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Trial begins in lawsuit against FBI by families of Bulger victims

E-mail|Link|Comments () July 1, 2009 05:54 PM

Deborah Hussey was strangled by Bulger and Flemmi in Boston in 1985, an eyewitness testified today.

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

A Justice Department lawyer argued today that the common law wife of Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi lived on "blood money" from the gangster for years and has no right to sue the government because Flemmi and his partner, James "Whitey" Bulger, killed her daughter while working as FBI informants.

"She protected, nurtured" Flemmi, said Justice Department attorney Lawrence Eiser on the first day of trial in a wrongful death suit brought by Flemmi's long-time companion, Marion Hussey, and the families of two other victims.

"She washed his clothes after he cut the teeth out of these people and she's going to blame the FBI on this theory," he said, referring to Flemmi's practice of pulling the teeth out of his victims so they couldn't be identified. "You can't hold the government liable for failing to arrest people," he said.

But lawyers for Hussey and the two other families said the FBI is to blame for the deaths of their loved ones because it knew Bulger and Flemmi were killers, but it protected them from prosecution because they were valued FBI informants against the Mafia.

"They should have been off the street," said Ann Donovan, a Newton attorney who represents Hussey, whose daughter, Deborah, was killed in 1985.

Framingham attorney Michael Heineman, who represents the family of Debra Davis, another victim, said Bulger and Flemmi were responsible for more bloodshed than the local Mafia and the FBI had a duty to protect the public from them.

"The FBI assisted, protected, and actively participated in criminal acts with Bulger and Flemmi," Heineman said.

The first witness to take the stand after opening statements in the non-jury trial before US District William G. Young was former Bulger associate Kevin J. Weeks. He described numerous murders carried out by Bulger and Flemmi from the 1960s through the 1980s. Several of those, he said, were committed because former FBI agent John Connolly warned Flemmi and Bulger that the victims were cooperating against them.

Weeks offered a gruesome eyewitness account of the slaying of Deborah Hussey. He said he was coming downstairs from the second floor in a South Boston home when he heard a thump and saw Bulger on the floor strangling Hussey.

"There was no way out of it. She wasn't struggling. She was just dying," he said.

When Flemmi put his head to her chest and realized she was still breathing, he took a clothesline, wrapped it around a stick, and finished strangling her. Afterward, Weeks said, Bulger was "laying on the couch, taking a nap."

The third case was brought on behalf of Louis Litif, who was killed in 1980. The case marks the last of the last of the victim lawsuits involving Bulger and will be tried together.

The families are seeking unspecified damages for the victims' pain and suffering and the families' loss of financial and emotional support, the Globe reports today.