from an FBI agent named Tom Daly. He said that he had heard from one of his informants who was now in the witness protection program, that we were going to do this story and that we were going to name Whitey Bulger as an informant. The agent told me that it's not true and he said that if you report something that's not true Whitey will not live with that. And he said he would think nothing of clipping you, Kevin, and you know, you live there. So I lived in South Boston and I would be, I would have been seen among our team as being the most vulnerable.
We actually huddled 57, as a team, after that. Obviously, I was a little disturbed by the phone call, and we, kind of, decided that if the FBI was serious about this there would have been a formal notification process. That said, you know, I was shaken enough to that I would talk to other law enforcement people that I really trusted and believed in, in the Massachusetts State Police and the DEA, and let them know what the FBI said. So they would know. We wanted that on the record. And we ended up going with the series, but as a precaution, the Globe decided to put my wife and I up in a hotel outside of the city. And I told my wife that the concern was that maybe somebody wouldn't like the series or the stories and then throw rocks through our window. I wasn't totally honest with my wife at the time. But...
DAVIES: You didn't tell her about the FBI call? Yeah.
CULLEN: I didn't tell her about that until much later after that. But, you know, we had a very nice week in a very fine hotel. And the state police had worked their informants during that week to see what Whitey's reaction would have been to the series. And the only thing that came back from the state police informants is that Whitey didn't like one section of the series in which we reported that he beat up a wino in front of Teresa Stanley's house. He said that that was no wino. Apparently 58, he thought that made him look like a bully 59 if he beat up a wino. But he didn't say anything about the informant part of it. Now obviously, he was furious about it, but he actually told the FBI, after this was revealed in the Boston Globe, that nobody would believe it, that they would see it as just an attempt to get back at his brother.
DAVIES: Which is kind of what happened, right?
CULLEN: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's...
DAVIES: I mean people didn't believe he was an informant, right? Criminals.
CULLEN: Well, you know, one of the most incredible things that you see in the book, Dave, we ask Anthony Cardinale, a very, you know, a very well-respected lawyer who has represented some of the most senior Mafia figures in the country, including John Gotti, Tony Salerno and Jerry Angiulo here in Boston. And Tony asked them all, separately, how come you, why didn't anybody make a move on Bulger after the Globe put that in the paper. And they all said the same thing, they said they didn't believe that the FBI would get into bed with somebody as vicious and as venal 60 as Whitey Bulger. So the Mafia actually had a higher view of the FBI than it deserved. I think it was both.
DAVIES: So it wasn't that the FBI was concerned about your safety.
CULLEN: No.
DAVIES: It's that they wanted to muscle you off the story?
(LAUGHTER)
CULLEN: They weren't concerned about my safety. They weren't concerned about anybody safety when it came to Whitey Bulger. So no, they weren't concerned about my safety, just the opposite. I mean this actually became a point of contention 61 during Judge Mark Wolf's long evidentiary hearing. By this time I was the London bureau chief for the Boston Globe and I got subpoenaed 62 and had to come back and testify about this. And I spent three hours on the stand asserting what happened. And we had contemporaneous notes of that period. Because as soon as I got off the phone with - the threat - my editor Jerry O'Neil said write this memo 20 and agent daily never took the stand. They said he was going to but after I testified he never took the stand. And Judge Wolf in his findings made it clear that that spoke volumes, that Agent Daily would not get up and refute my testimony.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy. Their new book is called "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice."
Well, let's move the story toward its conclusion here. I mean, you know, eventually the state police and the Drug Enforcement Administration make a case against Whitey and his associates, not for the murders, but for some other crimes. Whitey gets tipped off by his FBI friend, John Connolly, and goes on the lam where he is at large for 16 years. And then his associates start cooperating. They realize they're in trouble and so details of these murders come out, one by one. But there's an interesting chapter in this tale about how the FBI's complicity with Whitey Bulger and his criminal friend Steve Flemmi, how that story comes out, and it involves this federal Judge Mark Wolf. Tell us about that.
