Gangsters Les Diables De L Amérique S04E02 James «Withey» Bulger Le parrain de Boston
Category
📺
TVTranscription
00:00 (heart beating)
00:02 - Whitey Bulger was the most feared gangster
00:06 in the south of Boston.
00:08 (dramatic music)
00:10 Everyone who messed with him had problems.
00:13 - He was merciless.
00:17 There was no crime to him.
00:18 He was too brutal.
00:19 There was nothing too gruesome.
00:22 (dramatic music)
00:24 - James said, "No, I'm walking the path of that too.
00:27 You're a threat.
00:29 And that baby will be even more so."
00:31 - How he was attacked in the middle of the street
00:33 by James Bulger.
00:35 Whitey was a killer.
00:37 He liked to kill himself.
00:38 - The bets, the loans,
00:42 the sale of cocaine and cannabis,
00:45 the murders, it was the full game.
00:47 - Bulger was seen as a robber,
00:51 but he was only generous with people
00:52 to manipulate them.
00:54 - The very people who should have been
00:57 put under the locks were in contact with him.
01:01 He could kill without punishment.
01:03 (gunshot)
01:04 - When you tell Bulger that someone
01:06 hired a police car to get him arrested,
01:09 there's only one way to do it.
01:10 It's to get him out of the situation.
01:12 He's been killed.
01:13 - There were three bodies buried
01:16 near a suburb highway.
01:18 - He said, "I'm in trouble.
01:19 I'm going to take a break."
01:21 And that was the last time we talked.
01:23 - The public must know that everything
01:24 is being done to find him and bring him to justice.
01:27 - It's the last story of Whitey in a way.
01:30 And that began the life on the run.
01:33 (dramatic music)
01:35 (upbeat music)
01:39 - Today in the devil's land of America,
01:53 James "Whitey" Bulger, the godfather of Boston.
01:56 December 1994.
02:06 A violent storm swept the Atlantic coast
02:10 towards New England.
02:11 (man speaking in foreign language)
02:17 But the biggest gangster in southern Boston
02:21 had other concerns.
02:23 - This guy paid cops and other people.
02:30 There were about 20 guys there in Christmas
02:33 that he was giving out envelopes
02:35 to the Boston officials.
02:37 Whitey said, "Christmas is kids and cops."
02:42 - Whitey is the nickname of James Bulger.
02:48 (man speaking in foreign language)
02:52 - We had a record of an investigation against James Bulger
02:59 in a case of racketeering.
03:01 We started taking the criminal organization
03:01 from the bottom up.
03:04 From the bookmakers, the drugs, the drug dealers,
03:08 out to the top of the pyramid, so to speak.
03:11 - But on Christmas 1994,
03:15 as the snowstorm hit Boston,
03:18 James "Whitey" Bulger was already far away.
03:21 - James Bulger had been informed of the investigation
03:26 and of his imminent indictment.
03:29 And that's when he told the fugitives
03:30 who they were, as law enforcement were.
03:32 - In 1994, two days before Christmas,
03:36 someone warned him.
03:38 It's a classic, you know, "Whitey's trying to get away."
03:41 And that was the beginning of Whitey's ride.
03:43 (dramatic music)
03:46 - James "Whitey" Bulger became the number one public enemy.
03:50 A dangerous armed man,
03:54 who was on the list of the most wanted criminals
03:57 by the FBI for more than 10 years.
03:59 - He's a sociopath.
04:02 He's one of the few murderers
04:04 that I've had to come across in my career
04:08 has this kind of euphoria when he talks to killing somebody.
04:13 (speaking in foreign language)
04:17 - He was ruthless.
04:20 He killed women with his bare hands.
04:23 There was no crime against him.
04:26 There was no harm done against him.
04:28 - As the leader of a gang,
04:31 he's not very dirty, he's not very sturdy.
04:34 Whitey thought he was a gangster killer.
04:38 He wanted to kill himself.
04:40 But James Bulger played on two sides.
04:43 On one side, he built his empire by killing people.
04:48 But at the same time, he collaborated with the FBI.
04:51 - The very people who should have been
04:55 the people who were trying to put him under the covers
04:57 were trying to have a concert with him.
04:59 - James Bulger became an FBI informant
05:04 for more than 15 years.
