News of Bulger killing girls changed everything

FBI informant James "Whitey" Bulger's grip on Boston was once fodder for politicians' quips at St. Patrick's Day parties. All that changed 10 years ago when a team of state troopers and a DEA agent began unearthing bodies of his victims, including two young women long missing.

The truth about the murders of Debra Davis, 26, and Deborah Hussey, 26, changed the tone of talk about Bulger and his criminal partner, fellow-FBI informant Stephen Flemmi. They were no longer just bad guys who killed other bad guys. Strangling two young women and mutilating their bodies branded the pair as evil degenerates protected by their FBI handler John Connolly Jr.

In a bench trial, a federal judge has begun hearing testimony in civil suits against the bureau filed by the women's families.

Did the FBI give Bulger and Flemmi a free pass to murder? Other courts have found the bureau liable for the deaths of four Bulger victims and issued awards ranging from $3 million to more than $6 million to their spouses and children.

Last week, a lawyer for the Department of Justice told the court Hussey's family for one deserves nothing. Her mother Marion was Flemmi's common-law wife for many years and Flemmi began molesting Marion's daughter as a teen. He has admitted killing her in 1985 with Bulger.

Justice Department attorney Larry Eisner said Marion "nurtured" Flemmi, an FBI informant and murderous gangster beginning in the late 1960s, and lived on his blood money. "She washed his clothes after he cut the teeth out of these people," Eisner told the court.

Harsh words from the representative of law enforcers who kept both men on the bureau payroll for so long and protected them, according to mounting evidence in the First Circuit. According to testimony from a DEA investigator this week, someone with access to law enforcement databases in the 1980s secretly took Debra Davis off the national list of missing persons and claimed she was seen in Houston.

Davis' mother Olga had reported her missing in 1981. Debra disappeared following a meeting with Flemmi, her former boyfriend and her mother spent almost 20 years not knowing what had happened to her. In truth, she had been strangled to death, her teeth and fingerprints removed and was buried in a shallow grave, Flemmi has admitted.

In court documents, the government has repeatedly argued the FBI has discretion under law to make deals with informants as the agency sees fit.

Testimony resumes next week in Boston.

Mob boss to plead guilty with less cheese

Carmen DiNunzio, the head of the Boston Mafia, is slated to cop a plea tomorrow afternoon for bribing a Big Dig inspector who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The deal calls for DiNunzio, 51, to get a six-year jail sentence for conspiracy and gambling.

The big story, though, is how did DiNunzio lose almost 75 pounds while under house arrest.

"The Cheeseman," as he's known around Boston's North End where he ran an excellent fresh cheese emporium, topped the scales at 400 pounds a year ago when he was ordered to stay inside his East Boston home. His attorney later convinced a federal judge to allow him out for exercise time, while still on electronic monitoring.

Maybe The Cheeseman found something to live for besides food. The Boston Herald claims DiNunzio is engaged to marry Denise Spagnuolo of the North End.

With time served and time off for good behavior, book the hall for around June 2013.

Writer's cramp for DOJ lawyers defending FBI's Bulger handling

Department of Justice attorneys, determined not to pay a dime to the families of people murdered by the FBI's most infamous informant James "Whitey" Bulger, are working overtime this month.

Federal Judge William Young has ordered DOJ's legal team to review rafts of judicial findings in civil and criminal cases about Bulger and other murderous top informants' exploits under FBI cover and note which facts they reject.

On June 17, three weeks before trial in the next round of these cases, Young told the government's lawyers to put a big "D" -- for deny -- next to each fiction they detect in other judges' rulings. Ouch.

"Otherwise, the court will deem these facts not marked (as) admitted," Young said from the bench. (Cases on behalf of two women Bugler tortured and killed are slated for trial in July.)

DOJ begged Young to back off. "The United States requests that it be relieved of this unprecedented burden imposed at the eleventh hour and during a period of intensive trial preparation," said a brief signed by the assistant director of DOJ's torts division Mary Leach.

The judge this week softened his order. The feds still have a lot of marking up to do but they don't have to mark all those "D's" on Judge Mark Wolf's 661-page 1999 decision finding that Bulger and fellow informant Steve Flemmi could not invoke their FBI status as defense against an indictment. It's a good bet DOJ has already read that one.

The biggest fiction of all may be Leach's claim that the government's motivation for spending years on these cases is a desire to protect the public coffers or "the public fisc," as she writes, "from claims that are not well grounded in fact or law."

How many millions of dollars has the government already spent on its lawyers in the last seven years to defend the Boston FBI for protecting murderous informants instead of some citizens?











