Flemmi: Zip crowed, ‘I’m one of the gang’
This story originally appeared in the Herald on July 20, 2013.
James “Whitey” Bulger and his murderous right hand Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi were able to evolve into monsters right in front of the FBI “because we were central to their mandate to get rid of the Mafia,” Flemmi testified yesterday.
And they had no better puppet to help them bend law enforcement to their will than Special Agent John “Zip” Connolly, who went from selling out his federal badge for gifts of cash and diamond rings from the generous Winter Hill Gang to being forced to beg Bulger and Flemmi for an allowance.
In an interesting twist, Flemmi said when Bulger first started pestering him in the mid-1970s to meet Connolly, “I suspected I was being set up.”
Flemmi eventually folded because he realized “an FBI source would be a big thing.”
Bulger, charged with the gangland slayings of 19 men and women, insists he was not a top-echelon rat for the FBI and that Connolly, now incarcerated in Florida for second-degree murder, fabricated his 700-page informant file.
Flemmi , however, testified he and Bulger were “sometimes” in touch with Connolly on a weekly basis.
“I’m one of the gang!” Flemmi, on his second day on the witness stand at U.S. District Court, claimed Connolly once exclaimed after the Irish mob kingpins gave him $50,000. They soon realized, however, they were turning Connolly into a spoiled child.
“When he was going to work in his office he was dressing better than any other agent,” Flemmi, 79, said. “He had a nice car. Eventually he bought a boat.”
Flemmi, who is a decade into his sentence of life plus 30 years for admitting in 2003 to his role in 10 murders with Bulger, retakes the stand Monday.