Finnerty.
In February 1968, Billy did his first land deal with Finnerty. With a group of five other wired Boston pols, he bought fourteen acres of land from the federal government in Winthrop on the old Fort Banks military base.
Beacon Winthrop won the land after an open bidding process, paying $201,818. Eventually, after a few more of the paper transfers of the sort that Whitey would someday perfect in his own real estate transactions, the land was sold off between 1970 and 1972 for $499,999—a 148 percent return.
It was all “strictly legit,” as they would say at the State House. It was also Billy’s first big score with Tom Finnerty. It would not be his last.
In March 1970 Speaker John McCormack finally announced he would not seek a twenty-third term, and for the first time since 1926, the South Boston Congressional seat was open.
It was Louise Day Hicks’s for the taking.
But Senator Joe Moakley called Billy one night to give him the heads-up that, Louise or no Louise, he too would be running for Congress. And that meant that Billy could run for his open Senate seat, just as he’d run for Moakley’s open House seat a decade earlier. This time, though, he would be the favorite. His only significant opponent would be an aide of McCormack’s named Patrick Loftus.
Loftus never really threatened Billy, but the same could not be said of Whitey’s attempts to intervene on his brother’s behalf. In the summer of 1970, Billy heard from someone in Loftus’s campaign that Whitey had been “sounding off ” about taking care of Loftus. In 2003, under oath, Billy described to the congressional committee what happened next: “So I drove up the street, and I found him and I said, ‘This is madness. Don’t do this. . . .’ I think probably he thought he was doing this for me and ultimately around this time I made it very clear to him. Please don’t do it. He said, ‘I assure you I will never be near any of us again.’”
Billy won easily, just as Louise Day Hicks defeated Moakley in the Democratic primary to win McCormack’s seat. In January 1971, Billy was sworn into the state Senate. With forty members, compared to the 240 in the House, it was a much smaller pond, in which Billy would soon find himself a much larger fish than he had ever been before.
CHAPTER 5
B Y 1972 BOTH B ULGERS had risen higher in their respective trades than anyone could have imagined twenty years earlier. But any further advancement seemed unlikely. Both Billy and Whitey found their paths to the top blocked. For Billy, the problem was the state senators ahead of him in the Democratic leadership—President Kevin Harrington and Majority Leader Joe DiCarlo.
Whitey was now the undisputed king of the rackets in Southie, and he rapidly began consolidating the protection racket. Even though he had still not been officially designated as an FBI informant, Condon remained in contact with him.
In September 1973 he filed this report on Whitey: “Informant advised that JAMES ‘WHITEY’ BULGER has been moving around the city pressuring bookmakers and shylocks for payments of money. BULGER was told that he had been coming on too strong and is going to curtail these activities in the future.”
Whitey, obviously, had a different plan for the future. His goal was to curtail the activities of anyone in the underworld— or law enforcement—who could order him around. If any curtailing of activities was going to be ordered, Whitey wanted to be the one issuing the commands, not taking them.
But standing in Whitey’s way was the Mafia. If he were ever to dominate organized crime in Boston, he would have to eliminate Gerry Angiulo and his brothers who hung out on Prince Street in the North End. But even before that, Whitey would have to somehow take over the non-Mafia mob that he now associated with—the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville.
The Hill operated out of a compound of buildings and a garage owned by Howie Winter on Marshall Street, on
In February 1968, Billy did his first land deal with Finnerty. With a group of five other wired Boston pols, he bought fourteen acres of land from the federal government in Winthrop on the old Fort Banks military base.
Beacon Winthrop won the land after an open bidding process, paying $201,818. Eventually, after a few more of the paper transfers of the sort that Whitey would someday perfect in his own real estate transactions, the land was sold off between 1970 and 1972 for $499,999—a 148 percent return.
It was all “strictly legit,” as they would say at the State House. It was also Billy’s first big score with Tom Finnerty. It would not be his last.
In March 1970 Speaker John McCormack finally announced he would not seek a twenty-third term, and for the first time since 1926, the South Boston Congressional seat was open.
It was Louise Day Hicks’s for the taking.
But Senator Joe Moakley called Billy one night to give him the heads-up that, Louise or no Louise, he too would be running for Congress. And that meant that Billy could run for his open Senate seat, just as he’d run for Moakley’s open House seat a decade earlier. This time, though, he would be the favorite. His only significant opponent would be an aide of McCormack’s named Patrick Loftus.
Loftus never really threatened Billy, but the same could not be said of Whitey’s attempts to intervene on his brother’s behalf. In the summer of 1970, Billy heard from someone in Loftus’s campaign that Whitey had been “sounding off ” about taking care of Loftus. In 2003, under oath, Billy described to the congressional committee what happened next: “So I drove up the street, and I found him and I said, ‘This is madness. Don’t do this. . . .’ I think probably he thought he was doing this for me and ultimately around this time I made it very clear to him. Please don’t do it. He said, ‘I assure you I will never be near any of us again.’”
Billy won easily, just as Louise Day Hicks defeated Moakley in the Democratic primary to win McCormack’s seat. In January 1971, Billy was sworn into the state Senate. With forty members, compared to the 240 in the House, it was a much smaller pond, in which Billy would soon find himself a much larger fish than he had ever been before.
CHAPTER 5
B Y 1972 BOTH B ULGERS had risen higher in their respective trades than anyone could have imagined twenty years earlier. But any further advancement seemed unlikely. Both Billy and Whitey found their paths to the top blocked. For Billy, the problem was the state senators ahead of him in the Democratic leadership—President Kevin Harrington and Majority Leader Joe DiCarlo.
Whitey was now the undisputed king of the rackets in Southie, and he rapidly began consolidating the protection racket. Even though he had still not been officially designated as an FBI informant, Condon remained in contact with him.
In September 1973 he filed this report on Whitey: “Informant advised that JAMES ‘WHITEY’ BULGER has been moving around the city pressuring bookmakers and shylocks for payments of money. BULGER was told that he had been coming on too strong and is going to curtail these activities in the future.”
Whitey, obviously, had a different plan for the future. His goal was to curtail the activities of anyone in the underworld— or law enforcement—who could order him around. If any curtailing of activities was going to be ordered, Whitey wanted to be the one issuing the commands, not taking them.
But standing in Whitey’s way was the Mafia. If he were ever to dominate organized crime in Boston, he would have to eliminate Gerry Angiulo and his brothers who hung out on Prince Street in the North End. But even before that, Whitey would have to somehow take over the non-Mafia mob that he now associated with—the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville.
The Hill operated out of a compound of buildings and a garage owned by Howie Winter on Marshall Street, on
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