MURPHY: When John Connolly warns Bulger's associate that an indictments 64 about to come down, he says they should flee. But Flemmi does not take that advice, he hangs around and he's caught. Now he's sitting in jail and he decides his best defense 65 is to claim that they were informants and they had immunity 66 from prosecution. And at that time, they were charged with just gambling 67 and loan sharking and shaking down drug dealers 68. And the defense is that the FBI gave us immunity from prosecution with the caveat 69 that we not kill anyone. Judge Wolf held hearings that lasted throughout the year, and as some of their codefendants are sitting there listening to, you know, the fact that Whitey and Steve Flemmi were informants, they're furious and they can see the writing on the wall. They're afraid that if Flemmi decides to, now, you know, cooperate that they'll all be implicated in murders. And they - it's basically a race to be the first one to cooperate.
And so the first one is a hit man, John Martorano, who tells about murders that happened in the '60s and '70s. And then later, much later, you know, another associate - a longtime associate of Whitey Bulger's cooperates and he leads them to the secret graves. And what's happening behind the scenes is, you know, the state police and the DEA are seeing this case, sort of, unravel 70. I mean, the idea that, you know, how could - the original indictment 63 was that, you know, the head of the New England Mafia at the time, and Bulger and Flemmi, were controlling the rackets around the city that they were dividing up, you know territory. But now that case was falling apart. How could there be, you know, a conspiracy 71 that involved the Mafia and Whitey Bulger being partners when a Whitey was an informant against the Mafia? So seeing the case fall apart really spurred the DEA and the state police to go out and start, you know, trying to gather new evidence. You know, they cut some deals that were very controversial, men who had admitted to murders and got these unbelievable deals.
I mean they served time in prison and now are free. But what they gave is they gave the story of the FBI's, you know, what was happening behind the scenes, the secret graves which led to this new murder indictment.
DAVIES: Right. And so this judge, I mean he bores into it - as these people talk, he bores into this story about the murders and the FBI's relationship with Whitey Bulger and then writes, what, a 600-some-odd page report?
CULLEN: It was an opus - 661 pages. I think what Judge Wolf did more than anything was to challenge the Justice Department's self-serving narrative 72 that this was just the - a scandal that involved a rogue 73 agent and his rogue supervisor 74.
I think if you read the book you will see that the conspiracy involved many people in the FBI. It's been very convenient for the FBI with the connivance 75 of the Justice Department to spin this as, you know, John Connolly did this and John Morris let him get away with it.
I have a certain sympathy for John Connolly in the sense that he did everything the FBI told him to and everything that the FBI rewarded him for. And that was making informants. But he is now the - he's the guy holding the bag. He's the guy doing 40 years in prison now for helping 76 Whitey Bulger kill somebody.
DAVIES: Right. But they didn't tell him to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
CULLEN: Obviously.
DAVIES: Which he did.
CULLEN: Obviously. Yeah, yeah.
DAVIES: You know...
MURPHY: Well, I think the...
DAVIES: Go ahead.
MURPHY: I think that what's important here is, you know, there's been overwhelming evidence that John Connolly crossed the line, but I think the point here is that he wasn't the only one who crossed the line. And there have been civil proceedings 77, you know, based on wrongful death suits filed by the families of some of these victims where the judges have found that the FBI as an institution was liable.
That there was evidence of, you know, deliberately 78 sticking its head in the sand and not doing what it should have done and that was not a case of just a couple of rogue agents. That this couldn't have happened without approval at very high levels of the FBI and the Justice Department.
CULLEN: After John Connolly was convicted, the special prosecutor 79, John Durham, said that he would release a report that would identify the misconduct and criminal activity, if they found it, of all the other FBI officials involved in this. That report - we're still waiting for it.
MURPHY: And that was 11 years ago.
CULLEN: And Mr. Durham has moved on to the CIA case. So we're still waiting.
DAVIES: Our time is short so we're not going to have time to go over the fascinating tale of Whitey Bulger's 16 years at large and whether the FBI really pursued him as much as they should have, and how he was caught. That's all in the book. But I do want to ask you whether you feel you get this guy.
I mean I just made notes of character - things that you wrote about Whitey. I mean, his physical discipline. You know, his penchant 80 for healthy living and exercise. His ability - his propensity 81 to take a nap right after a murder. His fear of needles and germs. Do you feel like you get this guy?
CULLEN: I guess we get him a lot better than we did before we set out to write the book. But he is a man of so many contradictions. But the one thing I really took away from it, and when we got these letters that he's written from jail and went through, I thought it was striking that he went at great length to say that, you know, he offered his life up for Cathy Grieg, the woman that he spent 16 years on the run with and described as the great love of his life.
