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I'm Bill Bulger, son of William Bulger,
the oldest of nine children.
[James Bulger] James Bulger.
I was born in 1962, April 26th.
That makes me, um, 54 right now.
I'm Mary Hurley,
daughter of Bill and Mary Bulger.
I live across the street from my parents.
Now married and I have seven children.
My name is Kathleen Bulger Webb.
I have six sons, one daughter, six brothers, two sisters.
I'm very lucky.
My name is Dan Bulger.
I'm a Boston native
and lived almost all my 50 years in South Boston
and still live there now
with my three teenaged children.
[suspenseful music playing]
[William Bulger] Somebody said loyalty is the holiest good
in the human heart.
I think a degree of loyalty is owed
to family members,
and it should not be thrown aside
because someone has faltered.
[suspenseful music playing]
[woman] Whitey alone, doing what he did,
would be the father of books and movies.
Criminal rises to the top
by eliminating his rivals in the Mafia.
But then you have the brother.
Billy is studying hard.
He rises to the top
of the political world in Massachusetts.
To me, the story is fascinating
because it's not black and white.
There's lots of different complexities to it.
[Rep. Burton] Mr. Bulger, have you talked to your brother James
since 1995? And if so, where was he?
And where is he now?
On advice of counsel,
I am unable to answer any questions today.
One of the Fifth Amendment's basic functions
is to protect innocent men
who might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.
I find myself in such circumstances.
[Thomas Kiley] If they cannot have one Bulger,
we fear they will have another.
And if it is not Whitey, it will be Bill.
[Jimmy Bulger] There's a false narrative
in Boston about my family,
and it's been, you know, emblazoned in Hollywood films
for crime's sake.
[suspenseful music playing]
[newsreader] The FBI's new push
to find one of their most wanted fugitives
James Whitey Bulger.
He's linked to 19 deaths
and has eluded authorities since 1995.
[woman] Santa Monica was the best time of my life.
And of his, too...
They weren't looking for the real him.
They were looking for this person they created.
That's why he was out there, for all that.
It wasn't him.
[Jimmy] We have remained very quiet about this.
We do not talk about this to the media in any way or form,
because we cannot win.
I think it's time to knock it down,
at least to throw a punch back.
I do think that while my dad is still alive,
someone should just step up
and make sure that there's some record
that folks can look at
that can see that my father was a good man.
And his brother was not the monster
they made him out to be.
[pipes and drums playing]
[people chattering]
- [William] Hello? - [Bill Clinton] Hello?
Hello, Mr. President?
Yeah, it's nice to hear your voice.
I know that this morning,
I'm just the other President on the phone.
[audience laughing]
[applause and cheers]
Well, you're right about that,
but I don't think...
[people laughing]
I commend you for your humility.
- [Clinton] Then one of us needs to be humble. - Pardon me?
One of us needs to be humble.
[people laughing]
My name is William Bulger.
I'm 83 years of age,
living here in South Boston all of my life.
We lived at 41 Logan Way
in the Old Harbor Housing Project.
And I think we moved there when I was four years of age.
So most of my memory is there.
Spectacular friends and neighbors
in that community.
And I cherish them forever.
As a youngster, I used to work
at John's Meat Market on Divine Way.
And I loved working there.
And I knew everybody
in the Old Harbor Village as a result.
And when the time came for me to run for office,
they were fiercely loyal to me.
I'm married to Mary Sarah Foley Bulger.
[Mary] When we became engaged, he had $150 in his bank account.
[laughing] That was his entire savings.
Imagine saying yes to someone...
[guffaws]
No job and $150.
What was I thinking?
[William] We have nine children. I think 33 grandchildren
unless something's happened today.
I had a wonderful life in politics
serving in the Massachusetts House of Representatives
as well as the Senate for some 35 years.
I'm pleased to say
that every bit of it is a nice memory for me.
[Michael Dukakis] Bill Bulger and I arrived
in the Legislature almost at the same time.
And he was a delight to be with and listen to.
Because he's bright as hell,
funny as hell,
so when the representative for South Boston rose to speak,
everybody would quiet down
because we knew something would happen.
[Bill Weld] Well, he's a very sophisticated man,
a very educated man.
He was not unsure of where he stood ever.
If you read his autobiography, While the Music Lasts,
he makes no bones about the fact
that he always had...
limitless self-confidence in himself.
[gentle music playing]
[Jimmy] Okay. South Boston.
Well, I'm the second oldest of nine.
Most of the families on the street I grew up
on 3rd Street in South Boston
were big families, you know, eight, seven, nine kids.
Not unusual.
It's a small town, it's only about four square miles.
About 50,000 people lived in it
in those days. And there were families
that have lived in it for generations.
It was a working-class neighborhood of good people,
proud of where they came from and all close-knit,
being Irish Catholics for the most part.
[William] It was very strong as a neighborhood.
People were happy to say they were from South Boston.
They even had their song, you know.
♪ Southie is my hometown ♪
♪ There is something about it ♪
♪ Permit me to shout it ♪
♪ They're the tops for miles around ♪
["Southie is my Hometown" by Michael Charton playing]
[Matt Connolly] It was like its own little country,
and it wasn't really part of Boston.
It was South Boston and Southie.
[song continues playing]
The reason I think Southie sets it apart from the rest
is that there's a strong loyalty among the people
and a strong cohesiveness where they stick together.
They're not bothered by what other people think about them.
[people singing "Southie is my Hometown"]
I wasn't conscious when they named me,
but I definitely got a good name.
It's my grandfather's name, too.
It's my father's father's name, James Joseph Bulger.
So, uh, that's what I got.
His oldest son was named that,
and, of course, he's the famous "Whitey"
that everyone calls him now.
Nobody called him that.
When I was growing up,
most people would not know who my uncle was.
There's probably very few people in South Boston
that could identify him.
He was a very low-key guy.
He drove around,
usually late in the afternoons or late at night,
and he was not out hanging around anywhere.
He had no bad habits.
He didn't smoke, he didn't drink,
he didn't stand in bar rooms.
He took good care of himself,
and he was not around all that much.
[nostalgic music playing]
[film projector whirring]
[Dan] Jim Bulger, for the beginning of my life,
was just one more uncle who came through the door.
He had big muscles and yelled a lot,
but that was the extent of it.
[Bill] My uncle Jim's personality
is rather overbearing.
[laughs] I think my brothers, my siblings would all agree
that when he's in the room,
he's in charge and it seems extremely evident to anyone
even if he doesn't say anything.
[Mary Hurley] He could be a pain the neck.
I remember the time that I missed my curfew or something,
so I think my mother told him
that I was late coming home at night or something.
The next day, he shows up with this big Timex watch
with the big numbers, like,
"Don't forget to come home on time."
[Sarah Bulger Piscatelli] He was very inconsistent.
