Howie Carr (2015)

No, he's portrayed as the violent thug that he was. "Mostly intimidation," that was his job, according to Johnny Martorano. But everything was compressed. He killed a lot more people than he did in the movie. A lot more. Real quote from corrupt FBI agent John Morris: "You have no idea how dangerous he is."

No. The gang is defunct. Most of the remaining gang members have more to fear from ho-hos and twinkies than from gangland gats.

Yeah, absolutely. Richie Castucci, an FBI informant shortly before he was murdered by FBI informants Whitey and Flemmi, said in an FBI report that Whitey was an "animal" and that he had taken over collections from Howie Winter because Howie was always giving people a pass on debts. Once in Dedham, MA, in a crowded bar, Whitey threatened to chop off a guys penis and stuff it in his mouth. Dick O'Brien, a bookie who just died, used to bring his wayward bookies to Whitey's garage in the west end. When they would leave after Whitey lectured them, Dick would ask them where they wanted to be dropped off. They invariably replied, "The nearest barroom." Depp captured this murderous insanity in several scenes.

I saw the power that his brother, Billy Bulger, had at the State House as Senate President. And I began to do a little research. I quoted the mayor of Boston as saying, "If my brother threatened to kill you, you'd be nothing but nice to me." After that, I started getting death threats from Whitey. When somebody threatens to kill you, it concentrates the mind wonderfully, as Dr. Johnson might say.

Johnny is a very genial companion. I did a lot of the interviewing in the Boston Herald newsroom on Sunday mornings and as one of my co-workers, Laurel Sweet, said, "If only he wasn't so likable."

I would say, all of the above. When the Winter Hill gang was hunting down Indian Joe's crew in the early 70's, when they were working as hitmen for the Mafia, Whitey was the driver of the "crash car." He followed behind the main hit car. If a cop car began pursuing the hit car, his job was to crash into the cop car and disable it. That makes him just as guilty of murder.

On Atlantic Ave, by the way, Martorano, et al, were shooting at the front window of the victim's car. Whitey was directly behind and was almost struck by the hail of machine gun bullets. Again, too bad they missed.

Well, he took the phone call from Whitey after he (Whitey) went on the lam in 1995. (Eddie Phillips, the Senate door-opener who owned the house where the call came in, just died at age 72. The joke was, Billy liked Eddie because he was one of the very few guys at the State House who was shorter than the 65" tall Corrupt Midget, Billy Bulger.) State Trooper at Logan Airport who stopped Whitey from taking 50gs in cash out of the country was booted out of his plum assignment after he refused to turn over a report to a Dukakis aide. St Police Lt. Col. who put a bug in Whitey's garage would have been force to retire via outside section inserted anonymously into state budget (Gov. King vetoed the rider). Billy asked new mayor Ray Flynn to make gangster FBI agent Zip Connolly Boston Police commissioner. (A shocked Flynn turned him down.) Before Congress, Billy said he sometimes stopped Whitey on his "madcap adventures", like planning to kill a guy who was planning to run against Billy. I could go on...

Have you been reading about the Teamster indictments? Check out my column about that here. The president of Local 25 is a thug. And the FBI once grabbed 50 grand out of his father's house. One of the indicted Teamster thugs is named Fidler, a coke dealer and armored car-robbing gang associate. His father or grandfather was Suitcase Fidler, mentioned in passing in Black Mass, and discussed in somewhat greater length in the congressional report on FBI corruption in Boston. If you want to Google it, "Everything Secret Degenerates". Check Feb 13, 1970: Suitcase and another Winter Hill hitman are sent to California by the mafia to kill mob rat Joe Barbosa. So the tradition continues to this day in less organized fashion.

Absolutely. I've been audited repeatedly by the state and by the feds. Democrats and Republicans. You don't get death threats when you cover the Fake Indian, Elizabeth Warren, or Ted Kennedy running his yacht aground on Cape Cod.

As Whitey used to say, Christmas is for cops and kids. Sounds plausible. Are you related to the mastermind of the brinks robbery, Jazz Maffie?

I responded to Kevin Two Weeks in my own Daily Beast column here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/23/whitey-bulger-wanted-me-dead.html

As I also mentioned, Two Weeks is not the only derogatory nickname he has. He's also known as Kevin Squeaks. When Whitey screwed, he tried to keep the rackets going. He went over to Somerville, hometown of the hitman in Killers, and the coke dealers beat the shit of him, gave a beer 'n' a beatin' as Billy Bulger used to say on St. Patrick's Day.