That, you know, he was willing to submit himself to execution for murders he is charged with in Oklahoma and Florida if only they would release her or at least show leniency 82 to her. And that's a wonderful - it plays right into Whitey's, you know, selfless view of himself. But the flipside is that if he really wanted to help Cathy, all he had to do was to tell his lawyer to tell her lawyers, tell the feds anything they want.
Give me up. I'm going to die in prison. This is how I save you. So even in that case, in which he really portrays 83 himself as this noble person who would die for the woman he loved, it's mythmaking. And he's engaged in mythmaking from the day he was a young teenager stealing things and being polite to his neighbors and offering them rides home in a car that he could only afford because he was a criminal.
DAVIES: He cares about what the world thinks of him.
MURPHY: Oh, he definitely - to Whitey Bulger, reputation is everything. Everything. And he is now writing letters saying I was never an FBI informant. And, I mean, there's a very hefty FBI file on him that refutes that, you know, filled with things that only could have come from him. But he clings to this, you know, reputation.
He's built this reputation and I just don't think he can bear it, sitting in jail, that he's no longer the powerful guy, you know, out there controlling everything. He's insulted. They're now calling him things like King Rat.
DAVIES: Shelley Murphy, Kevin Cullen, thanks so much for speaking with us.
CULLEN: Thanks for having us.
MURPHY: Thank you.
DAVIES: Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy's book is "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." We spoke last February. Jury selection in Whitey Bulger's trial begins next week in Boston. He's charged with participating in 19 murders.
n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克
- I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
- He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。
vt.翻晒，撒，撒开
- The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
- She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。
adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的
- She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
- These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。
n.合作，协作；勾结
- The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
- He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。
v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的
- The newspaper alleged the mayor's corrupt practices.那家报纸断言市长有舞弊行为。
- This judge is corrupt.这个法官贪污。
n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )
- This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
- The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》
a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器
- Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
- Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。
n.匪徒，歹徒，暴徒
- The gangster's friends bought off the police witness.那匪徒的朋友买通了警察方面的证人。
- He is obviously a gangster,but he pretends to be a saint.分明是强盗，却要装圣贤。
n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说
- They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
- The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
adj.可耻的，不道德的
- It is very shameful of him to show off.他向人炫耀自己，真不害臊。
- We must expose this shameful activity to the newspapers.我们一定要向报社揭露这一无耻行径。
adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实
- He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
- Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。
n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量）
- They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
- The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。
adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的
- This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
- The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。
n.福神，吉祥的东西
- The football team's mascot is a goat.足球队的吉祥物是山羊。
- We had a panda as our mascot.我们把熊猫作为吉详物。
adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者
- He had a belligerent aspect.他有种好斗的神色。
- Our government has forbidden exporting the petroleum to the belligerent countries.我们政府已经禁止向交战国输出石油。
adj.挑衅的；对抗的
- Fans love rappers partly because they strike such a confrontational pose. 乐迷热爱这些饶舌艺人一定程度上是因为他们所采取的那种战斗姿态。 来自互联网
- You prefer a non confrontational approach when it comes to resolving disputes. 面对争端，你不喜欢采用对抗性的手段来解决。 来自互联网
adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的
- This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
- There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
n.才干
- With his gumption he will make a success of himself.凭他的才干，他将大有作为。
- Surely anyone with marketing gumption should be able to sell good books at any time of year.无疑，有经营头脑的人在一年的任何时节都应该能够卖掉好书。
adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧
- It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
- The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章
- Do you want me to send the memo out?您要我把这份备忘录分发出去吗？
- Can you type a memo for me?您能帮我打一份备忘录吗？
adj.漫长的，冗长的
- We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。
- The professor wrote a lengthy book on Napoleon.教授写了一部有关拿破仑的巨著。
n.时间安排，时间选择
- The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