We might see him four days in a row
and then not see him for six or seven months.
His days were different than my father's.
Obviously, they just-- Looking at them side by side,
one was wearing a black leather jacket,
the other one's wearing a suit.
[Bill] Early on, I just knew
he was doing something different.
Didn't fully understand what he was doing,
but certainly never felt
threatened by it or him in any way.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Brian Wallace] We were in Chinatown one night,
and we we were acting up, we had a few beers,
and we were being Southie kids.
"Give us a beer, give us a beer."
And the Chinese people,
"No, you're too young.
No, no beers."
And so I'm sitting there and this guy
taps me on the shoulder.
And turn around, I say, "What do you want?"
He said, "Leave these guys alone."
You're fresh punks from Southie.
"These guys work hard for their money."
I said, "Get lost."
I said, "We'll kick the shit out of you."
I thought all my friends would be laughing,
and I turned around, and they're all like...
I said, "What's the problem?"
They said, "That's Whitey Bulger."
I said, "You gotta be kidding me."
I said, "No way that's Whitey Bulger."
I said, "Oh, man."
So 20 minutes later, he's back.
"He said, " Want to go outside now
and we'll see who does what to who?"
I said, "No, sir."
He said, "Now you know who I am."
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Listen, I was just like you.
I was a fresh little punk from Southie
and I ended up in Alcatraz."
He said, "So you never open your mouth"
until you know who you're talking to.
You understand that? You're getting a pass this time,
because you're from Southie." He said, "But that's only one pass."
[William] ♪ Life is a weary puzzle ♪
♪ Past finding out by man ♪
♪ I'll take the day For what it's worth ♪
♪ I'll do the best I can ♪
♪ There were snowdrops And primroses ♪
♪ Piled high beside her bed ♪
♪ And Ferran's Church Was crowded ♪
♪ When her funeral mass Was said ♪
♪ Each human heart Must bear its grief ♪
♪ Though bitter be the bold ♪
♪ So God be with you Ireland ♪
♪ And the Old Bog Road ♪
That's it.
[applause]
[Mary] I remember the first time we heard that song
we were in a bar in Ireland,
and I started crying. And he says,
"I'm going to learn that one." And sure enough.
And she still cries.
[all laughing]
[stammering]
But it's not the lyrics, it's the singing.
[melancholic music playing]
[Peter Gelzinis] On both sides of the street that I grew up in
were housing projects, two very big housing projects.
The Old Harbor Project
was the first public housing development in the country
and the other one was the Old Colony.
Back then, when I was maybe
eight, nine, ten years old,
people swept the project hallways.
There were lace curtains
on the front doors of the apartment building.
There wasn't any sense
that these were public housing tenants
and there was any stigma to that.
It was just-- they were a part of the community.
[Jean Bulger Holland] Growing up here was wonderful.
Everything was brand-new.
The roads were perfectly paved with no traffic on them.
For a kid like me, roller skating around the whole project
was heaven.
And this was our apartment right here.
756 was our apartment,
and we walked up three flights of stairs
and my bedroom was up there on the left top floor corner.
When I was growing up, everybody was more or less
in the same economic circumstances as we were.
In later years, I would hear people talking about wealth
and what they had and they were vying
for who had the most.
But I remember an argument among my girlfriends
about who has the least.
I mean, you're talking about nostalgia.
I'm kind of one of the few men left standing
if you want to think about it.
Not too many left.
[nostalgic music playing]
[William] In the family, there's my older sister Jean,
my older brother James,
and I'm number three, and below me is Carol
and my brother Jack and my sister Sheila.
My father lived in... Well, for most of his life...
He was handicapped. He had one arm
and he had to work.
Whenever a call would come from the waterfront
they needed a night watchman.
And the coldest nights, Christmas, any night
that nobody else wanted the job,
he would be sure that he would get the call to go.
I think I was influenced greatly by their example.
[Jean] And then, of course, we had my brother Jim.
It was different.
He was always gone.
Nobody knew what the heck he was doing.
My mother was always trying to make him stay in the house
because she didn't know where he was
and who his friends were.
When I was going back over to Boston College High School,
he seemed to have been faltering in school,
and every now and then,
he would get into some kind of trouble.
Not large matters but...
My father lamented all the time.
When I was in the army,
I was stationed in Texas,
Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas,
and my father drove there.
He had, as I say, one arm.
When we sat down and talked,
he was expressing his concern about my brother.
But it was beyond his ability to control.
[Jean] We were all sitting around
in the small kitchen that we had.
My mother and father are getting our dinner,
and they're serving us.
And my brother Jim is there.
All of us were there, sitting around, and he's kind of laughing.
He had done something wrong
and we were all eating and very serious.
And I can remember him saying,
"I know what you're all thinking.
You think Mom got the wrong baby at the hospital,
don't you?"
And then he said,
"But you can't even say that
because I look just like his."
Always my brother Jim was a worry
and my brother Bill was a source of pride all the time.
Bill got into politics.
Actually, honestly, it was the force of his own personality.
He had always been well liked.
He was very outgoing.
He had a good sense of humor, even as a kid,
and he delivered groceries, so all the ladies loved him.
[William] I read the biography of James Michael Curley
and it's all about his life here,
and also the neighborhoods of the city,
I became familiar with that.
I was fascinated by all of it
because I had the interest in politics to begin with.
And Curley had a beautiful way of speaking.
He has a great aura to him.
[on recording] I James Michael Curley...
[William] And I used to do a take off of him.
[man on speakers] If Curley is elected governor,
then he will take the useless gold dome
from the top of the State House,
turn it upside down,
place it in the middle of Flood Square,
fill it with water and let the little children of South Boston
use it as a swimming pool.
[William] It was in 1960
and there were 16 candidates
for the House of Representatives.
There was a vacant seat
and I ran all over the place
and knocked on doors
and did everything that was necessary.
One of my opponents
used to call me "Same Suit" Bulger,
because I always wore the same suit.
Because it was the only suit.
And the night that I won,
I was happy that when he came to my victory party,
we stood on the stage together.
I introduced myself as "Same Suit."
At age 26, I was elected to the House,
and I stayed there for 35 years or so.
It was a happy life for me.
I think it might have been tough on people around me.
[nostalgic music playing]
[Mary] Some nights he would come home
and make the dinner
because he could tell I just about had it. You know.
I think at the time,
I may have even told my sweet wife "just one term"
but then another term,
"They need me."
That's how insufferable politicians become.
Oh. I'll tell you what happened then.
I just think he was so happy doing what he was doing
and he was doing such good things.
So I put up with it.
[giggles]
[Sarah] Reflecting back now as an adult,
knowing how busy he was at the time,
it's kind of impressive how much he did dig in around the house.
I mean, certainly my mother did the lion's share of it.
