Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (41 page)

Of course, the government appealed the decision and the case is still ongoing. It could be years before the appeals process runs its course and the McIntyre family gets the money. And if the government is successful in its appeal, it could have the award thrown out and a new trial begun. Their lawyer did say that the McIntyre family plans to ask a jury to decide additional claims against Connolly and five other FBI agents. Although they were allowed only a trial in front of a judge for this claim against the government, they can also seek jury trials in their claims against the agents.

60 MINUTES
INTERVIEW

I was surprised when my editor called to inform me that
60 Minutes
was interested in doing a piece on myself and this book. The actual interview with Ed Bradley in March 2006 went well. Ed and I spent one day driving and walking through Southie, along with a camera crew that filmed us as we walked and talked. During our walk, I pointed out places of interest in the book, such as where I grew up in the Old Colony projects, Castle Island, South Boston High School, the liquor store, Triple O’s, and the gravesites over by Florian Hall and down by the Neponsett Bridge.

That day, while we were filming up at South Boston Heights, a cop pulled up in a car. He told Ed he looked familiar and asked him if he was Morley Safer from
60 Minutes.
Ed reminded the cop that Morley was a white man and he was a tall black man. The cop brushed that info aside and asked him what he was doing there. Ed told him he was filming a segment about Whitey Bulger and Kevin Weeks. While I stood silently beside Ed, the cop said, “Well, if you see those two bastards, let us know.”

Ed turned to me and laughed. I said, “Now do you understand why they can’t catch Whitey? They don’t even know what I look like and I’ve been all over the news.”

Our final sit down interview took place a day later at Felt, an upscale club on Washington Street in downtown Boston. It lasted a couple of hours. I could see from the questions that Ed Bradley asked that morning, as well as the discussions we had off-camera and while we were walking around Southie, that he and his producer had taken a lot of time to research and read the book. He was particularly well versed in the history of Boston and busing. I also think, judging from the way he conducted the sit-down interview, that he was unbiased and attempting to provide his viewers with a complete and honest picture of the Whitey Bulger story.

On the air, when Ed listed all the crimes in which I had been involved and questioned such a “resume,” the only response I could offer was, “It’s the business we were in.” The business of organized crime. When he asked me what my job was working for Bulger, I answered, “Anything he asked me to do.” When he asked me about Jimmy, I told him, “He stabbed people. He beat people with bats. He shot people. Strangled people. Ran ’em over with cars.” Later, I added, “Ninety-eight percent of his waking hours were dedicated to crime, 2 percent to pleasure. He was very disciplined. Had no bad habits. He didn’t drink. He didn’t gamble. Didn’t do drugs.” I told him that Jimmy had been creating new identities and stashing millions of dollars in safe deposit boxes around the world, saying, “He was probably worth thirty to fifty million.”

Ed discussed the fact that Jimmy had been a top-level FBI informant since 1975, asking me how I felt learning that fact after Jimmy was on the run. “He betrayed me,” I told him. “He betrayed me the whole time. He betrayed all of us. He was giving up some of his own people. He was giving up the competition…basically he made a deal with the FBI, and they gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted…. We were supposed to live by a certain code. And this was his teaching, too. You know, you never rat on your friends. You never rat on your family; you never give your own up. You have a problem, you take it to the streets.”

As for my decision to cooperate with the government in December 1999, I said, “We made a deal to sit down and talk. They wanted proof that I was telling the truth. So I led them to three bodies.”

Then Ed said, “A lot of people, particularly the families of the victims, have been outraged. I mean they look at it, ‘We lost a loved one and this guy’s walking out on the street.’”

“They’re entitled to their feelings,” I told him. “I mean, if someone killed a loved one of mine, I’d want to kill them. I wouldn’t want them in jail. I’d want to kill them. So they’re entitled to, you know, and they’re probably correct.”

In the two days I spent with him, I found Ed Bradley to be engaging, and several times we enjoyed a good laugh together. He was unpretentious and I felt as if I wasn’t talking to Ed Bradley the reporter, but rather to Ed Bradley, the guy who lived next door. When I heard he died, it was pointed out to me that over his twenty-five year career on
60 Minutes
I was probably one of his last interviews.