05:08 For years, you had the Massachusetts State Police,
05:12 DEA, and Boston Police on one side.
05:15 Then you had the FBI,
05:19 who did the most to protect James Bulger
05:22 because he worked for them.
05:25 - As many as six murders directly
05:30 attributed to this kind of information
05:33 that he had learned and learned in the match
05:35 with the FBI,
05:37 that he deemed actionable.
05:39 [explosion]
05:40 And that was the FBI.
05:42 [dramatic music]
05:44 - His main source of information
05:46 is a man he's known since his childhood.
05:48 [dramatic music]
05:51 - John Connolly is part of what's called
05:55 the Boston FBI's Crime Organized Repression Brigade.
05:59 He knows James Bulger personally
06:02 because they grew up together.
06:05 James Bulger became an FBI informant thanks to him.
06:08 - Before his disappearance in 1994,
06:13 everyone knew where Whitey Bulger was.
06:17 [dramatic music]
06:19 - What made Whitey Bulger different
06:26 from most gangsters
06:27 was his involvement in Boston and the Boston area.
06:33 - In the area, everyone had heard of James Bulger.
06:37 [dramatic music]
06:39 - James Bulger comes from South Sea,
06:41 the working class neighborhood of Boston.
06:43 He comes from a respectable family.
06:45 - His brother was president of the Massachusetts Senate.
06:50 - William Bulger was the most powerful man in Massachusetts,
06:54 except for the governor.
06:55 And even among the governors,
06:56 no one had the influence and longevity that he had.
06:59 [dramatic music]
07:01 - James Bulger also had a certain influence in his neighborhood.
07:05 [dramatic music]
07:06 - People saw him as a sort of Robin Hood.
07:11 For them, he was the one who kept the drug trafficking
07:14 and the hackai away from the streets of South Sea.
07:17 He was the gangster at heart,
07:19 who distributed dindes on Thanksgiving.
07:22 - The Boston neighborhood has a very insular spirit.
07:26 People are very attached to it.
07:29 - Bulger was seen as a Robin Hood,
07:31 but he was only generous with people
07:33 to further manipulate them,
07:35 to make them useful to him or his gang.
07:39 [dramatic music]
07:40 - If there was a sympathetic elderly woman
07:43 that people liked,
07:45 he would go to her and make her a very public display
07:48 of his feelings,
07:50 to put this face up there as someone who,
07:54 you know, don't do business with him,
07:56 but he's a good guy.
07:57 [dramatic music]
07:58 - The best word I have to define him is manipulator.
08:01 And the people that he manipulated were his own associates.
08:05 He manipulated his whole community,
08:08 his family.
08:10 - His public image was used to divert attention
08:14 from his criminal activities.
08:16 - James Bulger was in charge of a criminal organization
08:20 called the Winter Hill Gang.
08:22 He used force in his activities in the south of Boston
08:25 to incite violence, to threaten, to push his own racket,
08:29 to force him into the hero position.
08:31 He ruled by fear and intimidation for years.
08:34 - Ultimately, he fought in drug trafficking,
08:37 but probably their most lucrative activity
08:40 was the exorcium racket.
08:43 His gang would extort people, businessmen, dealers,
08:47 bookmakers, criminals.
08:50 - He would say, "I'm not a dealer
08:53 "because I don't sell drugs."
08:55 But he would touch the wine bottles of people
08:58 who worked with him.
09:00 He would pressure dealers to work with him
09:03 provided they gave him a share of their profits.
09:06 So I mean, it's all semantics.
09:08 - And then there were the massacres.
09:11 [dramatic music]
09:14 - He was the most feared gangster in town.
09:18 And if you got on his nerves, you had several victims.
09:24 And this is what we called the "House of Horror."
09:28 - According to witnesses, one day,
09:30 Whitey tried to strangle a guy with a rope.
09:34 But the rope was too thick.
09:36 He couldn't kill him.
09:38 So he pulled out his revolver and said,
09:41 "Do you prefer a bullet?"
09:43 [explosion]
09:45 [dramatic music]
09:48 ♪ ♪
09:50 [dramatic music]
09:53 ♪ ♪
10:12 - By and large, the movie accurately captures
10:16 the evolution and the rise of James Bulger.
