Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [100]
Even though Carr is a maggot and a piece of shit, if we had killed him, it would have been like Alan Berg, the Denver radio talk show host assassinated by a white supremacist with a Mac-10 as he got into his VW. Law enforcement would never have stopped until they tracked down Carr’s killer, just the way they did with Berg’s. His murder would have been an attack on the system, like attacking freedom of the press, the fabric of the American way of life, and they would have spared no expense to solve the crime. But in the long run, Jimmy and I got sidetracked and the maggot lived. Still, I wish we’d killed him. No question about it.
In November 1999, Howie came to my arraignment. When I was walking by him, he said, “Do you have anything to say?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Howie, be fucking nice.”
In his column the next day, he wrote that I said, “Howie, be nice.” He couldn’t even get those four words right.
I was later informed they would be calling Howie Carr as a witness at my bail hearing. However, he didn’t get the chance to offer his thoughts about how dangerous I might be to him, since I didn’t go for a bail hearing.
Another reporter who earned Jimmy’s wrath was Paul Corsetti, also from the Boston Herald. Disgusted with the articles Corsetti was writing about him, Jimmy found out where Corsetti hung out and drank. One night in the early 1980s, dressed in a suit, Jimmy had me drop him off at the Dockside, a restaurant bar at Faneuil Hall. While I stayed outside in the car, Jimmy went in to find the Herald reporter.
When he saw Corsetti sitting at the bar, Jimmy went over and said, “Do you know who I am?”
Corsetti said, “No.”
“I’m Jim Bulger,” Jimmy told him. “And if you continue to write shit about me, I’m going to blow your fucking head off.”
The next day, Corsetti reported the meeting to the Boston police. He was issued a pistol permit within twenty-four hours. The cop who gave him the permit told him, “I’m glad my last name is not Corsetti.” A couple of days later, Jimmy found out about the scene with the cop and was glad to hear how uncomfortable he had made Corsetti.
But Corsetti was just one more example of Herald reporters who report stories that are inaccurate. These reporters are not the only members of the media who are careful never to allow the truth to get in the way of a good story. The story about state trooper Billy Johnson was another perfect example of that tactic.
That story began in September 1987, when Jimmy had me pick up him and Theresa to take them to the airport. They were planning to fly to Montreal to visit Theresa’s daughter Karen, who was married to hockey star Chris Nilan. It was around five in the afternoon, but by the time we got to the airport, Jimmy was already in a bad mood. We’d been halfway there when Theresa had realized she’d forgotten her license and birth certificate, so we had to go back for them. He’d started screaming and yelling and was plenty aggravated when we finally arrived at Logan.
Once we got inside the terminal, I walked him down to the check-in counter. While we’re in line, he put his bag on the conveyor to the X-ray machine. A security woman saw the bag, grabbed it, and said, “You have a large amount of money here. I’ll have to take a look.”
Immediately Jimmy grabbed the bag out of her hand and said, “Fuck this shit. I’m not going anywhere.” She promptly called security, and when a security guard arrived, he started to go after Jimmy. Walking a good way behind Jimmy, I banged into the security guy and knocked him over the counter. At that moment, Jimmy was trying to take off his money belt. But he had a knot in it, and as he was trying to pull the belt off, the knot