Long after the mob boss was killed in prison, the words of James “Whitey” Bulger could shake one of Boston’s most notorious FBI corruption cases.
Newly released court documents reveal a secret, handwritten manuscript from Bulger that claims former FBI agent John Connolly was framed.
Connolly is appealing his 2008 conviction for assisting Bulger in the 1982 murder of John Callahan in Florida. His lawyers argue that during past appeals, the defense never saw evidence that could have changed everything: The pages, which were seized when Bulger was captured in California in 2011.
“Whitey and Stevie [Flemmi] take him upstairs in a bar in South Boston and put a machine gun to him and say, ‘You’re going to get us this $400,000 that Callahan, who’s now dead, owes us,’” Peter Mullane, Connolly’s attorney, told NBC10 Boston.
He said the manuscript portrays his client as a fall guy.
“John used him — Whitey — to get information to help successfully prosecute the Boston Mafia,” Mullane said.
In the manuscript, the late mobster wrote, “The purpose of this book is first to expose these people who have lied about me to get a ‘get out of prison pass.’”
Mullane says Connolly is trying to clear his name.
“He feels morally obligated, as any responsible father would, to take the burden of his father having been a convicted felon, so his children and grandchildren and wife, when he passes on — which probably will be sooner rather than later — won’t have to live with it,” he said.
“I have no intention of ever giving testimony in court against these people — I seek no deal and will freely write the truth about many crimes and in doing so give up any home for being able to fight for a not guilty finding in court,” Bulger wrote.
“He was well read, very literate, so it makes sense that he would write a book to memorialize the life that he had,” Mullane said of Bulger.
The defense attorney feels the manuscript should be enough to overturn Connolly’s conviction. He says the same overreaching mistakes by prosecutors, similar tactics and misconduct in this case were made in Connolly’s racketeering case in 2002, and that the defense team will look to have that overturned next.
Bulger, who was wanted for years before being caught in Santa Monica 2011, went on trial in Boston 2013. Convicted of a litany of federal crimes, he was killed in 2018 at the age of 89 shortly after his transfer to a West Virginia prison.