- The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。
匪徒，歹徒( gangster的名词复数 )
- The gangsters offered him a sum equivalent to a whole year's earnings. 歹徒提出要给他一笔相当于他一年收入的钱。
- One of the gangsters was caught by the police. 歹徒之一被警察逮捕。
n.一体化，联合，结合
- We are working to bring about closer political integration in the EU.我们正在努力实现欧盟內部更加紧密的政治一体化。
- This was the greatest event in the annals of European integration.这是欧洲统一史上最重大的事件。
adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的
- He was outspoken in his criticism.他在批评中直言不讳。
- She is an outspoken critic of the school system in this city.她是这座城市里学校制度的坦率的批评者。
n.建议者；支持者；adj.建议的
- Stapp became a strong early proponent of automobile seat belts.斯塔普是力主在汽车上采用座椅安全带的早期倡导者。
- Halsey was identified as a leading proponent of the values of progressive education.哈尔西被认为是进步教育价值观的主要支持者。
n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营
- The Smiths brought a prosecution against the organizers.史密斯家对组织者们提出起诉。
- He attempts to rebut the assertion made by the prosecution witness.他试图反驳原告方证人所作的断言。
adj.尖的，直截了当的
- He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
- She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。
合作( collaborate的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾结叛国
- We have collaborated on many projects over the years. 这些年来我们合作搞了许多项目。
- We have collaborated closely with the university on this project. 我们与大学在这个专案上紧密合作。
n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)
- I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
- She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。
vt.恐吓，威胁( intimidate的现在分词)
- They were accused of intimidating people into voting for them. 他们被控胁迫选民投他们的票。
- This kind of questioning can be very intimidating to children. 这种问话的方式可能让孩子们非常害怕。
adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律
- He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
- Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。
n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福
- It's sheer bliss to be able to spend the day in bed.整天都可以躺在床上真是幸福。
- He's in bliss that he's won the Nobel Prize.他非常高兴，因为获得了诺贝尔奖金。
n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的
- She drew a little book from her bosom.她从怀里取出一本小册子。
- A dark jealousy stirred in his bosom.他内心生出一阵恶毒的嫉妒。
n.忠诚，忠心
- She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
- His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。
vt.使牵连其中，涉嫌
- He didn't find anything in the notebooks to implicate Stu.他在笔记本中没发现任何涉及斯图的东西。
- I do not want to implicate you in my problem of the job.我工作上的问题不想把你也牵扯进来。
n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财
- Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
- Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。
v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 )
- a gun battle which culminated in the death of two police officers 一场造成两名警察死亡的枪战
- The gala culminated in a firework display. 晚会以大放烟火告终。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.（美口）密友，伙伴
- Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
- Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！
谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发
- His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
- The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。
散布，传播( disseminate的过去式和过去分词 )
- Their findings have been widely disseminated . 他们的研究成果已经广为传播。
- Berkovitz had contracted polio after ingesting a vaccine disseminated under federal supervision. 伯考维茨在接种了在联邦监督下分发的牛痘疫苗后传染上脊髓灰质炎。
adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）
- Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
- Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。
n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝
- The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
- Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。
n.（中、南美洲的）美洲虎( jaguar的名词复数 )
- Jaguars are largely nocturnal creatures. 美洲虎基本上是夜行动物。 来自辞典例句
- Jaguars (Panthera onca) once ranged from southern South America to theUnited States. 美洲虎曾经分布在北美洲南部和美洲南部。 来自互联网
n.证词；见证，证明
- The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
- He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。
n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹
- He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
- The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。
adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的
- The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
- Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。
阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过
- The guards thwarted his attempt to escape from prison. 警卫阻扰了他越狱的企图。
- Our plans for a picnic were thwarted by the rain. 我们的野餐计划因雨受挫。
adj.非常的，过分的
- When it comes to blatant lies,there are none more egregious than budget figures.谈到公众谎言，没有比预算数字更令人震惊的。
- What an egregious example was here!现摆着一个多么触目惊心的例子啊。
adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的
- The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions.恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
- Nothing can extenuate such appalling behaviour.这种骇人听闻的行径罪无可恕。
adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的
- He refused to allow his secretary to handle confidential letters.他不让秘书处理机密文件。
- We have a confidential exchange of views.我们推心置腹地交换意见。
adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误
- All programs have bugs and need endless refinement. 所有的程序都有漏洞，都需要不断改进。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的
- These groups are very strongly implicated in the violence. 这些组织与这起暴力事件有着极大的关联。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Having the stolen goods in his possession implicated him in the robbery. 因藏有赃物使他涉有偷盗的嫌疑。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
v.支持，证实，确定
- He looked at me anxiously,as if he hoped I'd corroborate this.他神色不安地看着我，仿佛他希望我证实地的话。
- It appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account.看来他所说的和我叙述的相符。
n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目
- This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
- The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。
挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）
- We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
- We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。
adv.显然地；表面上，似乎
- An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
- He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。
n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮
- A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
- The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。
adj.唯利是图的，贪脏枉法的
- Ian Trimmer is corrupt and thoroughly venal.伊恩·特里默贪污受贿，是个彻头彻尾的贪官。
- Venal judges are a disgrace to a country.贪污腐败的法官是国家的耻辱。
n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张
- The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
- The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。
v.（用传票）传唤（某人）( subpoena的过去式和过去分词 )
- The court subpoenaed her to appear as a witness. 法庭传唤她出庭作证。
- The finance director is subpoenaed by prosecution. 财务经理被检查机关传讯。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.起诉；诉状
- He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。
- They issued an indictment against them.他们起诉了他们。
n.（制度、社会等的）衰败迹象( indictment的名词复数 )；刑事起诉书；公诉书；控告
- A New York jury brought criminal indictments against the founder of the organization. 纽约的一个陪审团对这个组织的创始人提起了多项刑事诉讼。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- These two indictments are self-evident and require no elaboration. 这两条意义自明，无须多说。 来自互联网
n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩
- The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
- The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。
n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权
- The law gives public schools immunity from taxation.法律免除公立学校的纳税义务。
- He claims diplomatic immunity to avoid being arrested.他要求外交豁免以便避免被捕。
n.赌博；投机
- They have won a lot of money through gambling.他们赌博赢了很多钱。
- The men have been gambling away all night.那些人赌了整整一夜。
n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者
- There was fast bidding between private collectors and dealers. 私人收藏家和交易商急速竞相喊价。
- The police were corrupt and were operating in collusion with the drug dealers. 警察腐败，与那伙毒品贩子内外勾结。
n.警告； 防止误解的说明
- I would offer a caveat for those who want to join me in the dual calling.为防止发生误解，我想对那些想要步我后尘的人提出警告。
- As I have written before,that's quite a caveat.正如我以前所写，那确实是个警告。
v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开
- He was good with his hands and could unravel a knot or untangle yarn that others wouldn't even attempt.他的手很灵巧，其他人甚至都不敢尝试的一些难解的绳结或缠在一起的纱线，他都能解开。
- This is the attitude that led him to unravel a mystery that long puzzled Chinese historians.正是这种态度使他解决了长期以来使中国历史学家们大惑不解的谜。
n.阴谋，密谋，共谋
- The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
- He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。
n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的
- He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
- Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。
n.流氓；v.游手好闲
- The little rogue had his grandpa's glasses on.这淘气鬼带上了他祖父的眼镜。
- They defined him as a rogue.他们确定他为骗子。
n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师
- Between you and me I think that new supervisor is a twit.我们私下说，我认为新来的主管人是一个傻瓜。
- He said I was too flighty to be a good supervisor.他说我太轻浮不能成为一名好的管理员。
n.纵容；默许
- The criminals could not have escaped without your connivance.囚犯没有你的默契配合，是逃不掉的。
- He tried to bribe the police into connivance.他企图收买警察放他一马。
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的
- The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
- By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报
- He was released on bail pending committal proceedings. 他交保获释正在候审。
- to initiate legal proceedings against sb 对某人提起诉讼
adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地
- The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
- They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。
n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人
- The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。
- The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces.检查官会把你的证言驳得体无完肤。
n.爱好，嗜好；（强烈的）倾向
- She has a penchant for Indian food.她爱吃印度食物。
- He had a penchant for playing jokes on people.他喜欢拿人开玩笑。
n.倾向；习性
- He has a propensity for drinking too much alcohol.他有酗酒的倾向。
- She hasn't reckoned on his propensity for violence.她不曾料到他有暴力倾向。
n.宽大（不严厉）
- udges are advised to show greater leniency towards first-time offenders.建议法官对初犯者宽大处理。
- Police offer leniency to criminals in return for information.警方给罪犯宽大处理以换取情报。