10:21 [dramatic music]
10:24 [train whistle blows]
10:26 - The story of James Bulger and his family
10:29 seems to be taken from an old Hollywood gangster movie.
10:32 ♪ ♪
10:34 - I told you not to kill him.
10:36 - When I look back, it's almost like the movie
10:38 is doing a dirty job.
10:40 - James Bulger is a gangster,
10:42 and he's playing a gangster in a movie called "The Brotherhood."
10:45 - The two guys are from the same family,
10:47 and one becomes a model of respectability,
10:50 and the other one becomes a horrible gangster.
10:53 ♪ ♪
10:55 - This is neither more nor less the situation of the Bulger family,
10:59 with James and his brother William,
11:01 played by Benedict Cumberbatch in "Strictly Criminal."
11:06 ♪ ♪
11:11 - The idea of having James Bulger played by me,
11:14 a gross butcher, was really unfaithful.
11:19 - Lynn Cessire was James Bulger's companion
11:22 for over 12 years.
11:24 Their story begins in 1966.
11:27 - His mother was the most adorable person
11:30 I've ever met.
11:32 He was showing her love.
11:35 And I never saw him in any other way than with high heels.
11:39 Even his slippers had heels.
11:42 - The Bulger sons grew up in South Sea,
11:45 a working-class neighborhood of Irish Catholics
11:47 in southern Boston.
11:50 It's one of the oldest slums in the United States,
11:53 and one of the hardest.
11:55 - At the time of the Civil War,
11:57 southern Boston was a very poor neighborhood.
12:00 But since then, the neighborhood has declined.
12:02 Poverty has gained ground, and the population has declined.
12:07 - His family moved into the first social housing
12:10 in New England.
12:12 James Bulger was 8 or 9 years old.
12:15 - There were a lot of families,
12:17 five girls and three boys,
12:19 and they were not all close.
12:22 I don't think it was a happy household.
12:25 - His father had been a unionist
12:28 before he had an accident that plunged his family into misery.
12:32 - His father was trapped in a tragic fate.
12:35 He lost an arm in a railroad accident.
12:39 You can imagine in the Americas of the Great Depression,
12:42 a slum boy had practically no chance of getting a job.
12:47 - James never talked about him.
12:51 And I learned very early on that,
12:54 except for the essential things, it was better not to ask questions.
12:58 - Like his father, he took the name James,
13:02 and he quickly proved to be a difficult child.
13:06 - He was unmanageable.
13:09 The school was absolutely not interested in him.
13:12 He was not the kind to be intimidated by good sisters,
13:15 even if they sometimes had the easy whistle.
13:18 It didn't impress a kid like Whitey.
13:21 - Whitey's nickname comes from his light blonde hair.
13:25 - Blonde, blue eyes, well built.
13:29 He was very muscular.
13:32 His features were very chiseled.
13:35 - James Bulger made his first stay in prison at the age of 14.
13:40 He was sentenced to five years in a minor's rehab center.
13:47 - He joined the US Air Force when he was released.
13:51 There too, he was a cash-in for assault several times.
13:55 He left the army and was later released to serve in the armed forces.
14:00 - He was robbing banks.
14:02 He spent some time in Atlanta federal prison.
14:06 Then he was transferred to Alcatraz.
14:09 And when Alcatraz closed, he was sent to Leavenworth, Kansas.
14:15 After nine years, he was released.
14:18 At the age of 36, he spent two-thirds of his life in prison.
14:23 - At his release from prison, he found work in the building.
14:31 - Lindsay Sear is a legal secretary.
14:34 But to make ends meet, she also works in a sandwich shop.
14:39 - James used to have his breakfast.
14:43 Lindsay tries to make a career as a model.
14:46 James Bulger, he wants to resume his criminal activities.
14:50 - He hooked on the Killen brothers,
14:53 who were the most important bookmakers in southern Boston.
14:57 - He convinced me to go out with him.
15:02 From there, he managed my whole life.
15:06 A few months later, Lindsay is pregnant.
15:11 He said to me, "Lindsay, you don't understand.
15:14 I'm not working in the building anymore."
15:18 And I said to him, "So what? What does it change?"
15:22 "I make enough for the two of us."
15:24 James said, "No, I'm the owner of this, too."
15:28 "Games, mortgage loans, it's not possible."
15:33 "You're under threat, and that baby will be even more so."
