13 years later, search for Bulger still intense

Task force traces leads worldwide

Age-enhanced photos by the US attorney's office.

The April 3 caller to the FBI's Boston office said the matter was urgent. Fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and his girl-friend, Catherine Greig, were hiding in compartment 7 of Amtrak's Auto Train, scheduled to arrive in Sanford, Fla., in half an hour.

The Bulger Task Force made a flurry of phone calls, mobilizing a team of FBI agents and local police who were waiting when the train rumbled into the station. Authorities quietly boarded the train, located an elderly couple in compartment 7, and realized, indeed, they had come face to face with Bulger. The problem was, it was the Bulgers from New Jersey - with no connection to the 78-year-old South Boston fugitive who remains one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted.

And yet the Task Force remains undeterred. More than 13 luckless years after Bulger vanished, a multi-agency task force of seven investigators is still assigned full time to tracking him. He fled just before his January 1995 federal racketeering indictment, was later charged with 19 murders, and is now being pursued by a posse of two FBI agents, two Massachusetts State Police officers, two lieutenants from the Massachusetts Department of Correction fugitive apprehension unit, and an FBI analyst, all of whom work out of an unmarked suite of offices in downtown Boston.

"It is frustrating, but I think at the end of the day we as a group here just want to locate and apprehend him," said FBI Special Agent Richard Teahan, a 16-year veteran of the FBI who became the coordinator of the task force two years ago. "We can't leave any unresolved leads because if we do, I don't want someone Monday-morning quarterbacking us and telling us we missed the big one."

As earnest - and expensive - as the task force's efforts may be, it is constantly plagued by the public perception that the FBI does not really want to find him. Bulger was a longtime FBI informant who shared cozy dinners and gave a stream of gifts to agents for years, then was warned by his former FBI handler to flee just before authorities moved to arrest him.

"If anybody doubts that we're looking for him, they're wrong," said Teahan during a recent interview at the task force offices. "The amount of work that's been put into finding him is truly amazing."

William E. Christie, a New Hampshire lawyer who won a $3.1 million negligence suit against the government on behalf of the family of one Bulger victim, said the public's suspicion is justified.

"I would like to think that they are really looking for him," Christie said. "But when you see the extent of the corruption that existed over the course of Bulger's informant relationship and the conduct of the Department of Justice in defending the civil cases that have been brought by families, I think that people's skepticism is warranted."

Still Christie said it's not a waste of resources for the task force to keep hunting for the gangster - as long as they are really trying. The families of Bulger's victims "really want him brought to justice and the injustice is that he's been allowed to be at large all this time," Christie said.

No other fugitive currently on the 10 Most Wanted list has a task force assigned full time solely to his capture, though several of those who were captured in the past did, according to the FBI.

In the past year, the task force has investigated over 100 Bulger look-alike sightings and pursued more than 300 additional leads generated by a sighting in Sicily of a couple that resembled Bulger and 57-year-old Greig, but were later identified as a German couple, Teahan said.

Task force members traveled to Mexico, Italy, England, and Spain in pursuit of Bulger last year. This year they have been to Germany and two other countries, which Teahan would not identify because of ongoing investigations.

The task force was reluctant to disclose details of the search and so worried about secrecy that members asked a reporter not to disclose the location of their offices.

There is no sign outside the offices to signal the nature of their work, but inside dozens of photographs of relatives and associates of Bulger and Greig are plastered on a conference room's walls. World maps dotted with push pins marking places of interest, charts plotting various data, and photographs of the fugitive couple - some age-enhanced - adorn the walls of a sprawling room lined with desks where investigators work the phones and computers.

Some investigators pursue possible Bulger sightings, while others work the historical part of the case, focusing on the gangster's family and former associates.

"There's so much history to it, and somewhere in that 13-year run there is somebody either in Boston or connected to Bulger somehow that we haven't found yet," Teahan said. "I'm looking for that person who received or made calls from James [Bulger] and could be funneling money to him."