That aside, Squeaks is absolutely correct. Whitey would have never talked like that to Martorano. I said that in my column days before Two Weeks did. The first time Whitey ever met Johnny, he went to his bar on Columbus Ave. in the South End in 1972 and asked Johnny to get Howie Winter to intervene to save his life. The young, more numerous Mullens gang was looking to kill him, as they'd already killed Billy O'Sullivan. I go into all of this in my book, Hitman, but O'Sullivan had just opened an after hours joint in Uphams Corner and on opening night Johnny shot a guy in the head. O'Sullivan had to shut the place down. Therefore, Johnny owed O'Sullivan big time for wrecking his place. Billy O, as he was known, told Whitey, "If anything happens to me, you can call in the chit with Johnny," which Whitey did. Johnny was not his underling. He was the senior partner in the gang, along with Howie Winter. Getting back to Black Mass, the whole scene about the peanuts is actually based on a guy named Nick Femia, a former Joe Barbosa associate who became a drug addict and went to work for Whitey.

To digress yet again, he was a major suspect in the Blackfriars Massacre on Summer St. in 1978 -- five people, including a Channel 7 reporter not named Howie Carr, murdered in a cash-and-cocaine ripoff. When Femia went to work for Whitey, Whitey had Zip Connolly, the FBI agent, write a 209 (an FBI report) saying Femia really didn't kill all those people at Blackfriars. Femia used to walk down to the McDonald's on Causeway St. across from the Garden and buy fries, which Whitey hated. One time, he actually grabbed the fries out of Femia's hands and began throwing them at the fat thug. A few weeks later he "fired" Femia from the gang, and dictated a new report to Zip: Femia was involved in the Blackfriars Massacre after all.

Martorano has been telling people, it's too bad Nicky didn't pull out a gun when Whitey grabbed his fries and shoot him, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble.

He had six of the agents in the Boston office on his personal payroll. Through the state budget, Billy had major clout with private sector employers, including utilities. Remember, FBI mandatory retirement age was 50 then. They needed jobs. When Zip Connolly retired and became security chief for then-Boston Edison, he succeeded an ex-FBI agent and was in turn himself succeeded by another ex-Boston FBI agent. That's why Zip always took the new SAC's to Billy's St. Patrick Day breakfast -- to show how much clout the Bulgers had.

I saw him almost everyday in mid to late 1980s because I had to drive by the liquor store on my way between jobs. I never went in the liquor store for obvious reasons. But Stevie Flemmi, Whitey's partner and fellow FBI informant, told me later that, "Whitey was always talking about you." My editor in New York just told me that Johnny Martorano told him my life really was in danger back then. I did speak to Billy though.

Tough question to answer... Both are bad but in different ways. The mob is a blue collar problem. The government is white collar. I have learned to try to live by the motto of Johnny Torrio, Al Capone's mentor in the Chicago outfit: "We don't want any trouble." I gave that motto to my hitman in Killers, Bench McCarthy.

I'll look him up at the Herald archive on Sunday. Shoot an email to my producer (steve@howiecarrshow.com) and we'll get to the bottom of this, Mr. Carr, if possible. I believe Peter Falk played the role in the movie.

Listen, he's dead ringer. I used to see Whitey every day outside that liquor store staring at me. Depp got it, just from studying those state police surveillance videos outside the Lancaster Street garage.

All true. I have a picture in Brothers Bulger of Kerry at the last St. Patrick's Day breakfast. He's wearing a campaign button for Billy Jr., who was trying to win his father's seat. He was crushed by now-Congressman Steve Lynch. Ted Kennedy went to the breakfasts too, as did Bill Weld, the governor who was elected in 1990, basically running against the Bulgers. The GOP was in this up to their eye-balls, too. How do you think Billy got the first presidential debate in 2000 for UMass Boston when he was president of the college. Of course, a little of the luster was taken off the rose by the fact that if you looked out the window where the debate was held, you could see the cops digging up the bodies of Whitey's victims buried under the Neponset Bridge. (They pulled the curtains.)

Kevin Weeks, Whitey's 300-lb Fredo, has expanded the story more than he's expanded his waistline over the last fifteen years. First they just knew where I lived, then they were going to put a little C4 in a basketball and blow me up, then they were going to shoot me from a graveyard across the street from my house. Lately, Weeks has been saying they were going to use 40 lbs of C4 that they got from a crooked FBI agent to kill me. That FBI agent is still alive, by the way, and he's even fatter than Kevin Weeks.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/henchman-tells-of-whiteys-black-deeds/

He was a RAT! From 1960 on, he ratted out the members of his own bank-robbing gang. His protector in prison was House Speaker John McCormack of Southie. Billy was with the McCormacks in politics. McCormack got Zip Connolly on the FBI by writing a letter to his pal, J. Edgar Hoover in 1968. Two years later, in 1970, McCormack was retiring and, in what appears to be one of J. Edgar's final favors to Mr. Speaker, he instructed the Boston office to recruit Whitey as an informant, even though he was a small timer handling afternoon dog bets at wonderland. This revisionist history about him not being an informant is utter BS. The feds introduced 900 plus pages of his rat work at trial.

