Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [138]
When I did an online chat for the Boston Globe, I was told that the chat, which I did with a Globe reporter and which lasted an hour, also received one of their biggest responses ever. Some of the questions I was asked were silly and I responded accordingly.
For instance, one question was “If you were Whitey, where would you hide?” I answered, “The Playboy Mansion.”
Someone else wrote, “You’re a scumbag,” and I wrote back, “And you’re a tough guy on the computer.”
When he next wrote, “You should be tortured to death,” I responded online, “Come and do it.”
Some of the questions, however, were serious, like these:
Q.: Do you regret your violent past with the mob?
A: It’s not something I’m proud of.
Q: Are you sorry for hurting your family?
A: I’m sorry not just for hurting my family, but for hurting other people’s families.
Q: Do you plan to stay in Boston for the rest of your life?
A: Until I’m ready to leave.
Q: Are you prepared for the backlash from your book?
A: There’s backlash from anything you do in life. There will always be pros and cons.
Q: How have your emotions and past relationships been affected while writing this book? Was this an eye opener and are you thankful for the second chances in life?
A: You open your eyes to things that you’ve done and you realize that while you were doing them how it affected other people never really occurred to you.
Q: What is your biggest regret from your past?
A: You don’t realize at the time just how many people you hurt when you commit a crime, when you kill somebody. I mean it’s far-reaching how many people suffer, families, friends, distant relatives.
Q: Do you have trouble sleeping at night knowing what you’ve done to people?
A: No, thank God.
Q: Mr. Weeks, do you have any idea how warped your sense of “honor” in how you conducted your life sounds to a regular person? May God have mercy on you.
A: To some people it is warped, but then again, most people were not brought up in the same environment and don’t have the same code of morality around them.
Sure, it would have been easier if I answered some of those questions with the decent answers many of those who entered the chat would rather have heard me speak. But I have to be truthful in everything I say, no matter how awful some of these words sound or how many people I anger. I performed those crimes and there is no denying them nor how I felt at the time I committed them.
There were dozens of book signings and speeches, as well. At first, I was uncomfortable about standing up in front of a crowd and talking about my life, and then answering the questions. But I had decided to answer all questions and tell only the truth, which made my job easier. There wasn’t a night when I was pleased to do this public speaking but I was amazed at the intelligent and often praiseworthy comments and questions I received from the crowds gathered to take a peek at a bad guy. I always began my speeches with a plea to the crowd not to blame South Boston for the fact that criminals like Jimmy and I were part of the town. Approximately thirty-six thousand people live in South Boston today and it is not fair to judge all the good hard working people there by two. I also discussed my surprise that people were fascinated and wanted to hang around with criminals, to tell their friends that they knew us well. “We were not nice people,” I warned my listeners. “We were always looking for a score.”
Several women at different book signings, at events around the Boston area, or on the Internet, wanted details about their loved ones. They asked, either in person or on the Internet at Amazon.com, if I knew their fathers or uncles and if I had an idea what