15:40 In the life of gangster James Bulger,
15:43 this baby will take up considerable space.
15:46 - To take care of the baby, I had to kill James.
15:51 And then, good luck.
15:53 - I knew he was a gangster and he killed people,
15:57 but I didn't know how much he was protected.
16:09 In 1972, the godfather changes the image of the gangster to the public.
16:15 The work, which traces the rise of the son of a godfather of the Italian mafia,
16:20 wins three Oscars, including the Best Film.
16:24 And that will comfort the authorities in their goals.
16:29 - In the 70s and 80s, the government focuses its efforts
16:36 on the fight against the Italian mafia and the Cosa Nostra.
16:40 According to the godfather, the American peggers are controlled by the five families of the Italian mafia.
16:46 Which is not the case in the South Sea neighborhood.
16:53 - The organization led by Whitey Bulger was essentially Irish.
17:00 They controlled Boston and part of New England.
17:05 The betting, the loan sharks, the sale of cocaine and cannabis,
17:10 murders, racketeering, extortion, they did it all.
17:15 And to take power, James Bulger does not hesitate to make the corpses of his Irish compatriots.
17:26 - During the 1960s, there was a gang war that lasted several years.
17:35 At that time, the former banner James Bulger was a bookmaker for the Killen brothers.
17:43 - The Killen brothers were at war against a new organization, the Mullens gang.
17:51 The Mullens gang has several young people who have just returned from Vietnam.
18:01 Proportionally, that also lost more people in Vietnam than any neighborhood in the United States.
18:08 The Mullens gang, the men of the Mullens gang did not have the respect we usually have for the elderly,
18:16 for those who have come from the top of the ladder.
18:18 They were afraid of the Killens.
18:20 A few weeks after the godfather's first, one of the Killen brothers was shot.
18:27 The scene recalls gangster movies.
18:31 - Donald Killen lived in Framingham, a suburb west of Boston.
18:36 He was celebrating his son's 4th birthday when he was called on the phone and shot in a trap.
18:41 He was killed in his car by a machine gun.
18:44 The surprise was total, no one did that.
18:49 He will follow a particularly bloody gang war.
18:53 - Whitey was very smart about that.
18:58 He wanted to make peace.
19:00 And he went to see the gang not affiliated with the most important mafia in Boston,
19:04 an organization run by a guy named Howard Winter.
19:08 James Bulger proposed an alliance to Howard Winter to stop the gang war.
19:17 According to legend, Howard Winter would have convinced the gang leaders to unite within a single organization.
19:27 The Killen and Mullen gangs merged.
19:31 And he operated under the authority of the Winter Hill gang.
19:35 Howard Winter will entrust the reigns of his gang to James Bulger.
19:41 - Howard Winter said that he was influenced by the fact that Whitey served time in Alcatraz.
19:49 In the middle of the world milieu, having served time in Alcatraz is a bit like having a college degree for any other discipline.
19:58 The Winter Hill gang will also see the emergence of another future khaid, an Italian named Steve Flemmi.
20:07 - His nickname was the Rifleman.
20:11 Steve Flemmi says the Rifleman because he had served as a rifleman during the Korean War.
20:17 When he came back here, he had tight ties with the Cosa Nostra.
20:22 James Bulger was number one and Steve Flemmi was number two.
20:30 - I really loved Steve Flemmi.
20:34 How hard he was, how cold he was.
20:38 He would have been capable of killing anybody.
20:41 The minute somebody betrayed him, how could he do it?
20:45 He resisted, he killed.
20:48 In the 1970s, James Bulger also acquired the same reputation.
20:55 - There was a guy named Tommy King, who was probably the toughest guy in the Mullens gang.
21:02 He threatened cops, that kind of thing.
21:05 One evening, in a bar of the Winter Hill gang, Tommy King threatened James Bulger before apologizing the next day.
21:14 He was found a week later with a bullet in his head.
21:19 - There were a number of Mullens gang members who were a threat to Whitey.
21:25 Guys with whom he had a couple of head-on encounters.
21:28 So he decided to eliminate them as a precaution.
21:32 Among the six bodies buried secretly in different places in southern Boston, there is Tommy King's.
21:41 James Bulger will also experience a personal tragedy.
21:44 At the age of six, his son falls ill.