Thanks... A few years ago a guy in Hollywood bought the option to Brothers Bulger. He wanted to make it a long form cable TV drama, like Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. They want a 3-year "story arc" and it was easy to put together from true incidence in Brothers Bulger and some of my other books. But he never could sell it. I hope Netflix is paying attention... I still have his number.

Good question. I think the lesson here is, if you spend thirty years establishing false identities and putting several million dollars cash in safety deposit boxes around the world, and then the FBI gives you an 18-month head start, during which time they don't even ask the woman you've been traveling with what your aliases are, chances are the trail is going to go a little cold. I'm not suggesting this, but Whitey did have a way of dealing with, if not his own ex-girl friends, Stevie's...

Whitey scared them so badly they needed a drink. Another story from the garage: One of O'Brien's bookies wanted to quit the rackets. O'Brien brought him in for a chat with Whitey. The guy told Bulger, I want to get a second job. Whitey said, Really? You know I have a second job, too. What's that, asked the bookie. "I kill people," he said.

Neither publishing nor radio are what they used to be. Nor, for that matter, are newspapers or TV. Everybody is basically a freelancer now. I'd rather publish my own books, because I have platform to sell them on with my radio show. And, by the way, I own my radio show now. There aren't anymore safety nets.

The movie was only 2 hours long. Bulger's reign of terror spanned 40 years. There weren't all that many fist fights. They carried guns. For more on the plot against me, check out the 60-minutes interview Kevin Weeks, Whitey's grave-digger, did.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/henchman-tells-of-whiteys-black-deeds/

I think Martorano dumped Tony Veranis' body in Dedham after shooting him in the head. The thug he was with dropped his wallet next to the body. They had to drive back and pick it up. (The wallet, not the body.) Talk about risky...

I understand the limitations of a Hollywood film, but it would have been nice to see a little bit more about Billy Bulger and what happened to the people, not just cops, who crossed Whitey Bulger. For instance, one guy, John E. Powers, the first Democrat State Senate President since the Civil War, also from South Boston, later got a court house job and was Whitey's boss when he had a no-show job at the court house in Pemberton Square. Powers fired Whitey, saying a gangster shouldn't have the keys to the DAs office. When Billy became Senate President, Powers and his top assistants had their pay frozen in the state budget for at least 5 years. This is what Judge Daher meant when he told a reporter how balless Mike Dukakis was when he was running for president in 1988: "How can he stand up to the Russians when he can't stand up to a corrupt midget?" I'd like to have seen more of that in the movie. But again, that's why a long form dramatic TV series would have been a more appropriate vehicle. (Are you listening, Netflix?)

No, but I think he's probably a big man on campus at his current lock-up in Sumterville, Florida. That's the worst thing about this movie, that it no doubt increases Whitey's stature in the can. Note, however, that his galpal Catherine Greig was just indicted again for refusing to tell what she knows about where he stashed his money. He must still have millions out there. They found safe deposit boxes in Montreal, London, Dublin and Clearwater, Fla. Think how many more there must be.

The first audit was done by the feds when Reagan was president, after I printed some grand jury testimony that tended to exculpate my state representative from Winter Hill, who was charged with attempted extortion. Later Mike Dukakis threw a state audit at me. Since then I've been audited repeatedly by the feds. Might have something to do with my, er, political views...

I say, "Whitey, I'm a free man and you're gonna die in prison. You thought you were so smart, but all the people you tried to screw, not just me, but everybody else, the Martoranos, Pat Nee, Howie Winter, we're all walking around, and you're not."

I was just trying to write a good column. Sometimes I did like to play with their heads, like when Zip Connolly was outed for giving his first ex-wife a diamond ring that the Winter Hill gang gave him. I rode down in the elevator with him and asked him, "What's your favorite Gary Lewis and the Playboys song, Zip?"

Everybody Loves a Clown, She's Just My Style, Save Your Heart For Me? The elevator doors open... And I say to him, "Or is it, This Diamond Ring!" He ran out to the microphones and starting screaming, literally, that he was innocent. That was the lede to my column the next day, The Elevator Story. And as my witnesses I had two other reporters on the elevator, one of whom was Dick Lehr, author of Black Mass.

I was at the Big E last week. Had a blast. As always.

New England, obviously, although I insist that no flour be added. If a spoon can stand up in the chowder, it has been adulterated. Rhode Island chowder is not bad, but I was weaned on the Maine variety. Manhattan chowder -- an abomination!