Whitey's Payback (31 page)
Thanks to the late Bob Callahan, who introduced me to the Mitchell brothers; to Susie Bright, renowned author and “sexpert,” who helped me understand the world of adult entertainment; and Tom Caldarola, a longtime friend who remains my “go-to” person in San Francisco. Thanks to the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association in New York’s Chinatown for their assistance and for their tireless advocacy on behalf of Asian immigrants in the United States; to legendary civil-rights attorney Myron Beldock, who first helped me track down George Whitmore; to Regina Whitmore, George Whitmore’s beloved daughter; to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and friend Jim Dwyer; and to Sewell Chan, deputy Op-Ed editor at the
New York Times
.
As a magazine writer in pursuit of a story, often I have found myself at the mercy of local reporters. Few were more gracious than John Caniglia of the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, who shared sources and contact information on the Lee Lucas story. Also helpful in Cleveland were attorneys John McCaffrey and James Owen. Special thanks to Geneva France in Mansfield, who suffered a grave injustice at the hands of the criminal justice system in the Northern District of Ohio, and who remains a friend.
My investigations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, were aided by a host of people across the border in El Paso, Texas. Special thanks to Valentin Sandoval, a well-connected filmmaker and poet who led me to contacts in Juárez and El Paso; to the lovely Valerie Anne Garcia, who kept me safe and sound at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown El Paso; to Howard Campbell, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a highly knowledgeable source on the effects of the narco war in the borderland region; and to Carlos Spector, a civil rights attorney who continues to do essential work on behalf of Mexican immigrants and others whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the narco war.
I have been covering the Whitey Bulger beat for years and am greatly indebted to local reporters in Boston who have been on the front lines of this story, most notably Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen of the
Boston Globe
. For leading me to important sources; helping with logistics and the cultivation of contacts in Boston; and helping me to understand important details about the Bulger era, I would like to thank the following people: Pat Nee, Kevin Weeks, Jimmy Martorano, John Martorano, Marilyn Di Silva, Tommy Lyons, Paul Griffin, retired FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick, Steve Davis, Richard Stratton, Sharon Branco, John Connolly, Jim Connolly, the late Teresa Stanley, and lawyer and author Harvey Silverglate. Special thanks also to Jim Carmody, manager at the Seaport Boston Hotel, and Lucas Whitmann, editor at
Newsweek/Daily Beast.
Special thanks to Joel Millman, a friend and highly skilled reporter at the
Wall Street Journal
, for serving as a welcome sounding board over the years. And to Sophia Banda, friend, confidant, and sometimes personal assistant, who has been and remains a ray of sunshine in my life. And, as always, to my longtime agent Nat Sobel and his crew at Sobel Weber Associates, Inc., who were instrumental in making sure this book found its proper home.
Finally,
muchas gracias
to legendary publisher Otto Penzler at MysteriousPress.com, who is responsible for getting this book into print and published as an ebook in record time. Having presided over the genre of crime writing—both fiction and nonfiction—as a publisher for nearly forty years, Penzler knows the terrain. And he and his new partners at Open Road Media have established themselves as skillful practitioners at the commingling—and transition—of books from the printed page to electronic formats.
Mostly, I am grateful to the Spirit that put me on this path, and am thankful for the confluence of circumstances that have made it possible for me to make a living doing what gives me the most fulfillment: investigating subjects that engage my head and my heart, and writing stories for the entertainment and edification of those who revere the written word.
Whitey’s Payback
is a collection of sixteen true crime stories, subjects ranging from irish mob kingpins to mafia hitmen, to yardie drug lords to corrupt cops, from America’s foremost authority on the underworld.
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger is the last of the old-fashioned gangsters. As a polished, sophisticated psychopath—who also happened to be a secret FBI informant—his Boston reign of fear lasted for 20 years. For over a decade he was second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s most wanted list. Captured after sixteen years in hiding, he now sits in a maximum security prison awaiting trial on racketeering charges and nineteen counts of murder. But Bulger will have his payback: at trial he has promised to lift the lid a toxic conspiracy of agents, cops, judges, criminals, and politicians that helped enforce his rule.
T.J. English has been writing about men like Bulger for over two decades. In this collection, in addition to numerous pieces about Whitey, he investigates the frontline of crime in the US. Combining first-rate reporting and the storytelling technique of a novelist, English takes his readers on a bloody but fascinating journey to the dark side of the American Dream.
The Westies: Inside The Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob
Born to Kill
Paddy Whacked
Havana Nocturne
The Savage City
THOMAS JOSEPH ENGLISH (b. 1957) is one of America’s foremost authorities on the recent history of crime. His New York Times bestselling books have investigated the Irish mob, Vietnamese gangs and mafia infiltration of pre-Castro Cuba. He has also written for the screen, producing episodes for the gritty cop shows
NYPD Blue
and
Homicide: Life on the Street
. He lives in New York City.
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First published in the UK in 2013 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © T.J. English, 2013
The moral right of T.J. English to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781856727
Printed in Germany.
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