February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The detail from the latest FBI wanted poster for Whitey Bulger.
By Jim Smith
BOSTON — Under a plea agreement filed in federal court last week, a former top deputy of fugitive South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger has implicated Bulger in the murder of John McIntyre, an admitted IRA gun-runner who disappeared in November 1984.
Kevin Weeks, who was indicted on federal racketeering charges last November, led authorities to a Dorchester gravesite earlier this year, where the bodies of McIntyre and two other murder victims were unearthed. That discovery fueled speculation that Weeks was cooperating with authorities in a bid for leniency.
In documents accompanying last week’s plea agreement, Weeks admits to aiding and abetting Bulger and cohort Steven Flemmi, who are identified in court papers as "John Doe #1" and "John Doe #2," in the murders of McIntyre and three other victims. He also admits to being an "accessory after the fact" to a fifth murder.
Weeks, who is 44, will admit under terms of the plea agreement that he kidnapped and confined McIntyre prior to his murder by Bulger and his associates. He will also admit to exhuming the bodies of McIntyre and two other victims from an undisclosed location in October 1985 and reburying them at the 1985 Dorchester site where they were discovered in January.
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Federal authorities now believe that McIntyre was killed because of reports that he had been talking with Quincy police about Bulger’s involvement in the ill-fated voyage of the Valhalla, the fishing trawler used in the 1984 attempt to smuggle seven tons of arms and ammunition to the IRA off the coast of Ireland. Working from an informant’s tip, gardai had intercepted the shipment and captured four IRA men at sea after the weapons were transferred from the Valhalla to the Irish trawler Marita Ann off the coast of Kerry.
The parents of McIntyre initially reported that they believed that British military agents assassinated their son. That theory formed the basis of a 1989 book by John Loftus, "Valhalla’s Wake." Earlier this year, John McIntyre’s brother Christopher told reporters that his late father had endorsed that theory as a ruse to keep Bulger associates from acting on threats made against him and his family. And John McIntyre’s mother, Emily, told the Echo then that it is obvious that "Bulger and his gang" were responsible for her son’s murder.
The McIntyre family is filing a wrongful death suit against the FBI, charging that former agent John J. Connolly Jr., who was Bulger’s handler, told Bulger that McIntyre had spilled his guts about the Valhalla to Quincy police while being detained on a misdemeanor arrest in October 1984.
Connolly is now under indictment for obstruction of justice. He is charged with tipping off Bulger early in 1995 about an extortion and racketeering indictment that would have led to Bulger’s arrest. Forewarned, Bulger fled Boston in January 1995 and has been a fugitive since.
Now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, the 70-year-old Bulger is believed to be traveling with longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, who is 48.
The intriguing saga of Bulger and his role as crime boss and "top echelon informant" who helped destroy the Italian Mafia in New England is the subject of a new best-selling book, "Black Mass," by veteran Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill.
Bulger, whose younger brother William is a former president of the Massachusetts Senate and currently a college president in the University of Massachusetts system, is the subject of two separate federal racketeering indictments, one returned in 1995 and the other last December.
Weeks’s allegations about Bulger’s involvement in the murder of McIntrye and others will likely lead to new charges against the fugitive, including homicide.
Under last week’s plea agreement, Weeks will be placed in security while in prison. Prosecutors will recommend a sentence of five to 15 years and will offer him the option of participating in the witness protection program.
The FBI is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to Bulger’s capture. Since he fled in 1995, Bulger has been tracked to Chicago, New York City, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Canada and Ireland, but the FBI has always been a step behind.