A FORMER CLOSE associate of alleged mob kingpin James “Whitey” Bulger has offered gruesome details of three killings he says he watched the Irish-American criminal commit.
Kevin Weeks described the killings in court in Boston during his second day of testimony in Bulger’s trial for his alleged role in 19 murders in the 1970s and 1980s.
The 57-year-old – a key witness in the proceedings – told the jury that he had led authorities to the graves of the three victims after he began co-operating with authorites in 2000.
Describing the 1985 killing of Deborah Hussey – the daughter of another gang-member’s longtime girlfriend – Weeks said he didn’t think anything was going to happen to her as she “wasn’t a criminal”.
Weeks said he was at a South Boston house with Bulger when he heard a thud. He claimed the then saw Bulger choking the 26-year-old, and then strangling her with a rope.
According to the Boston Globe, Weeks also detailed the killing of Arthur “Bucky” Barrett, a safecracker and thief who Bulger allegedly shot in the head in 1983. A year later, according to Weeks, Bulger murdered a suspected informant by the same method, after a failed attempt to strangle him.
All three bodies were buried in the same basement, Weeks said, but they later had to be moved as the house was being sold.
Weeks – who first developed connections with Bulger in the 1970s – has already served a five year sentence after pleading guilty to racketeering and aiding five murders, following an agreeement that he would testify against his former boss.
Weeks said he first developed a friendship with Bulger in the 1970s while he was working as a bouncer at Triple O’s, a South Boston bar where Bulger did business as the leader of the Winter Hill Gang.
Soon, he said, he was working as an enforcer, driving around the city and picking up cash from local bookmakers the gang were extorting.
In court yesterday, he testified that he had also seen the mob boss open fire on a car and kill two men in 1982.
The high-profile trial opened last month, with prosecutors describing Bulger as a murderous drug dealer and extortionist who “did all the dirty work himself.”
The defence meanwhile denied claims that Bulger - who was arrested in June 2011 after 16 years on the run – was an FBI informant. The 83-year-old is accused of 19 murders, extortion, money laundering and arms trafficking.
Bulger became the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in ‘The Departed’, the 2006 crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.
(Additional reporting by AFP)
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