[Jimmy] He used to read to us at night when we were kids.
So there'd be some of us sitting on the sofa,
he'd sit on the floor.
Kids beside him, kids behind him
and everybody would be following the same story.
A couple on the couch up above him
and he'd have his back to the sofa
and he'd be reading the book,
whether it was Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island
and we'd read a couple of chapters a night.
And I remember as a boy just being enthralled with the story.
[Jimmy] I remember that very vividly
because he encourages us all to read and be good students.
He was very keen on education.
[uplifting music playing]
Forced busing was put upon the people of Boston
because there was an imbalance in the school system
in that the neighborhoods that were predominantly Black
were not getting the education
that the white neighborhoods were getting.
That was the argument made.
And the solution was, by the court,
to bus kids from one neighborhood to another
so you wouldn't walk to your local school anymore.
You'd be bused across the city to another school.
[Shelley Murphy] When busing started, I was 16 years old.
I was going into my senior year at South Boston High School,
um, that was now being sent to another school,
a school that was all Black across town.
And South Boston, of course, had been all white.
I wouldn't care if they are green or purple,
the idea of putting my kid on a bus
when I have a school right across the street
from where they should go. I don't care what color they are.
Let us go to our neighborhoods where our kids are safe.
[overlapping yelling]
[Pastor Robert Gray] South Boston was, it was like Alabama.
It was Mississippi, just right down the street.
Regardless of the political peace that was going on,
kids were stoned.
[demonstrators chanting]
[Jean McGuire] Up on the hill there in South Boston,
you had people with sheets,
"Niggas, go home, go back to Africa."
It was ugly.
[dramatic music playing]
It's not about the bus. It's about us.
Everybody in the suburbs gets on a bus to go to school.
You don't call it busing. You call it education.
The bus was the code word to say,
"Blacks are leaving their place."
[man] It was a situation where suddenly one local neighborhood
became a national flash point for this question.
That explosion fueled a lot of political careers.
[man] I want Senator Bill Bulger!
[people cheering and applauding]
[William] I am here before you to emphasize one central thought.
They were wrong.
They were wrong
about you.
They were wrong
about the intensity of the love
which you have for your children and for your community.
They were wrong about your determination
to remain in this city
as a cohesive community
and that you somehow are the ones
to blame for some social problem.
[cheers and applause]
It was so unfair that you would be labeled racist
simply because you opposed busing.
That's not to defend in any way, shape or form
the people that were out there throwing rocks at buses
and hurling racial slurs.
So I really felt that Billy Bulger
was speaking for me
and for the people who didn't really have a voice.
[Pat Nee] The first time I met Whitey,
I was at an afterhours club in South Boston.
There was card games going on,
and I wasn't a gambler, but I'd be at the bar drinking.
Whitey he was in there, I was introduced to him.
I had heard he was a bank robber and all this stuff.
You know, it didn't make any impression one way or another.
So I'm sitting there at the bar.
We're just engage in meaningless conversation.
And one of our guys had stopped at the Killeen's bar room
in Southie that night and got his nose bit off
and shot three times in the arm.
And before he went to the hospital,
he came into the club to tell us what happened.
Two guys took him to the hospital
and we all piled into one car.
We ran out of room and Whitey said,
"I'm going that way."
Hmm, okay.
I know he was with the Killeens and that's who had shot Mickey.
I said, "I don't think we'll be talking again."
He says, "No. See you later."
Who knew we were on opposite sides?
And then the shooting started.
We'd hunt each other.
He almost got me one summer evening.
Tried to come in the window with a grease gun, I think.
I grabbed the rifle out of the closet.
A .30-06 with a scope, and I jumped out the window
because I see him, which way he was running,
and I kept dropping on one knee
trying to get him in my scope but I couldn't.
I couldn't get a clear shot of him.
His mother lived here
and he was pretty close with his mother.
So I see this is a real good place to try and get him.
He won't expect me to be in the weeds here.
I staked this place out periodically.
For about 18, 20 months I showed up here.
I thought I had a real good shot to get him here,
but I never did. He never showed up.
We joined forces because you can't make any money
when there's a war going on.
The cops are looking to get everybody.
It was time to end it anyhow.
Enough damage had been done on both sides.
We just walked in one Monday with Whitey and told everyone,
"You're working for us now."
Everyone says, "Okay."
We threw the money on the table,
me and Whitey.
I said, "We've been in the wrong business all these years.
Look at this. We were all going, "Are you kidding me?"
That's what we get for the week?
Says, "Yeah. Week after week."
[suspenseful music playing]
[Kevin Weeks] I'm working at Triple O's.
Jim Bulger, Steve Flemmi used to come in all the time
on the weekends.
And little by little, they're talking to me more and more,
especially Jim Bulger.
"How you doing? How's your family? How is this?"
Just talking about stuff around the town, everything.
I got involved in a few other things.
And then I started beating people up.
Besides my regular job,
I beat a couple of people up for Jim Bulger.
And then basically, one day he came and he says
to Kevin O'Neill, he says, "I'm taking him with me."
[intriguing music playing]
You know, I can't say anything bad about him.
He treated me really well,
almost like a son.
He taught me a lot about crime, about life, about dealing with people.
And he was always trying to keep me out of trouble.
He was always thinking, thinking, using his head,
putting the odds in our favor on everything.
And... I mean, he was a smart guy.
He was ahead of a lot of people.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Catherine Greig] I was 24.
He wouldn't tell me how old he was at the time,
but he was 44 or 45.
I knew of him, of course,
but I was walking my dog in the park
and he asked somebody, "Who is that?"
And then he started to call,
and I'm like, "No, I'm not interested in going out with anybody now.
I'm just ending a relationship."
So he just kept calling.
And then I eventually did go out to eat with him.
He was very persuasive.
He loved his family.
And he loved going to Bill's house and seeing all the kids.
He was really part of that family, you know?
There may have been a long period of time sometimes
that he didn't come in there, but he just loved it.
And was close to nieces and nephews
after for a long, long time
[female newsreader] Elected to the State Senate in 1970,
Bulger became Senate President in 1978 at the age of 44.
[journalist] President, congratulations.
A bit of a surprise.
Obviously, you weren't taken aback by it all.
No, the Senate President Kevin Harrington had informed me
last week that he was thinking of it
and he made up his mind a couple of days ago to do this.
[Murphy] If you go back to the old movies, right?
The good brother, the bad brother,
The Angels with Dirty Faces, right?
It's sort of an age-old story.
You have Billy Bulger, who was arguably
the most powerful politician in the state,
the long time President of the Massachusetts Senate.
And at the same time, you have his brother,
this notorious gangster.
To me, the story is fascinating
because it's not black and white.
There's lots of different complexities to it.
Trying to get at that relationship
and how they interact
and what their relationship is.