21:49 - I took him to the doctor, who said, "He has varicella."
21:54 "Give him aspirin for children every four hours, and everything will be fine."
22:02 In the fall of 1973, Douglas Sear fell into a coma after an allergic reaction to aspirin.
22:11 - On Monday afternoon, I was afraid his brain was damaged.
22:16 James told me, "Don't dramatize everything."
22:19 And at 8.30 p.m., he died.
22:24 All alone.
22:26 It was... Excuse me.
22:30 [♪♪♪]
22:33 - Jimmy was just inside himself.
22:36 A man who wanted to be strong like a rock, who never cried, who could not be touched.
22:42 The tears were streaming down his face.
22:45 I remember him saying, "I don't want to suffer like this again."
22:52 It was too hard for him.
22:58 He told me, "If you get pregnant again, I'll kill you."
23:01 Shortly after his son's death, James Bulger was approached by someone he had known since childhood.
23:09 John Connolly.
23:13 - John Connolly grew up in the same working-class city as him.
23:17 He knew the Whitey family very well.
23:21 - John Connolly joined the FBI in the 1960s.
23:26 He was a coordinator of the indicators in the files related to the Mafia.
23:31 - The government wanted to attack organized crime in Italy,
23:34 and for that, it asked the help of the Irish Mafia.
23:39 - John Connolly said to him, "The FBI is determined to get rid of the Mafia.
23:44 "Join us, you can help us."
23:47 - He convinced James Bulger that in exchange for information on the Italian Mafia,
23:54 the FBI would close its eyes to its own criminal activities.
23:59 But there was still a corner to be turned.
24:02 James Bulger's associate, the second-in-command of the Winter Hill Gang,
24:07 was already working for the government.
24:10 - Steve Flemmi was the first to collaborate with the FBI
24:16 and provide information on the actions of the Cosa Nostra, the Italian Mafia.
24:24 James Bulger agreed to join his associate in a secret partnership with the government.
24:32 - By 1975, James Bulger and Steve Flemmi were FBI indicators.
24:40 - The young Italian from Dorchester and the young Irish from South Boston had a lot in common.
24:46 But their biggest thing in common was that they had the FBI with them.
24:51 They were basically able to kill anyone they wanted.
24:54 In 1980, former detainee James Whitey Bulger became the South Boston's godfather.
25:09 To establish his power, he eliminated several of his rivals and buried them in the South Sea neighborhood.
25:17 - He wanted to be the godfather, and he did what he had to do to become one.
25:22 He became the number one in the South Boston neighborhood.
25:26 In 1979, James Bulger became the undisputed leader of the Winter Hill Gang,
25:33 whose eponym, Howard Winter, was arrested with several accomplices for having cheated on a cash bet.
25:43 - He threatened and beat the jockeys so that they would lose their races.
25:47 All the members of the Winter Hill Gang were indicted, except Whitey and Steve.
25:54 Steve Flemmi, the gunman, is James Bulger's number two.
26:00 - Why weren't Whitey and Steve indicted?
26:04 Nobody understood.
26:06 In hindsight, we know that John Connolly, FBI Special Agent of the Anti-Mafia Brigade,
26:13 went to see the prosecutor in charge of the case and told him,
26:17 "These guys are helping us with the Mafia. We need them. We can't afford to be indicted."
26:25 James Bulger and Steve Flemmi play a double game.
26:32 They are members of the PEGG, but they benefit from the protection of the US government.
26:38 - All the members of the community knew that James Bulger had connections.
26:45 He had warned them, "If you go to the FBI, I'll know before you're released."
26:52 - They were all afraid of him. They knew that if they cooperated with the police, they were dead.
26:58 In this deafening silence, James Bulger's gang operates in complete impunity.
27:04 - There were bookmakers, local entrepreneurs, loan sharks, this kind of stuff like that.
27:11 And all this little world had to regularly pay a tribute to Bulger and Flemmi.
27:16 Before, these people paid the Mafia. Whitey and Steve explained to them,
27:20 "Now you're with us." Whitey was collected in the $10,000 a week.
27:27 Grasped by this success, James Bulger wants to see bigger.
27:32 In 1981, he throws his coin on the High Alley, a variant of the Basque ball very popular in Florida,
27:39 and which gives rise to bets organized by the company World High Alley.
