Stephen “The Riflemen” Flemmi the former partner of James “Whitey” Bulger and Winter Hill gang member finally got his turn to take the stand in the ongoing Bulger trial. Flemmi and Bulger traded some obscenities after coming face to face again after 18 years. Flemmi who is currently serving a life sentence for his part in 10 murders and he claims that Bulger was also involved in all of them. He gave some chilling details on some of the murders commited by Bulger and himself including that of his one time girlfriend Debra Davis as Bulger wanted her dead because she had known critical information about both him and Flemmi and may have talked because the couple was breaking up. Flemmi testified that he led Davis to a vacant house in South Boston where Bulger was waiting and strangled her to death. He told me I’ll take care of it, I’ll do it said Flemmi of Bulger because he couldn’t bring himself to do it so he watched as Bulger choked the life out of her. Once she was dead Flemmi said he took over of disposing of the body with help of other Winter Hill gang members.
“Artist rendering of Stephen Flemmi on the witness stand”
Flemmi also went on to testify about the relationship him and Bulger had with the FBI and that they were both former informants something Bulger has denied since the start of the trial. Flemmi admitted to being an informant in the 1960’s and then in mid 1970’s rekindled his relationship with the FBI through Bulger at a meeting with John Connolly Jr and Dennis Condon at a Newton coffee shop. Flemmi recounted that at first Bulger had told the gang he was getting information from Connolly because they were old friends growing up together and that Connolly was also a friend of his brother William Bulger a politician. I was suspicious of it and suspected Bulger was probably an informant said Flemmi and after he was asked to meet with Connolly him and Bulger both began working with him as informants. He said the relationship with the FBI paid off when Connolly and his supervisor John Morris got federal prosecutors to remove both him and Bulger from a 1979 indictment for fixing horse races because the pair was working as protected informants against the Italian mafia.
Flemmi also testified that Bulger made payoffs to Connolly of more then $230,000 over the span of a decade including a payment of $50,000 from a drug shipment in which Connolly then joked “I’m one of the gang now”. Bulger also paid cash to a handful of other FBI agents ranging from $2500 to $5000 at a time from a expense fund he had setup according to The Riflemen. This will make it much harder for Bulger to continue to deny the face that he was ever an FBI informant which seems more important to him and his defence then trying to prove he is innocent of other charges including multiple murders. Many believe Bulger understands he has no chance of being acquitted of the current charges and and more worried about trying to re-establish his tarnished reputation and legacy and prove he was never a rat.