They're very protective of each other.
Whitey was careful not to embarrass him.
When their mother died, Whitey made sure
that there was no opportunity
for a photo of the two brothers together.
But there were intersections.
I mean, there were things that happened
that really triggered media scrutiny.
[Wallace] Boston magazine did a story called "The Brothers Bulger"
and they came to me, and they said,
"You know both Bulgers, how do you separate them?"
"I said, "Well, if you're sitting in a room
and you close your eyes,
"you wouldn't know which was which," I said.
"They're both intelligent, well-spoken, well-read,
can talk on any subject."
I said, "They're just, they're brilliant people."
So about a week later, I was going to Triple O's
on a Friday afternoon after work
and I feel this gun in my neck,
and I'm like, "Oh, my... What's going on here?"
And I hear his laugh.
And he said, "I saw that quote."
He said, "You're learning."
He said, "I like that you're learning."
[Weeks] He was proud of his brother. He loved his brother.
I'd go up the house with them.
His brother lived on East Third Street, and we'd go inside.
And they basically talked about the kids,
talked about education.
I mean, it sounds crazy, but that's what they talked about.
Talked about what was going on in the town, talked about politics,
talked about everyday stuff that you'd see in the paper
and on the news and everything.
He was very careful.
He sheltered his brother, you know?
I mean, Billy's not stupid.
And he probably heard a lot of stories about his brother,
what he was doing out there and stuff,
but it was never confirmed to him.
No one ever told him, you know,
exactly this happened or that happened.
[Weld] No one inside the State House
really ever thought about Whitey Bulger
and Bill Bulger in the same breath.
Except maybe me.
I had indicted Whitey Bulger in a narcotics case
under seal to prevent him from fleeing back in the '80s
when I was US Attorney.
So I knew a bit about him.
The word on the street was
Whitey kept the drugs out of South Boston?
Complete lie.
Quite the contrary was true.
So I knew all about
the nefarious deeds of Bill's brother,
but I just never made any connection there.
And if I wasn't going to make that connection,
believe me, nobody else was.
I wouldn't have known Whitey Bulger if I'd fallen over him.
I had no idea who he was.
He had nothing to do with government as far as I could see.
No impact on public policy.
I had no idea what he was doing.
I mean, the dominant Bulger brother
was the Senate President, not this other guy.
The state government that he and I entered
in 1960 and 1962 as young state legislators,
it was one of the three or four more corrupted in America.
Bill Bulger was the guy that brought integrity
to the Massachusetts State Senate.
Nobody understands this.
Sadly, not really well recognized,
what he did to set those kinds of high standards
and maintain them.
And we're benefiting from that now.
And I think he has a right to take a pretty good chunk
of the credit for helping to make that.
[Bowns] He seemed to be someone who believed in power
and wielding power to get things done.
[applause]
[Bowns] I'd say he's someone who's very principled,
very religious.
I think he's a compassionate man,
soft spot in his heart for the most vulnerable people,
poor people, children,
and very stubborn.
Won't compromise on his convictions.
A recession is not a moral justification
for casually punishing the helpless, the homeless,
the sick, the disadvantaged.
We cannot and we must not squander
a half century of social progress
to pay the bills of a difficult year.
We cannot turn our backs on the education of the young
or the care of the elderly.
We cannot, and I am confident that we shall not,
be found wanting in performing the work
that we have been so clearly sent here to do.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
[William] He wasn't very open about things with us.
"It would be, " Don't worry.
It's not anything like that," sort of reassuring.
"There's nothing to be concerned about."
But all of the indicia were there.
And...
You knew you had something to worry about.
[Nee clears throat]
This is the Mullen Club.
This is where we socialized.
All the fighting was over,
so you wouldn't have to duck and weave anymore and hide.
We would socialize here. We would drink here.
We ran dice games here.
We ran card games here.
We did cookouts in back.
Everyone would come here if they wanted to see us,
including the police and the FBI.
He would come by night
and come in and all the beer would go flat.
But he didn't drink.
He'd hang around a little bit.
He didn't like to shake hands.
He didn't like to touch people.
He would immediately go in the bathroom.
Most people didn't catch on,
but he'd go in and wash his hands and he'd come back out.
He didn't like contact.
He loved that people would be fearful of him.
He really got off on it.
You know, little by little, we're starting to pick up on this stuff.
This is not going to be a good relationship.
But we didn't know how bad it was going to turn out to be.
He was not a good guy to be around.
[Weeks] Unless we were doing something it was really boring.
Once a week, you'd go by, you'd pick up the envelopes.
People would drop off money, you pick it up.
You really didn't have too much to do.
Then when you had a problem, everything stopped
and you'd be out 24 hours a day.
The people we'd grab, most of them were involved in drugs.
They were big drug dealers.
And they were the people that brought in
by the boat loads or different things.
We'd grab them and tell them that they were going to pay us.
Oh, I remember one time we got this fellow,
talked to him for 20 minutes.
And next day he showed up with a hockey bag
with $500,000 in it.
One fellow we shook down, we got $1.6 million off him.
So there's a lot of money coming in.
[interviewer] Were you bribing those guys? Just--
[laughing] Bribing them? No.
[interviewer] What were they giving you this money for?
For their life.
[ominous music playing]
For Jim Bulger, Whitey, violence was his last option.
He would use anything in his arsenal up until that,
whether it was scaring people or intimidating people,
beating people, whatever... to get his way.
But when he decided to use violence,
especially against someone that was capable...
He decided on killing them, he was going to kill them.
And there was no changing his mind.
It was just business with him.
He'd put everything into it.
After he killed someone, he'd be nice and relaxed.
It's kind of like taking a Valium or something.
He just...
It was over and that was it. It was done.
And then he'd be on to something else.
[brooding music playing]
[Wallace] If he liked you
and he wanted you for whatever, he would...
He would bring you in.
And then he'd make you do something
so that you couldn't get out because he had that on you.
Like Kevin buried the bodies.
Kevin couldn't get out.
I mean, if Whitey'd get caught,
he's gonna say, "Kevin buried those bodies there."
So it was just this whole game that they were playing.
It wasn't a game, though. They were killing people.
They killed some of my friends.
[ominous music playing]
[William] You don't want a battle of wits. You're unarmed.
I mean, we don't... [laughing]
I'm only kidding.
My brother will be asking for you.
[laughter and applause]
He's got a great sense of humor. He's a funny bastard.
He has a great ability to assess a situation
and come up funny on it.
This guy is dangerous. He could end up in the White House.
He's like Mr. Magoo.
Right off the edge of the cliff.
- And, oh, an eagle comes along. - [laughter]
Brother, he always lands on his feet.
"Oh, I just made a minor mistake
for $1.5 million in my tax return."
[laughter]
Can you imagine if I had made a little mistake?