27:44 - This company belonged to Roger Wheeler, an oil maniac.
27:50 James Bulger and his men thought that if they could get rid of him, they could buy the company back from the Whip.
27:57 James Bulger heard about this sport from a retired FBI agent,
28:01 who became the security officer of World High Alley.
28:05 The Winter Hill gang starts by robbing the parking lot's users,
28:10 and thus collects $10,000 a week.
28:13 But Roger Wheeler discovers the Pink Panther.
28:16 He will be found dead shortly after,
28:19 murdered in his car with a bullet in his face, after a golf game.
28:25 - The murder of Roger Wheeler, a very popular millionaire,
28:29 will draw the attention of the general public on the Winter Hill gang.
28:34 Especially since the murder of Roger Wheeler will be followed by many others.
28:40 - A business man from Florida named John Callahan knew a lot about this case.
28:45 He had to die.
28:47 - One of the men in charge of the Winter Hill gang, a certain Brian Alloran,
28:53 had also heard about the murder of Roger Wheeler, and had warned the FBI.
28:58 John Connolly immediately informed James Bulger.
29:02 Alloran was shot down in the middle of the street.
29:08 James Bulger became untouchable, and he started drug trafficking.
29:14 - I experienced that too in the 80s. There was coke everywhere.
29:20 He would say, "I'm not a dealer because I don't sell drugs."
29:24 But he was getting wine bottles from people who worked with him.
29:28 He was pressuring dealers to work with him,
29:30 provided that he would give him a share of the profits.
29:33 The drugs brought him millions.
29:36 Millions, and millions, and millions, and millions.
29:39 In 1984, James Bulger sent a shipment of weapons to the IRA,
29:46 the Irish Republican Army.
29:50 - Several members of his organization had close ties to the Irish Republican Army.
29:55 - The plan was very bold.
29:58 In Gloucester, a small fishing port in northern Boston,
30:02 they loaded the weapons onto a boat and sailed there.
30:05 Shortly after, their boat, named Valhalla,
30:09 handed the weapons over to Marita Han, a boat from the IRA.
30:13 But this one was intercepted by the Irish Army.
30:18 - There was this fellow, John McIntyre, who was on a ship that was arrested.
30:24 He had been arrested and he gave us the fact that he was working with John Bulger.
30:28 They brought him to this house, which we call the House of Horrors.
30:33 They put him in a chair and interrogated him about the information he had given the police.
30:40 Then they killed him and buried him in the basement of that building.
30:45 For James Bulger, the men who worked for him were interchangeable.
30:50 But as the bodies accumulated, the FBI's protection began to crack.
30:56 - Certainly our team was very upset by the way John Connolly managed his collaboration with James Bulger,
31:03 and by the consequences that came from that.
31:05 I wanted to pursue Connolly for assistance to a wanted person,
31:09 and for that I tried to prove that he had telephone contacts with Bulger.
31:14 Some FBI agents want to get John Connolly out.
31:18 Several federal agencies decide to put pressure on the Winter Hill gang.
31:24 - We prosecuted a large number of executors and subordinates of that organization.
31:31 - In this case, the state police and the office of the federal prosecutor of the state police in Massachusetts
31:38 carried out a large-scale investigation.
31:41 They have established that the bookmakers were involved in money laundering.
31:47 - Finally, some of these subordinates agreed to collaborate,
31:52 and we were able to create a case for racketeering against the organization's leaders.
31:57 As an exceptional storm approached southern Boston,
32:02 James Whitey Bulger was about to be accused.
32:08 - I picked up the phone. It was 3 o'clock in the morning.
32:11 He said, "I'm in trouble. I'm going to leave for a while."
32:14 I said, "I lost the app for him."
32:16 He laughed and said, "For me, praying is useless."
32:19 I said, "Yes, praying is always useful."
32:22 And he hung up.
32:24 And that was the last time we talked.
32:33 In 1999, James Bulger was on the list of the 10 most wanted criminals by the FBI.
32:40 - The public must know that everything is being done to find him and bring him to justice.
32:45 He disappeared on Christmas 1994, when a storm swept through New England.
32:51 - When he learned that he was going to be charged under the RICO Act, he fled.
32:57 The RICO Act is a law adopted by the American Congress in 1970 to fight organized crime.