Iof having the Justice Department step up to the chalk board and write the mantra of the FBI's Top Echelon informant program 500 times: "The end justifies the means."

With its
Several judges in the First Circuit have repeatedly urged the government to settle these lawsuits but the Justice Department refused to have serious discussions with any of the families.

Jury has 'insane' conman's kidnap case

A Suffolk County jury now has the fate of Clark Rockefeller in its hands.

In closing arguments this morning, Rockefeller's defense tried to hammer home a preposterous insanity defense against Rockefeller's admitted kidnapping of his 7-year-old daughter last year.

"Taking a look at Mr. Rockefeller, you know that something is wrong with him," his attorney Jeff Denner told the jury. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist or respectfully a psychiatrist to know that something is very wrong with him … This is not a man playing with a full deck."

Yes, Rockefeller is a sick man. But the line between madman and bona fide jerk clearly falls on the jerk side for his man who has conned good people for decades.

"This is not a case about madness," prosecutor David Deakin said this morning. "It's a case about manipulation … Don't let him get away with that. Don't let this insanity defense be the culminating manipulation in a lifetime of lies designed to try to get what he wanted."

This case should have ended in a plea and probably about 7 years in prison. Instead, Rockefeller got to keep playing us all for a few weeks.

Followup Note: Jurors convicted Rockefeller of kidnapping and he was sentenced to serve four to five years in prison. His attorney says he will appeal.

Former House Speaker DiMasi to be indicted today

Former House Speaker Sal DiMasi and several of his associates are being indicted this afternoon on corruption charges, Boston Justice has learned.

DiMasi is self-reporting to the federal courthouse right now to faced a federal magistrate. He resigned in January after what began as an ethics investigation into his dealings with a friend's software company Cogos ULC.

The grand jury began investigating under former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, who is a Republican. But even Dems in high places now running the U.S. Attorney's office couldn't save DiMasi from this one.

Kidnapper-conman wanted $1 mil to give up custody

No doubt Sandra Boss would love to turn back the clock and beg off that Manhattan costume party where she met Clark Rockefeller dressed in maroon corduroys as Professor Plum from the board game Clue.

The mystery had just begun that night and would evolve into a marriage, a beautiful baby girl and a hellacious kidnapping for which Mr. Rockefeller practiced by tossing a knapsack into the back of an SUV. The bag was stand-in for his 7-year-old daughter.

Boss, 42, the multi-millionaire executive who now lives in London, took the stand in Boston today, and described how Rockefeller, whose real name is Christian Gerhartsreiter, conned her with his charm before turning into a lazy, browbeating house husband who wouldn't get a job.

"The defendant, particularly in the early years, was unhappy with the limited amount I earned at my job and put a lot of pressure on me about it," Boss testified. "I observed he could get a job and contribute."

She divorced him and he readily surrendered custody for a cash. He wanted $1 million. They settled on $800K.

Clearly, somebody forgot to get a prenup. Sadly, Rockefeller is now using the dough to pay for an inane defense claiming he was insane with self-absorption and needed to steal his adoring daughter to feed his ravenous ego.

Stay tuned for the cross-examination. Rockefeller's attorney will need to use Boss' testimony to show the depths of the conman's kookiness.

Conman's defense fuels Narcissism Awareness Week

Boston high society con man Chris Gehartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, suffers from narcissistic personality disorder and delusions of grandeur, a psychologist for his defense told a judge today.

Cue the howls of outrage from talk radio and FOX news commentators.

Rockefeller, who is on trial for charges of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter last year, was so sick with self-aggrandizement that he talked to investigators when captured and also flapped his mouth to reporters in recorded interviews, Boston area forensic shrink Catherine T.J. Howe told the court.

"It would be incredibly hard for someone with a narcissistic personality disorder to say no to someone who said you're so important that I need to talk to you on camera," Howe testified.

Convincing the newly sworn jury of mostly college-age kids that he was so high on mental illness that he wasn't responsible for snatching the child would be Rockefeller's greatest con yet.

It won't work. His defense team's Hail Mary pass is likely to land with a thud outside the end zone. Without rampant narcissism in the population, the justice system would have nothing to do.

But will the argument convince Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frank M. Gaziano to keep the jury from seeing video of Rockefeller spilling the beans in a "Today Show" interview? Doubtful.

In 2003, Gaziano was a federal prosecutor who won the first federal death penalty verdict in Massachusetts for a mentally ill killer who crossed state lines. Gaziano tapped high-priced forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner to tell a federal jury that multiple murderer Gary Lee Sampson suffered from an anti-social personality disorder and addictions but still could have stopped himself from killing.