Animal by Casey Sherman

his bandits sported Elmer Fudd–like hunting caps with flaps covering their ears.
    An arrest warrant was issued for Whitey Bulger on January 4, 1956. Bulger knew enough to steer clear of his old haunts, at least for a while. His one reported visit back to Boston occurred during the Christmas holiday. Whitey Bulger kept moving; he’d be in California one week, New Mexico the next. He traveled with a girlfriend under several aliases, including Leo McLaughlin, Martin Kelley, and Paul John Rose. Not only had Bulger changed his name, but he also changed his appearance. He dyed his soft blond hair jet black and began to sport horn-rimmed glasses. The FBI had also learned that Bulger (a nonsmoker) had taken to walking around with a cigar stuffed in his mouth in an attempt to distort his facial features.
    H. Paul Rico had known Bulger for a couple of years. The two ran into each other often in Boston’s gay nightclub district, where Bulger worked as a hustler and where Rico cultivated informants. There has been much speculation over the years, however, that their interests in Boston’s homosexual scene had more to do with pleasure than it did with business. In March 1956, Rico and another fellow FBI agent, Herbert F. Briick, received a tip that Bulger had returned to Boston and was spending time at a nightclub in Revere, just a few miles north of the city. Rico and Briick staked out the place for a couple of nights until they spotted a disguised Bulger walking out of the joint with another local thug named John DeFeo. Rico and his men swooped in and captured the fugitive Bulger, who was unarmed. During his arraignment the next day, the prosecutor called Bulger “a vicious person, known to carry guns, and [who] by his own admittance has an intense dislike for police and law enforcement officers.” 21
    A few months later, Bulger was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was shipped off to federal lockups in Atlanta, Georgia, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and then the “Rock” itself—Alcatraz. Meanwhile, H. Paul Rico stayed in Boston and reaped the rewards connected with the high-profile capture. Rico’s boss in the Boston office sent a personal and confidentialmemo to J. Edgar Hoover praising the young agent for taking Whitey Bulger off the street. The special agent in charge described the South Boston hoodlum as “extremely dangerous,” a person with remarkable agility and reckless daring in driving vehicles and overall unstable and vicious characteristics.
    Upon receiving the memo, J. Edgar Hoover swiftly promoted Rico to special agent and wrote him a letter in which he stated, “It is a pleasure to approve this promotion in view of your superior accomplishments in connection with the Bank Robbery case involving James J. Bulger Jr. and others.” The FBI director went on to praise Rico for his ability to develop valuable and confidential sources of information. Rico’s new special agent status also came with a cash bonus and a trip to Washington, DC, for a celebratory photo with Hoover himself. Rico boasted to colleague and criminal alike that he had a close relationship with the nation’s top cop. Given the rumors about each man’s sexual orientation, Rico’s braggadocio no doubt triggered snickers behind his back.
    The FBI’S use of electronic surveillance ( ELSUR ) had been paying dividends in the bureau’s fight against the mob, but Hoover continued to stress the need for his agents to cultivate informants in the hope of gathering solid human intelligence ( HUMINT ). One confidential source developed by the Boston office provided agents with significant information about disharmony at the highest levels in the New England Mafia. The story began to unfold when underboss Jerry Angiulo awoke to find his car riddled with bullets outside his apartment in Boston’s North End. Was it merely a warning? Or had the gunman believed Angiulo to be in the car at the time? The informant had no way of knowing. What he did tell