33:05 In 1999, the FBI believed that 19 murders were indictable against James Bulger and his gang.
33:19 - With the RICO Act, the fact that a murder was committed in connection with a criminal organization is now an aggravating factor.
33:28 James Bulger and his number two, Steve Flemmi, are warned by the FBI that their arrest is imminent.
33:37 James Bulger immediately flees.
33:40 - Steve Flemmi thought he had a little time before he fled, but he was caught.
33:46 He is imprisoned in the crowd, but he will not speak.
33:50 - James Bulger's family knew more than he told us, it's obvious.
33:56 We started with his family and no one wanted to cooperate with us.
34:01 Then we interviewed his associates, with the same result.
34:05 No one spoke.
34:07 We had a lot of trouble because no one wanted to cooperate with us,
34:10 both among Bulger's relatives and in his environment.
34:14 For several years, investigators will only have a few thin leads to get their hands on.
34:20 James Bulger still has a long way to go on them.
34:24 - He had fled with a woman named Teresa Stanley.
34:31 They were in Chicago for a period of time, then Memphis and New Orleans.
34:37 They were bouncing around.
34:40 James Bulger even has the luxury of a visit to the Alcatraz prison, where he spent nine years of his life.
34:46 In the skin of a tourist, he is photographed in a prisoner's outfit.
34:53 - He was spotted several times.
34:56 He was in contact with Kevin Weeks.
34:59 Kevin Weeks will be the key to this long ride.
35:04 - Kevin Weeks considered James Bulger as his mentor.
35:08 He was young and he preferred to be the lieutenant of Whitey than to make his own career.
35:13 Kevin Weeks is a young boxer from a working-class city in South Sea.
35:19 He had been a leader at Triple O, a bar frequented by the Winter Hill gang.
35:24 - In the 80s, Kevin Weeks became Bulger's right-hand man.
35:29 He also has always refused to cooperate with the police.
35:34 Until he learned that his mentor was a swing.
35:38 - He did not know that Bulger and Flemmy were informants.
35:44 He agreed to talk to the investigators as soon as he learned that for several years,
35:50 Bulger and Flemmy had provided information to the FBI.
35:55 This new fact, revealed during Steve Flemmy's hearings, is the effect of a bomb.
36:02 James Bulger's organization is beginning to crack.
36:06 A man named John Martorano, a spy for the Winter Hill gang, agrees to collaborate.
36:13 Kevin Weeks will give him the job.
36:16 - Kevin Weeks and John Martorano were from the same old school.
36:21 Whatever happens, we don't cooperate.
36:24 For them, there is nothing worse than an informant or a swing.
36:28 The two men lead the investigators to several secret graves.
36:32 - We found three bodies buried near a suburban highway.
36:39 Not far from where we are.
36:42 Another body was found near a beach in the Dorchester neighborhood.
36:48 And two bodies will be discovered in Quincy, south of Boston.
36:56 In 2009, former FBI agent John Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison for unprecedented voluntary homicide.
37:05 - In this trial, Kevin Weeks' testimony played an essential role.
37:11 - This case was very embarrassing for the police.
37:15 The facts date back to the 70s, 80s and early 90s.
37:19 We wanted to finish with all of that.
37:22 The FBI will take more than 10 years to capture James Bulger.
37:26 - From the beginning of 1995, that is, from the moment Whitey Bulger fled, the FBI has not stopped tracking him.
37:37 We took it very seriously, even if many people thought we were not looking for him.
37:42 What I know is that in 2009, when I arrived, the FBI was the only service looking for him.
37:49 In 2010, the FBI will change tactics.
37:53 Investigators came across photos of a woman suspected of fleeing with James Bulger.
37:58 Kathryn Gregg.
38:00 - She had never been arrested in our service, and we only had a few mediocre photos of her.
38:06 But a clue suggested that she had perhaps had a shit implant.
38:11 The agents discover photos of her in her medical file.
38:17 - This is an announcement by the FBI.
38:19 Have you seen this woman?
38:21 The FBI offers $100,000 for any information that can locate Kathryn Gregg.
38:26 - With hindsight, we realize the interest there was in focusing on her.
38:33 She was 16 years younger than James Bulger.
38:36 And so if they were still alive, it's the kind of couple likely to attract people's attention.
