Flemmi: Mafia feared 'Whitey' Bulger's gang

September 24, 2008 11:17 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

(AP Photo/J. Pat Carter, Pool)

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

MIAMI -- Notorious gangster and longtime FBI informant Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi boasted to a Florida jury today that he and his sidekick James "Whitey" Bulger were so powerful in the 1980s that even the Mafia didn't want to tangle with them.

John J. Connolly

"The Mafia didn't want to get involved with us,'' the 74-year-old gray-haired gangster said. "I'll tell you we were a formidable group.They didn't put us out of business that's for sure."

Flemmi is testifying for the third day in the state trial of his former handler, retired FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., who is accused of murder and first degree murder in the 1982 slaying of Boston business consultant John B. Callahan.

Connolly, 68, who retired from the FBI in 1990 after 22 years, is accused of warning Bulger and Flemmi that Callahan was being sought for questioning by the FBI and would likely implicate them in the 1981 slaying of Roger Wheeler, a Tulsa businessman who owned World Jai Alai, a sports gambling operation with frontons in Florida and Connecticut.

Last week, hitman-turned-government witness John Martorano testified that at Bulger's and Flemmi's urging, he lured Callahan to Florida and killed him. Callahan's bullet-riddled body was found Aug. 2, 1982, in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport.

Martorano told jurors that Callahan enlisted him, Bulger, and Flemmi to kill Wheeler as part of a plot to take over World Jai Alai. If the plan had been successful, according to Flemmi, then he and other members of the Winter Hill gang would have served as muscle for Callahan, making sure that the Mafia didn't force him to give them a cut of World Jai Alai's profits.

"If the Mafia came in and tried to intimidate John Callahan, we would be available,'' Flemmi testified today.

Defense attorney Manuel L. Casabielle asked skeptically, "You were going to stand up against the entire Mafia?"

"Let me tell you something Mr. Casabielle, the Boston Mafia wanted no part of us and neither did the New York Mafia. That's a fact."

Flemmi also testified that he was disappointed that he wasn't there when Bulger gunned down Winter Hill gang associate Edward "Brian'' Halloran and an innocent bystander on Boston's waterfront in May 1982.

"I'm part of the team, I should have been available in case something went wrong," Flemmi told a Florida jury. "My presence would have helped to some degree. If I was available I would have been there. We were partners."