The reaction from the interview was positive among my family and friends, but there were some observers who complained I didn’t show any remorse for my crimes. When I answered Ed Bradley’s question about whether or not I felt remorse for what I had done, they cut part of my answer. What I’d said was, “No, I don’t think or dwell on the past. I can’t change it so I don’t beat myself over the head. Do I feel bad about things that happened? Certainly. But I still can’t change it.” But I guess it made for more dramatic TV for the one word, “No,” to be my answer. The truth is I mostly keep all that to myself. I don’t go around sharing my feelings with people. Besides, who are these people to judge me? I don’t owe anyone outside my circle an explanation. I didn’t write the book to ease my conscience or make anyone like me. I just wanted to tell the true story, not a story told by a hack reporter or a low level drug dealer, neither one of whom had the slightest idea of what was really going on.

BRUTAL
PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN

After the
60 Minutes
interview I appeared on numerous television and radio shows, appearances I did not seek, but were part of the publicity campaign set up by the publisher. Three days after the
60 Minutes
interview aired I was on the
CBS Early Show,
where I was interviewed by Harry Smith. When Smith asked me about my remorse, I said, “It’s something I live with and I can’t change the past. So I don’t dwell on it. I just try to move on.” Like so many interviewers, Smith also asked me about whether or not Jimmy would be found and prosecuted. “He’s probably over in Europe somewhere under an alias, and I think when he dies of natural causes—because I don’t think they’ll ever find him—that he’ll be buried under that name,” I told him. And I told dozens of other interviewers the same thing.

I was also on
Fox & Friends
and
The Abrams Report
with Dan Abrams, as well as local television shows all over the Boston area. Obviously, all these efforts paid off, since
Brutal
hit the
New York Times
bestseller list on April 2, 2006. It also made the
USA Today, Wall Street Journal,
and
Boston Globe
bestseller lists, as well as many others. For the most part, I endured all the interviews, but I did lose my cool a couple of times, once on a radio show when the interviewer obviously hadn’t read the book and had no idea what he was talking about.

My appearance on some other shows sparked protest as well as interest. When some radio listeners to the
Dennis & Callahan
radio show in Boston complained about the station giving air time to “hardened criminals,” the response was that it made for fascinating airtime. Which it did. That show had one of the program’s highest ratings. I was on radio shows all over the country, including Mark Fuhrman’s show in Spokane, Washington. Since Fuhrman was a former policeman and had handled murder cases, he was obviously knowledgeable about the subjects we discussed. All his questions were insightful and there was no doubt he had read the book.

When I did an online chat for the
Boston Globe,
I was told that the chat, which I did with a
Globe
reporter and which lasted an hour, also received one of their biggest responses ever. Some of the questions I was asked were silly and I responded accordingly.

For instance, one question was “If you were Whitey, where would you hide?” I answered, “The Playboy Mansion.”

Someone else wrote, “You’re a scumbag,” and I wrote back, “And you’re a tough guy on the computer.”

When he next wrote, “You should be tortured to death,” I responded online, “Come and do it.”

Some of the questions, however, were serious, like these:

Q.: Do you regret your violent past with the mob?

A: It’s not something I’m proud of.

Q: Are you sorry for hurting your family?

A: I’m sorry not just for hurting my family, but for hurting other people’s families.

Q: Do you plan to stay in Boston for the rest of your life?

A: Until I’m ready to leave.

Q: Are you prepared for the backlash from your book?

A: There’s backlash from anything you do in life. There will always be pros and cons.

Q: How have your emotions and past relationships been affected while writing this book? Was this an eye opener and are you thankful for the second chances in life?

A: You open your eyes to things that you’ve done and you realize that while you were doing them how it affected other people never really occurred to you.

Q: What is your biggest regret from your past?

A: You don’t realize at the time just how many people you hurt when you commit a crime, when you kill somebody. I mean it’s far-reaching how many people suffer, families, friends, distant relatives.

Q: Do you have trouble sleeping at night knowing what you’ve done to people?