[applause]
[Weld] He'd make fun of me
for worshipping in wooden churches
and my people having come over
on the Mayflower and silver spoon,
and I was Irish on my chauffeur's side
and all that sort of thing.
Got a lot of good lines, good laugh.
No one loves a joke like the Irish. It's really terrific.
I didn't know Protestants get up this early on Sunday morning.
Really good to see you.
We're not going to pick on you today or something like that.
Somebody said, "Don't be too hard." It was your wife.
[laughter]
[Dukakis] I loved going to the breakfasts. They were hilarious.
If it's a broken convention,
we're going to use your old charisma...
[Dukakis] They were a feature of political life of Boston.
I mean, if you were anybody, you better get down to that breakfast.
And if you went down there,
you should expect to be raked over.
I know this is going to disappoint some of you,
but I'm not going to be a candidate for the presidency...
of the Massachusetts State Senate.
[laughter and applause]
You're keeping us in suspense, Governor.
He's still waiting to hear. Chitty, tell him.
[laughter]
The one weakness he had, and I say this respectfully,
was that he just wouldn't spend a lot of time
thinking about his media relationships.
Marty Nolan from the Globe said, "Well, Mr. President,
looks like a nice day, doesn't it?"
- I said, "I never mind your trick questions." - [laughter]
The Boston Globe and Bill Bulger
really didn't get along all that well,
and he didn't mind saying so.
Didn't mind sharing his opinion
of "the sullens of the Fourth Estate,"
as he sometimes called them.
[William] Do we need any greater assurance
of the excellence of this candidate
than to know that the Boston Globe
has endorsed his opponent?
Is there any greater assurance needed?
[applause]
[Connolly] He had a different philosophy from the Boston Globe
because he would never respond to their requests.
He was always, you know, "You didn't elect me.
I'll be responsible to my constituents, not to you."
It became a personal grudge
between Bill Bulger and Gerald O'Neill
and Dick Lehr from the Globe.
If you read their book, they say,
"In the pantheon of American criminals,
Whitey stands out above all of them,
above Gotti, above Al Capone. They have him at the top.
Whitey wasn't even at the top in Boston.
So you just look at that.
It makes no sense
unless they're really trying to do something
other than what they're doing, which is to take down Bill,
because of their hatred for Bill.
[ominous music playing]
[Bill] The big target was my dad very often.
You know, that's what I think was going on.
They would love to get Senate President Bulger.
You know, they tried numerous times
to concoct stories and have people come in.
And if they could tie my Uncle Jim to him
in order to tear him down in his career,
they would make a name for themselves.
[Dan] I've even read the headline,
"William Bulger Is the Head of the Mob."
There could be nothing any further from the truth.
[Shelley] I think the job of the media is to lay it out,
let people know.
And I think that if you're a politician,
you're going to come under a lot of scrutiny anyway.
If you're a politician with a brother who's killing people,
part of the story is the brother.
I mean, that's part of it.
[Alan Dershowitz] The investigation was directed at an accusation
that Senator Bulger had committed a serious felony,
namely, had accepted a $250,000 bribe
indirectly through another attorney.
I don't care whether you... Listen, Mr. Chairman.
There's never anybody has made such an accusation against me,
except for Silverglate and Dershowitz.
He's been accused of all kinds of crazy things in the media
but never charged with anything.
They are reckless and they are liars
and they have no moral constraints upon them.
Look at them.
They are beneath contempt in my view
I hope I'm making myself clear.
[Jimmy] They throw around the word "corrupt." He's not corrupt.
He's the most honest guy that has ever walked.
The real sad part of the whole story of the Bulgers
is what they've done to his reputation,
because that narrative is just absolutely false.
[dramatic music playing]
[Gelzinis] There's two poles in the town.
Then. Okay, there was the criminal pole
and there was the political pole.
Two forces of gravity.
And they were both controlled by the Bulger brothers.
Those two brothers actually were
the sort of center of the universe
in the town for a long time.
[dramatic music continues]
[animated music playing]
[newsreader] Indicted this week for 12 counts of racketeering
and extortion,
James "Whitey" Bulger is a shadowy figure
caught on surveillance photos and police wiretaps.
[female newsreader] The FBI revealed that Bulger
had been an underworld informant,
helping them collect evidence against the New England Mob.
His handler was disgraced FBI agent John Connolly.
[Connolly] John Connolly became an FBI agent in 1968.
The FBI wanted to partner with top criminals
who had access to other top criminals.
They wanted to have a long-term relationship with them,
and they didn't want anyone to know about it.
Remember, these are our most important assets that we have,
informants. I mean, they're the name of the game.
You're going to get friendly with them and you're going to like them.
But you never forget who you work for.
[brooding music playing]
[Weeks] I didn't really know about the friendly relationship
between John Connolly and Jim Bulger
till, I'd say, early '80s.
And I found out we're paying John Connolly for information.
The FBI is trying to do this.
The State Police are trying to do that.
The DEA is trying to do this.
The Boston Police are trying to do that.
He let us know of all these investigations going on, on us.
And that's how we avoided them all,
because we were getting tipped off.
[Wallace] John Connolly idolized Whitey when he was growing up as a kid.
They grew up in the project, both of them.
Whitey saved him one time he was getting beat up.
I think he got taken care of his whole life by Whitey.
I mean, John would wear these $5,000 suits
and these cuff links that cost more than my house.
And he had the hair all done.
He looked like someone out of Goodfellas.
Whitey pulled him in.
He pulled him in, and then he got him in so far
that he was in, he couldn't get out.
December 23, 1994.
John Connolly came down to the liquor store.
And he was looking for Whitey and Stevie.
He couldn't find them,
so he come up to me and he told me
that the indictments were coming down.
So I called Jim Bulger, I beeped him.
He came down, saw me. We took a ride.
Within 30 minutes, he was gone. Packed up and gone.
[intriguing music]
For the first
35 years of my life, I was Bill Bulger's son.
Once all that burst onto the scene with the arrests
and him going on the run, suddenly it flips.
You become Jim Bulger's nephew.
You know, "Are you related to that Bulger?"
No one ever asked me that years ago.
They would ask me if I was related to Bill, you know,
and it's kind of turned on his head
because while my father was a very visible person, right?
He had a very visible job,
and his brother, by nature, was invisible.
Whatever he was doing,
and we weren't even totally aware
of what that fellow was doing. No one is.
If you're in that life, you keep it quiet.
Bear in mind,
until the time they heaped all these charges on them,
there was, we never had any idea, he, uh,
that these things he was accused of,
that was not known.
None of us would have known that.
Do you understand what I mean?
You know, being a bookmaker is different.
You know?
There was a booking in every bar
and someone had to be the bank.
But I don't, you know, as far as all the other charges.
No one...
