In their statements to open the murder trial for James "Whitey" Bulger federal prosecutors told jurors tales of cruelty, torture and murder as they tried to portray Bulger as a "hands-on killer," according to ABC News.
18 years after Bulger fled Boston to become a mainstay on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list the Bulger trial finally began on Wednesday. During the opening statements Assistant United States' Attorney Brian Kelly portrayed Bulger as the leader of "a group of criminal that ran amok for almost 30 years," according to ABC News.
Kelly told the jury about how Bulger had his hands in virtually every manner of criminal enterprise. The Boston Globe printed excerpts of the transcript of the opening statements. Kelly opened the trial with this speech.
"This is my chance to give you an overview of the case. It's a case about organized crime, public corruption and all sorts of illegal activities, ranging from extortion to drug dealing to money laundering to possession of machine guns to murder, 19 murders.
It's about a criminal enterprise, which is a group of criminals, who ran amok in the city of Boston for almost 30 years. So you'll hear about crimes in the '70s, the '80s and the '90s. And at the center of all this murder and mayhem is one man, the defendant in this case, James Bulger."
Much of Kelly's opening statement was spent on explaining that Bulger was at one time an FBI informant and corrupt agents helped him avoid capture for so many years. Kelly described that Bulger would pay off police officers "so they could get tipped off to investigations and stay one step ahead of the honest cops who were actually trying to make a case," according to the Boston Globe.
In the opening statement for the defense Bulger's attorney, J.W. Carney, took great pains to make the case that Bulger was never an informant for law enforcement.
"Now, James Bulger never ever, the evidence will show, was an informant for John Connolly. The evidence will show that he was nave an informant for John Connolly. There were two reasons for this. Number one, James Bulger is of Irish descent, and the worst thing that an Irish person could consider doing was becoming an informant because of the history of The Troubles in Ireland. And that was the first and foremost reason why James Bulger was never an informant against people."
Carney readily admitted that Bulger had committed many, many crimes but that the murders were put on him by people attempting to cut down their jail time. Carney also claimed that Bulger wasn't in hiding when he fled Boston for Santa Monica 18 years ago.
"He settled in California, not hiding, living openly in plain sight for the next 16 years while those former FBI agents, I submit, pretended to look for him," Carney said.
As the case moves on from the opening statements two former state troopers are expected to take the stand. Bob Long spent three months in 1980 observing a garage that was used as a "gangster board room" where he saw Bulger and many other organized crime figures come and go, often with large envelopes of money, according to the Huffington Post.
Cameras have been banned from the courtroom but a live blog of the trial can be followed here.
