Howie Carr thread week of August 21, 2011

Sun column ping. Howie is back on air tomorrow

Gangs all here!
Whitey as CEO of motley crew
By Howie Carr | Sunday, August 21, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Stuart Cahill

Whitey Bulger is settling into the rest of his life down at the jail in Plymouth, and it’ll be years before he actually goes to trial, if he ever does.

Still, if the case ever does make it to court, this is one of the more fascinating exhibits the jury will get a look at — the Winter Hill Gang’s organizational chart from 1975, the glory years.

This chart, which was produced by the DEA and the Massachusetts State Police, was first used in the 2008 murder trial of Zip Connolly in Miami. The crooked FBI agent was convicted of killing John Callahan, who’s on the chart right under Jimmy Martorano. The actual triggerman was Jimmy’s brother, Johnny, who as one of the gang’s partners is at the top of the chart. The driver on the Callahan hit was Joe MacDonald (also spelled McDonald), another gang partner. McDonald was one of two Winter Hill hoodlums to make the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. The other, of course, was Whitey.

The gang was formed in 1972 when Whitey suggested to the other guys at the top of the chart that there might be room for a second organized crime crew in Boston besides “In Town” — the Mafia. When Stevie Flemmi returned from the lam in 1974, he became the gang’s sixth partner.

One of the guys on the chart didn’t even make it to New Year’s 1976. Tommy King, on the left, Southie side of the chart, made the mistake of besting Whitey in a barroom brawl. He got two in the hat and was buried on the beach under the Neponset River bridge.

The gang began breaking up in the late 1970s after Fat Tony Ciulla, the resident horse race fixer, was arrested and became a rat. Ciulla’s testimony took out the gang’s leadership, except of course for the two FBI rats, Bulger and Flemmi.

Since then, the gang members have gone their separate ways, usually with a prison sentence compliments of their dear friends Whitey and Stevie. Less than half are still alive. Stevie Flemmi and Joe Yerardi are doing time in the federal pen in Otisville, N.Y. Flemmi’s doing life, and Yerardi, the youngest on the chart at age 57, will be released next July.

Jimmy Flynn became an official of Teamsters Local 25 and had a bit part (as a judge of all things) in the movie “Good Will Hunting.”

As for Whitey, he continues to wait for his close-up. When he finally gets it, this chart will come in handy. Clip and save.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1360288

special Sat column ping

Prez exits on wave of ineptitude
By Howie Carr | Saturday, August 27, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

And so farewell, Barack Obama, don’t let the hatch door of Air Force One hit you on the way out of Massa-tu-setts, as you pronounce it.

The first family came in separate planes, and they’re leaving, ditto. Hey, it’s only money, our money.

Even before Irene, this wasn’t much of a presidential vacation compared to the earlier ones. An Obama vacation on the Vineyard has been downgraded from Cat 3 to tropical storm. It’s hard to get excited about the arrival, yet again, of the second coming of Herbert Hoover.

He’s already had at least two visits to the political ATM here this year, not to mention his wife Mooch-elle’s shakedown cruise a couple of months ago. What do they say? Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds contempt.

And what was that bunkum from Obama about a “historic” hurricane? Right now it’s only a tropical storm, and he’s trying to conflate it into the Blizzard of ’78. But hey, he and his whole administration, whenever they talk about the economy, they sound like weathermen. Whether it’s the tsunami, or the drought, or the financial crisis ... it’s gotta be somebody else’s fault.

Thursday night, Austan Goolsbee was on Fox trying to blame the cratered economy on the “earthquakes out of Washington, D.C. I mean, we’ve had a series of things that have put some heavy blows and slowed the economy back down.”

I’m not making this up. The “earthquake” is causing the double dip.

Which reminds me. I felt the tremor in Brighton the other day. And I still have yet to receive my FEMA debit card.

And now Barack Obama is gone, back to Washington. He had no choice, I guess. You can’t be playing golf while voters are getting hammered. And apparently he still believes North Carolina is in play next year — he wants to get down there to commiserate with the good folk of the Tar Heel state.

Meanwhile, as the president packed on the Vineyard, his dear pal the governor put his foot in his mouth big-time. A Ch. 4 reporter asked him about the illegal alien suspected of killing an American in Milford last weekend. Deval’s lip curled, as if he were back at the State Road restaurant with the rest of the Beautiful People.

He said, haughtily, that the American — whose name he couldn’t recall — wasn’t killed by an illegal alien, he was killed by a drunken driver. Who wouldn’t have been in the country if he’d been tossed the first time he was arrested for assaulting a cop, but what does Deval care?

Heck of a job, Devie.

If Barack didn’t say it as he was lifting off last night in Air Force One, he should have.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1361698

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