38:45 We received information about a couple named Charlie and Carol Gasco,
38:49 living in Santa Monica, 3rd Street, apartment 303.
38:53 It was very specific information.
38:55 They lived very discreetly.
38:57 She was doing all the shopping, they were paying their rent in cash.
39:01 For us, it just fit perfectly.
39:03 So I called a colleague from Los Angeles, Scott Gariola.
39:07 I met the manager of the apartment on the parking lot.
39:13 The parking lot of Bulger's house had a small storage room.
39:16 I broke the door of this room, and I told the manager to call them,
39:22 and ask them to come and see if anything had been stolen.
39:26 After 16 years of driving, James Bulger is about to fall into the trap.
39:34 - I could see an old man coming out of the elevator and heading to the room.
39:39 That's where we stopped him.
39:41 There were four of us around him, with a gun pointed at us.
39:43 I asked him his name, and he said, "You know who I am."
39:47 It was like with Moby Dick, the white whale.
39:51 We had finally caught him.
39:54 Agent Ehan escorts the former informant to Boston.
40:00 We got on the aircraft very early in the morning,
40:06 and arrived here, we interrogated him for 5 hours, without interruption.
40:10 He was always doing all of the talking.
40:12 He could turn his personality around.
40:17 What I mean by that is, at one point during the interrogation,
40:21 he had evoked one of his friends who died in 2009,
40:25 and he started crying.
40:27 Because of the death of his friend, he was crying without any restraint.
40:31 And his personality switched from one to the other.
40:36 And he was talking about how he had beaten up one or two people in Boston.
40:41 And his eyes were becoming icy.
40:44 It was the strangest thing I've ever seen.
40:48 In June 2013,
40:54 James "Whitey" Bulger is presented to a federal court
40:58 to answer 32 charges of racket,
41:01 possession of weapons,
41:04 and presumed involvement in 19 murders.
41:07 The charges against him were overwhelming.
41:11 The case was indefensible.
41:14 Whitey's lawyer turned around out there and said,
41:17 "Yes, he was a gangster. He was a figure in the middle of the ball pit.
41:21 He did all these things, but he was never an indicator,
41:24 and he didn't kill his wife."
41:26 The list of victims includes women.
41:31 The evidence and testimonies point to James Bulger as their killer.
41:35 Every witness was more confusing than the others.
41:39 The witnesses were notorious murderers.
41:42 Some witnesses had a few.
41:46 They would join, and Bulger would insult them.
41:49 It was a real ball pit.
41:52 When Kevin Weeks came,
41:54 we would have said two teenagers swearing at each other.
41:57 "Go fuck yourself. No, you go fuck yourself.
42:00 Go fuck yourself."
42:01 The whole thing was so distasteful.
42:04 People were screaming, "Whitey Bulger is like this.
42:07 Whitey Bulger is like that."
42:09 During the whole trial,
42:13 Bulger repeated that he was not cooperating with the FBI.
42:16 And that's a big lie.
42:18 And an informant file, I examined it,
42:22 which was too large to think.
42:25 He did not want to be perceived as a balance.
42:29 That's what he was.
42:30 But he always refused to admit it.
42:34 The jury's deliberations will last a week
42:37 due to the complexity of the case and the considerable number of evidence.
42:42 James Bulger is found guilty of 31 of the 32 charges against him.
42:48 Only the extortion one will not be held.
42:51 But that will not change anything.
42:56 At the time of the verdict, several close witnesses were present.
43:00 He refused to look them in the eye.
43:03 On November 14, 2013,
43:08 James Whitey Bulger is sentenced to two years in prison and five years in prison.
43:14 He will also have to pay nearly $20 million in damages to his victims.
43:22 The trial also allowed us to demystify the idea that James Bulger was a kind of Robin Hood,
43:28 whose only goal was to protect his neighborhood.
43:31 Now everyone knows what kind of guy he really was.
43:35 Did he commit all the murders that were accused of him?
43:41 Not all, in my opinion.
43:44 Was he able to kill?
43:46 Yes, of course.
43:48 It's the gangster's archetype.
43:51 A sociopath, insensitive,
43:53 greedy for power, manipulative,
43:56 devilish,
43:58 a gangster unjustly,
44:00 just pure evil.
44:02 He's a loser.
44:03 [Gangster]
44:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]