[ominous music]
[woman] Whitey Bulger's relationship with the FBI
was exposed shortly after he went on the run.
[Kevin] We all believe we were paying for this information.
Then it all came out
that not only were we paying for information,
but they were given information.
And it destroyed all of us.
I mean, a lot of us were devastated by it
because we believed that we were paying for information.
And we couldn't believe it, he was an informant.
[intriguing music]
The informant file that was alleged to have been
his contained information.
He provided this poor fiction.
[intriguing music continues]
The first page is a report that says something along the lines,
"Informant said that somebody may have been involved
in a crime."
The very last page of this file
is the same exact report with a different date on it
down to the syllables and everything.
An expert has looked at them and said,
"This guy wasn't a informant. This is nonsense."
And I put some previse in that.
The thing that convinces me the most
that he was not in informant
is the intensity with which the Department of Justice
insisted that he was an informant.
They didn't insist so much and so hard
that he had murdered somebody
or robbed this bank or done this crime or that crime.
It was that thing they want to be true so much.
So why would the government want this so badly to be true?
I don't know quite the answer to that question,
but I believe the case is that were not true.
The relationship between Jim Bulger
and the Department of Justice was solely
that Jim Bulger was bribing them all.
[woman] Where is Whitey?
It's a game the FBI is sick of playing.
The latest possible sighting
of South Boston's most notorious gangster
and his mob of all places, Sicily,
birthplace of the Mafia.
The prize for the winner of where's Whitey
is a cool million dollars.
That's the bounty on his snowy white head.
[Shelley] Well, he's on the run.
This is when the whole case blows up.
[reporter] New York's Time Square.
A billboard showing the FBI's new push
to find one of their most wanted fugitives, James Whitey Bulger.
[Shelley] They put him on the FBI's ten most wanted.
The pressure is really on the FBI to find him.
[Kevin] Part of it was because it was such an embarrassment
to the FBI.
They wanted him so bad that they boost them up,
you know, and they could never catch him.
So it just became like Elvis sightings,
all around the world at one point.
You know, "He's there, he's there."
[intense music]
The big part of my uncle's persona is a myth.
When you're in a business that he was in,
you want people to think you're tougher than you are
and it protects you.
So there is a myth that you bring on yourself.
I believe that the media helps to create that myth
later in his life.
As he fled, there was no defense, right?
The myth takes off on its own.
[Kevin] Johny Depp might have looked like him,
but he didn't act like him.
Get in the fucking car.
[Kevin] It is a mystical movie.
It should be made by Walt Disney.
I saw the movie and I couldn't believe that that was
what was supposed to be portrayed as our life
what we did, what we lived.
It was made up. It was fantasy.
And no one knew where he was.
[Catherine] And we were all through the country
for a year, a year and a half.
We just drove and drove
and we would see signs on the road and we think,
"Oh, we never heard of that.
Let's go travel down there and see what that's like."
And Santa Monica, he had been in
and it was nice because the ocean was there, the beaches
and it was just the climate that, oh, that was fabulous.
We were on the California freeway
and it was beating hot day, brutally hot.
And he saw an elderly couple with a Volkswagen camper
that had broken down
and he put the vehicle in reverse and got out.
And he spent probably the next hour changing the tire,
talking to the man and woman doing this and that.
That's the kind of person he was, a very kind, giving person.
And he was kind to me, my family, but strangers.
I think even the workers
that lived in the building that we were at,
he was always trying to help them.
There were a couple of single mothers in there
and he always tried to help them
play with the kids out in the lobby,
leave things in front of the door,
deliver the mail.
Just to be helpful to people.
I remember the day we were on Venice Beach in the summer time,
sitting on a bench, and then about eight policemen came up
and they just stopped in front of us.
And my first thing is, uh-oh, and he's just calm and looking at them
and one stepped forward and he said,
"You know, I'm going to retire soon.
And I hope my wife and I are as happy as you people are."
[sighs]
I guess we did feel freer there.
I can remember somebody saying to me
when we first were arrested,
"Aren't you relieved
"you don't have to look over your shoulder?" [laughs]
Are you crazy?
I never looked on my shoulder.
We stayed in the same building, the same apartment.
We didn't worry.
We've had a wonderful life in Santa Monica, really.
[intense music]
[Rep. Burton] Edmund Burke said that the only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
He wasn't talking about why we're here,
but he might just as well have been.
Rogue members of the FBI up to the highest levels
protected informants at the expense of innocent people.
Informants committed murders with impunity.
Killers were tipped off
so that they could flee before being arrested.
And when people went to the Justice Department
and the FBI with evidence about murderers,
some of them wound up dead.
Did you talk to your brother
about rumors that he was a government informant?
No. I don't believe so.
Did you know that he was involved in murder?
No, I do not. I just...
Did you know he was involved in narcotics trafficking?
No.
Did you ever use any of your authority to, uh,
to chastise or threaten people that,
that were after your brother?
No. Never.
In retrospect, giving your power and prestige,
did you ever discourage law enforcement
from doing everything
it could go after your brother?
Never.
With the Chairman's indulgence,
I would like to offer a few words about my brother.
Many words have been written about him.
A few have been spoken by me.
So please allow me to speak plainly.
I do not know where my brother is.
I do not know where he has been over the past eight years.
I have not aided James Bulger in any way.
While he has been a fugitive.
Do I possess information that could lead
to my brother's arrest?
The honest answer is no.
I know my brother stands accused of many things.
Serious crimes, brutal crimes.
I do still live in the hope
that the worst of the charges against him
will prove groundless.
It is my hope.
But I am ever mindful
of the Good Shepherd story
and its lesson that no one is to be abandoned.
I care deeply for my brother.
But no one should construe my expression of concern
in any way condoning any illegal acts.
Nor should anyone think that I ever take lightly
this entire matter.
Among the constituents of my legislative district
and in the Massachusetts Senate, there was always
an awareness of my brother.
It was never a secret.
But people understood that we were different people
who lived different lives and should be judged separately.
[female newsreader] After months of controversy
surrounding his post,
the President of the University of Massachusetts
is stepping down
and it all has to do with his brother
who happens to be one of the FBI's ten most wanted.
[male journalist] For months,
Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney
and the State attorney general have called for his resignation.
The University board held out until now.
[W Bulger] I deeply appreciate the strong vote of confidence
that you gave me just six weeks ago,
as well as your willingness to judge me on my own merits.
I think that Bill Bulger taking the Fifth before Congress
is what gave then Governor Romney the leverage he needed
to get Bill Bulger out as President of UMass.
[soft music]
I'll never forgive Romney
for what he did to Bill
when Bill was proving to be
one of the most effective presidents
at the University of Massachusetts we'd ever had.
It was all about the brother.
[gentle piano tune]
[Christine] We saw that his family was being subjected
to things because of him.