A: No, thank God.

Q: Mr. Weeks, do you have any idea how warped your sense of “honor” in how you conducted your life sounds to a regular person? May God have mercy on you.

A: To some people it is warped, but then again, most people were not brought up in the same environment and don’t have the same code of morality around them.

Sure, it would have been easier if I answered some of those questions with the decent answers many of those who entered the chat would rather have heard me speak. But I have to be truthful in everything I say, no matter how awful some of these words sound or how many people I anger. I performed those crimes and there is no denying them nor how I felt at the time I committed them.

There were dozens of book signings and speeches, as well. At first, I was uncomfortable about standing up in front of a crowd and talking about my life, and then answering the questions. But I had decided to answer all questions and tell only the truth, which made my job easier. There wasn’t a night when I was pleased to do this public speaking but I was amazed at the intelligent and often praiseworthy comments and questions I received from the crowds gathered to take a peek at a bad guy. I always began my speeches with a plea to the crowd not to blame South Boston for the fact that criminals like Jimmy and I were part of the town. Approximately thirty-six thousand people live in South Boston today and it is not fair to judge all the good hard working people there by two. I also discussed my surprise that people were fascinated and wanted to hang around with criminals, to tell their friends that they knew us well. “We were not nice people,” I warned my listeners. “We were always looking for a score.”

Several women at different book signings, at events around the Boston area, or on the Internet, wanted details about their loved ones. They asked, either in person or on the Internet at Amazon.com, if I knew their fathers or uncles and if I had an idea what had happened to them. If I did recognize the name, I would tell them what I knew. If I had no idea who the person was or what had happened to him, I told them that.

After the television and newspaper interviews, people recognized me all over the place, which is never a good thing for a criminal. Luckily, I have no desire to continue my former life as a criminal. I tell myself every day that I will not commit a crime. So far, I have not. Nor do I intend to. My life today is very simple and that is the way I want it to be. Andy Warhol once said that everyone gets his fifteen minutes of fame. As far as I’m concerned, my fifteen minutes have lasted too long.

THE DEPARTED

Still, I never quite know what surprise is going to come my way. One afternoon after the
60 Minutes
interview, I was asked by a retired major in the Massachusetts State Police to spend some time with movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, who was in Boston shooting Martin Scorsese’s
The Departed.
Although I wasn’t anxious to do that, I acquiesced. I met the actor in his suite at the Sheraton Hotel outside of Boston, and spent two and a half hours with him. It was easy to see that his role as Billy Costigan was, in fact, not based on my relationship with Jimmy, nor did the character he played resemble me or my life in any way. Over lunch, I found DiCaprio reserved but very intelligent. He was anxious to question me about what my reaction would be in certain circumstances, the circumstances his character would encounter in the film. When I finally saw the film, I found that he had acted on some of the advice I had given him.

As for the movie itself, I felt it failed miserably in portraying Irish organized crime in South Boston. I know it was based on
Internal Affairs,
a Hong Kong thriller, and it tried to jump on the climate of interest in the Irish gangs of Boston in this adaptation. But the film had nothing to do with South Boston or the people in
Brutal.
But what can you expect from a movie based on organized crime in Hong Kong?

There were little details that rang especially untrue for a South Boston gang; such as the word “guinea,” a word Jimmy or I would never have used. I found the use of the woman in the projects opening the door, smoking despite her portable oxygen tank, insulting to the good people of South Boston. The busing scenes, I noted, were from Charlestown, not South Boston. Also, Jack Nicholson’s character Frank Costello barely resembled Jimmy, who was always perfectly coiffed and well dressed in expensive suits or casual wear. The fact that they tried to show that the Irish mob was infiltrated by undercover state police was absurd, especially since Jimmy would never allow anyone around us who wasn’t known to us or had been around us for a great portion of his life. The attempt by the writers to incorporate certain events written about in local newspapers made the movie disjointed in various scenes. The only character that rang at all true was Mark Wahlberg’s Dignan, who was similar to a sergeant in the State Police Organized Crime Unit who was intent on getting us.