After Bulger fled, he and his criminal sidekick, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, were exposed as longtime informants who had provided the FBI with information about local Mafia leaders while getting away with murder. Their former handler, retired FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., was convicted of federal racketeering in 2002 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for protecting the pair from prosecution and warning them to flee before their indictment. Connolly is slated to stand trial in Miami in September on murder charges for allegedly plotting with Bulger and Flemmi to kill a potential witness in 1982.

That history haunts investigators when they knock on doors looking for information.

"Most people from Boston have an opinion or an idea about the Bulger case, some conspiracy theory," said Teahan, who joined the FBI in 1991, the year after Connolly retired. "We have to breach that barrier . . . and make people realize the bureau is dedicated and committed to finding this guy."

The other FBI agent on the task force, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Doug, said it is difficult when agents try to interview someone who wants to talk about media reports or Internet blogs suggesting agents are sporting flip-flops and sunscreen as they scour the world's vacation spots for Bulger.

"We're not the bad guys," said Doug, who joined the FBI six years ago and investigated cyber crime before being moved to the task force several years ago because of his computer skills. "I stand behind what I do. I recognize that this is a very important case, and I am humbled to be a part of it."

He said there's plenty of work to do, which is neither fun nor exciting.

Tips come from around the world by phone, mail and e-mail, ranging from the serious to the bizarre. Many callers ask about the $1 million reward being offered for information leading to Bulger's capture.

In January, a woman called the FBI saying she believed she spent two hours skiing at Jackson Hole, Wyo., with a man she now suspected was Bulger. The following month, a woman reported that a man she met while running a marathon in Malta could be the fugitive. Last month, an Irishman e-mailed that he believed he spotted Bulger and Greig on a Galway street.

The task force has ruled out many tips by running background checks, pulling driver's license photographs, and conducting interviews.

Their files are brimming with photographs of elderly men, some whose resemblance to Bulger is so striking it took fingerprinting to rule them out.

In recent years, the task force fingerprinted two corpses, one in Texas and another in Wisconsin, eliminating them as Bulger, according to investigators. They remain convinced Bulger is alive.

"I think if he died his family would bring him back for a proper burial," said one investigator, who has worked the fugitive case for more than six years and asked not to be identified.

Task force members say the Bulger family has refused to cooperate with the manhunt, even though their loyalty to the fugitive has cost them. William M. Bulger was pressured to resign as president of the University of Massachusetts in 2003 after he was grilled by a congressional committee about his relationship with his gangster brother.

The third brother, John "Jackie" Bulger, a retired clerk magistrate at Boston Juvenile Court, spent six months in prison for lying to federal grand juries about contacts with his fugitive brother.

"The Bulger family to the end will not give him up, will not negotiate a surrender," Teahan said.

The FBI, which pays for the task force's travel expenses and office, would not disclose how much it has spent trying to find Bulger.

US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said it is important for the task force to remain intact until Bulger is caught, regardless of the cost, because the case is so significant.

"It's important for him to come back and face the charges," Sullivan said. "There will always be some critics saying we're spending too much time and too much money and 13 years later we're no closer to catching him. . . . I don't think we should do it because of the critics, I think we should do it in spite of the critics."

The last confirmed sighting of Bulger was in London in 2002.

Teahan said many tips are referred to FBI field offices stateside or to FBI legal attachés overseas, but the task force pursues the most promising ones.

Before task force members travel out of the country, they must get approval from FBI headquarters and permission from foreign authorities, he said. The task force has no authority outside the United States and must persuade foreign law enforcement officials to pursue a Bulger lead.

Teahan recounted knocking on a door in Ajijic, Mexico, last year, thinking Bulger could be inside.

"You get all fired up, thinking this is it, this is the one, we're going to get him," said Teahan. An elderly man with bright blue eyes who looked a lot like Bulger, but was a retiree from Somerville, opened the door.

"You just have to put your head down and keep going," Teahan said.