And he would have felt so bad about that.
[sobbing]
But he does what he wanted to do later in life is,
I have to answer these things
because my poor family...
[sobbing] That really troubled him.
[piano music continues]
[Mary] My husband worked hard,
and you would think he would be treated fairly,
but it didn't work that way.
You learn to handle it when you live with Bill.
Bill tells you you can't let it get to you.
We just keep on going the way you are
and don't worry about that.
That will work out.
[female newsreader] And breaking news.
A crime boss from the FBI's ten most wanted list
finally captured tonight here in Southern California.
[male reeporter] What a night this is.
The so called globe trotting godfather of South Boston
arrested tonight on the streets of Santa Monica.
He and his girlfriend arrested here.
Whitey is in custody.
[suspenseful music]
[Shelley] They finally find him 16 years later,
living in a rent control department
in Santa Monica, California,
with $822,000 stuffed in the wall.
Oh, and by the way, he's caught
because his girlfriend is feeding a cat.
And former Miss Iceland notices how kind they are at the cat
and then recognizes them when she's sitting back in Reykjavik
from an episode of like 2020 or something.
I mean, she calls in the FBI, and they capture him.
[Christine] In his mind, he always knew
there was a potential for that day to come.
He was emotionally very bad. Yeah, he was.
He was.
He was a realist.
When they brought him back to town,
I likened it to Caesar when he captured Vercingetorix
and brought him back to Rome for the triumph.
And the man is in shackles in a cage
and he's coming into the city of Rome
and going through the archway.
That's what they were doing here in Boston.
We were the bad Bulgers.
It's continually, you hear that drumbeat.
[reporter] Mr. Bulger, what do you think
that your brother is in prison right now?
Can you tell us about this book
that his niece and nephew are writing?
[Mary Bulger Hurley] I remember when Osama bin Laden got caught.
Osama bin Laden had some relatives
living in Cambridge, Massachusetts
and everybody came out defending those relatives
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They could make the distinction
between these Osama bin Laden relatives
and Osama bin Laden
who was top on the most wanted list or something.
And I was thinking, "How can they make the distinction"
of them, but not for us?
Why can't people see that?
We are not all, you know...
Whitey Bulger.
[sirens wailing]
[reporter] Are you happy to see your brother or anything?
No. I gave a statement.
"My father said, "I'm going down to the courthouse.
"I want him to see me."
So he went on with one of my brothers
and my other uncle Jack,
and they went down to the court house to sit in the front row,
so that Jimmy saw them
so that he knew that they care about him.
The 2013 trial of Whitey Bulger was totally unnecessary
because Whitey was willing to plead guilty to all charges
on the condition that Catherine Greig get a break.
Let her off we don't need a trial, I'll plead guilty.
And I'll do the rest of my life in prison.
He was in his 80s at the time,
but they didn't want to let him do it
because they wanted to put on this big show.
The Globe and the media had created this huge myth
out of James Bulger.
And then the US Attorney's office
comes in strong afterwards.
[Shelley] The prosecution presented 63 witnesses in 30 days.
Victims, drug dealers and hitmen
who are serving time for murder and plea deals.
[Kevin] I hadn't talked to Jim Bulger until I saw him in court
at his trial
and I was sitting as close as I am to you away from him
maybe nine, ten feet.
And he wouldn't look at me at all.
And I kept on staring at him, and he wouldn't look at me.
You know, I just wanted to know why you did this.
You know, explain it to me,
and he wouldn't look at me at all.
I never gave up anybody in my life
and I'm disappointed
because he was my mentor and everything.
And I believed everything he said.
There's nothing I wouldn't have done for him.
And now I find out you're an informant.
[Jimmy] When you swear in court to give your testimony,
it's swearing to tell the truth.
If you've arrested half a dozen guys
and threaten them with life in prison,
but if they talk about this other guy
they can only do six years.
Well, they're talking about that other guy
because it's worth more than gold or currency.
It's freedom.
Some of these fellas that testified against them
were admitting to ten murders or more.
Are you crazy or just nuts?
I know you're mourning. And I'm sorry for you loss
but we have something much bigger here. We have--
What's the "bigger here"? What's here?
Tell me what's here. What's...
[woman] So you take the crimes of these five individuals,
plus a few more, you know,
and you put it in the scales of justice...
How do their combined crimes
which include at least 100 murders
weigh less than the crimes of James Bulger?
The scales of justice were altered,
and the question is why.
[man] After 16 years as a fugitive, Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger
learned his fate Thursday for a reign of terror
in the 1970s and '80s.
The 84-year-old has been sentenced to life in prison
for 11 killings and a string of other charges,
including extortion and money laundering.
[woman] Today is the day that many in this city
thought would never come.
James J. "Whitey" Bulger now stands convicted
for his role as the ring leader
of the murderous Winter Hill Gang.
This day of reckoning for Bulger
has been a long time in coming.
Jim Bulger is my uncle, and he's still family to me.
But I am aware that now, in retrospect, he hurt people
The families that were left, some kids that I played with
when I was younger, who didn't have a father
and I didn't realize until 30 or 40 years later
why they didn't have a father.
[man] There's no way to equate what our family has gone through
with what the victims of the crime families have gone through.
They've suffered terribly.
The Bulgers are not in that bucket.
[Catherine] It's very difficult for me,
almost impossible for me to say
he was like this,
and this is the way I was with him in Santa Monica
and how he lived
and he did that.
I mean, it's hard for me to see that
but I'm not diminishing their suffering at all.
I mean, I know they lost people.
Uh...
I don't know. I'm sorry.
[brooding piano tune]
[Jean Bulger Holland] I feel sorry for him at times.
Then I could be angry.
He's been his own worst enemy.
And I know he never expected the fallout.
But you don't even know-- Does he have the capacity,
for him to look beyond what his own little life is,
you know,
and see how it's affected anybody else?
I'm not sure that he... He goes there.
[William] I wrote to him
all the years he was in prison.
You know, I cared... I care about him.
I'm not sure
if he was listening attentively to me.
[woman] I really loved my mother
but could never express it with words.
Fortunately, my brother Bill could
and always said the right things to her and my father
in their last moments.
"I can see the room."
"My mother in it in so much pain"
"but I couldn't do anything for her."
After the trial, I wanted to find out
what we were told, and I went to the Plymouth Prison
and got Bulger's information.
He was an inmate there.
And find out how to write to him.
And I did send him a letter
and explained that I was on the jury
and I just had questions.
When he talked about the criminality
there was a harshness to him.
But then he would start talking about his family,
and there would be just this softness
a kindness, a compassion.
Even in the very first letters, Jim talked about Catherine
and how he had wanted to take the death sentence
and have her get out of prison.
[newsreader] "Whitey" Bulger's girlfriend, Catherine Greig,
just learned that she'll spend
an additional 21 months behind bars,
almost two years.
Greig is already serving an eight year sentence
for helping Bulger evade capture.
[man] The government wanted to punish her
because it was the only way they could really get
at Jim Bulger, make him hurt more.
The judge allowed every alleged victim of Jim Bulger
who had no relevance whatsoever to Catherine Greig
to come into court
and call her a dirty little bitch.
And they yelled at her, and the...
No judge should allow their courtroom
to be used like that.
It was disgusting.
[Catherine] I didn't have a trial. I pled guilty to the charges,
but my sentence was still the longest in US history
for what I was charged with.
I wasn't given that long sentence for what I did.
I was given that long sentence
and the last thing the judge said to me
when I left the courtroom was,
"Now, if you come back and speak to us,"
'cause I wouldn't talk to them...
"If you come back and speak to us"
"we'll be glad to revisit this."
And I thought, "How outrageous is this?"
And I didn't understand then that what they did to people
was give them a pass if they told, not even the truth,
but they told their version of the truth.
And that, unfortunately
is what has become of our justice system
which I think is horrendous.
[gentle music]
[Jason Bowns] I think Bill Bulger
wanted to be judged for what he did
and not for what his brother did.
And I think people, for some reason,
they're just fascinated by the crime stuff.
You know, it really hit home to me
when I was calling UMass Boston,
I was asking them to help me track down
an article in the library.
It was called "The Bulger I Know."
And the girl on the end of the line, she said,
"As if we know any other Bulger
"You know "Whitey" Bulger, as if we know any other."
And the article wasn't even about...
It was about Bill Bulger
and it was written by Walter Boverini,
who had served with him in the Senate.
And it just hit me how much his legacy
and anything that he did was fading away
and being overshadowed by his brother.
And even, UMass Boston, where Bulger had been President
for eight years, didn't even know that it was about him.
[melancholic music]
[Jimmy] As I get older
I realize, like, my dad's contemporaries
are checking out now.
And guys who remembered him being a Senator
they're getting old.
They're my age, you know, time moves on.
The neighborhood I grew up in is gone.
It doesn't exist anymore. There's nothing.
There's nothing left, there's yuppies over there now.
You know, I think some of them think they live in South Boston
and it's the place to be,
but the guys who made it South Boston,
the people who lived there,
they're spread all through the south shore, you know.
[brass band playing]
[indistinct chatter]
- [William Bulger] It's a big crowd here. - [man] Yeah, it is.
[William Bulger] ♪ From the mountains ♪
♪ To the prairies ♪
♪ To the oceans White with foam ♪
♪ God bless America ♪
♪ My home sweet home ♪
[band music fades]
[man] Sadly, he at least in part
is going to be remembered because of his brother.
I hope at some point we can at least
find a way to recognize him
in the contributions he made to making this a better place.
[man] He grew up in modest circumstances in Southie.
Southie was a very tightly knit community,
so they were a force under themselves.
And I think Bill Bulger's political legacy
will last for another 100 years in Massachusetts.
People are gonna remember him for a long time.
[drums playing]
[Bill] He raised nine children.
He came out of the housing projects in South Boston,
got himself to Boston College High School
and then to Boston College.
He went into the military
so the GI Bill could pay for his College.
That should shine through more
than the shadow of a brother.
You know, whatever the transgressions of his brother,
that should not overshadow my dad.
[sentimental music]
[newsreader] And we have breaking news now
about a notorious Boston mobster.
[reporter] We're just learning
that the notorious gangster James "Whitey" Bulger
has been killed in prison.
Officials had just moved him
to a prison in West Virginia.
At the height of his power, "Whitey" Bulger ruled the streets
with an iron fist.
But those days are long over.
Now "Whitey" Bulger is dead in a prison in West Virginia
and authorities are trying to figure out how this happened.
I'm out in front of Billy's house.
By the way, he came home and we got a fleeting shot of him.
You know, they just kind of pulled up and he ran in.
We did see one man come up, leave a card in the mailbox
right there and walk away.
He didn't want to talk either
as reaction continues to come in.
[reporters chatter]
[Catherine] I was in my room
and I could hear people running down the hallway
and my friend...
[breaths deeply]
[voice breaking] ...stood in the doorway and...
"Miss Catherine... Miss Catherine..."
"It's Jimmy..."
I thought he had a heart attack
because he had mini heart attacks.
And she said, "He was murdered."
I screamed. I literally screamed.
I couldn't believe it.
I jumped up and I ran down the room
and I think I ran yelling the whole way
"'Whitey' Bulger is dead. He's been killed."
It was stunning.
It was really stunning that he would...
That it would end that way.
[Bob Ward] We all knew "Whitey" Bulger was going to meet his end.
But still, it's kind of a shock when it actually happens.
"Whitey" has been this larger than life
figure in South Boston and in Boston,
I think all of New England, for decades.
And now he's gone, and it's just kind of hard
to let that sort of sink in a little bit.
Part of me was angry at myself
because I had visited him several times in jail
and it had been a while since I had visited him
and I really regretted the fact that I had not at least gone down
to visit him,
you know, one more time.
When I learned that he died,
I didn't think of it as the end of a chapter,
I thought of it as who signed the paperwork
to put him in that prison.
It was a set up.
The government executed him in my opinion.
[Catherine] He was waiting to be transferred to a medical facility,
and instead, somehow they transferred him
to the most dangerous...
[voice breaking] ...prison and put him
in population immediately.
No, that's not one person's mistake.
That is over-seeing.
[woman] We are very aggressively chasing the story
of "Whitey" Bulger's murder
because I feel strongly that
this needs to be thoroughly investigated.
There needs to be accountability.
And that...
I'm not just talking about the people that went into the cell
and murdered him.
I'm talking about the people in the Bureau of Prisons
who put him in a position where he could be murdered.
And that's really the bigger question.
[Catherine] He wasn't the person that was created by the media.
I don't know how they created what they did.
It seems like they needed him to be a monster.
I felt like it was my responsibility
to try to diminish this horrible image.
I thought this is my chance
to see how my life was
and it really, truly...
If I had to do all over again,
I would go with him.
[morose music]
[William Bulger] The subject that interests so many,
the life and the activities of my brother James
is painful and difficult for me.
But it is a subject I've lived with for a long time.
In truth, my effort with Jim spanned the decades.
My attempts to change my brother's life
were unsuccessful.
I wish that I could have achieved success.
But I must tell you that reforming Jim Bulger
was not my sole 24 hour a day focus.
I never wrote my brother off or walled him off,
but public service and my own immediate family
placed very large claims on me.
And while I worried about my brother,
I now recognize that I didn't fully grasp
the dimensions of his life.
[somber music]
[somber music continues]
[William praying] Our Father, Who art in heaven
hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
[somber music]