FBI man seen pressing police

Intervened in S. Boston murder case, report says

The South Boston bars were emptying out during the early morning of Mother's Day in 1986 when a man carrying a handgun ran out of Triple O's, the most notorious of the drinking places on West Broadway, known as James J. "Whitey" Bulger's clubhouse and operated by one of Bulger's key sidekicks, the beefy Kevin O'Neil.

The pop-pop of gunshots rang out and, in a car parked across from the Triple O's entrance, Tim Baldwin, 23, an ex-con who'd just gotten out of jail, slumped forward, dead. The shooting occurred in front of dozens of witnesses, and Boston police believed they had the shooter: Mark Estes, another ex-con who had been drinking at Triple O's and was feuding with Baldwin over a woman.

But this was 1986 and Southie was Bulgertown. It was a time when the legendary crime boss's power was at an all-time high, when he was seen as the ultimate stand-up guy, and when no one talked in the old neighborhood. It was also a time - although no one knew it then - when a band of FBI agents in Boston was constantly running interference for Whitey and his gang, addicted to Bulger as a longtime informant.

In another possible example of the extent to which Bulger and his close associates were protected by the FBI, an internal bureau document shows that former agent John Connolly, Bulger's handler, allegedly tried to steer police away from O'Neil, a key witness to the Baldwin murder.

The FBI report describes a September 1986 meeting between police Sergeant Detective Brendan Bradley, the lead homicide investigator in the Baldwin murder, and Connolly. Over coffee in the John F. Kennedy federal building, where the FBI's Boston offices were located, Connolly cut to the chase.

"What are you doing to my friend?" he asked Bradley. Connolly told Bradley that he knew all about a grand jury subpoena just issued to O'Neil.

O'Neil, explained Connolly, was "a good [expletive]" from a good South Boston family. His brother was an injured firefighter. Bradley, according to FBI reports, responded that they were talking about a murder investigation, and O'Neil could give them the shooter. Connolly was apparently unmoved.

"But he's a good guy," insisted Connolly, adding that Baldwin, the dead man, was "an [expletive] anyway."

The strained meeting ended. Connolly, according to statements Bradley later gave the FBI, did not "ask directly to withdraw the subpoena to O'Neil," but the homicide detective left with the impression "that was the purpose of the conversation." Back at his office, Bradley complained to another officer and to prosecutors.

Connolly, in a brief telephone interview earlier this week, denied such a meeting had taken place. "That's an abject lie, like so many of the other nonsensical fabrications in this whole matter," he said.

Bradley and the two former prosecutors who worked on the Bald win case declined to comment yesterday.

But during the FBI's 1992 inquiry, one of the prosecutors, John Kiernan, who told investigators that he knew Connolly professionally and socially, said he did not recall Bradley ever complaining about Connolly's behavior in 1986.

Kiernan said he did not "believe Connolly would ever do such a thing." But the other prosecutor, James Hamrock, clearly recalled Bradley returning from coffee with Connolly and telling him about Connolly's move.

Hamrock told the FBI that at the time his first impulse was to subpoena Connolly to the grand jury. But that would only worsen the sometimes tense relations between local prosecutors and the FBI, so it never happened.

Connolly's reported overture did not stop police and prosecutors from pursuing O'Neil, who did appear before the grand jury but refused to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Estes had actually been arrested soon after Baldwin's murder, but in court, witnesses recanted their identification of him as the shooter.

"I'm from South Boston," one of the witnesses shrugged, trying to explain the turnabout to the judge. "We keep things to ourselves."

Estes was let go. Nine years later, in June 1995, he was gunned down in South Boston. The Baldwin murder was never solved.

After O'Neil was issued a subpoena to appear before the grand jury, Connolly called Bradley on Sept. 5, 1986.

Bradley called him back. "Connolly said that he wanted to talk," Bradley recalled later, according to FBI reports assembled in 1992 as part of an internal inquiry into possible misconduct triggered by police concerns about Connolly.

Police and prosecutors had decided to go after O'Neil because he was running Triple O's the night Baldwin was killed. The lead homicide detective had developed information that O'Neil "knew all the details of the murder, including the name of the perpetrator."

Connolly asked to meet Bradley for coffee. Three days later the two met in the lobby of the Kennedy building. Bradley arrived first. Connolly, the flamboyant agent known for his fancy suits and coiffed hair, emerged from the elevator carrying only one cup of coffee, for himself.

The agent apologized to the officer about the other, empty hand, saying, "The girls in the office love me and always buy me coffee."

Last fall, O'Neil, now 51, was indicted on racketeering charges, identified by authorities as one of Bulger's top lieutenants in a gang that controlled drug dealing and loan-sharking in the Boston area.

Last month, Connolly, now retired from the FBI and working as a Boston Edison executive, was indicted along with Bulger and his associate, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, on charges of racketeering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Connolly was charged, among other things, with tipping them off to an earlier indictment in January 1995. Bulger has been a fugitive since.

The federal probe of FBI corruption, as well as several unsolved murders, is ongoing, part of the undoing of Bulger's once-mythic reign.

In February 1992, Thomas Hughes, then head of the Boston FBI office, notified the investigating agent, John Gamel, about his concern that the inquiry into possible misconduct by Connolly was aimed at an agent who had retired. Connolly had left the bureau in 1990. Hughes also noted that "the statute of limitations may have run."

The matter was revived in 1997 and 1998, when investigators looking at possible FBI corruption again interviewed Bradley about his alleged meeting with Connolly. The encounter originally was scheduled to be revealed during hearings US District Judge Mark L. Wolf held throughout much of 1998, but Bradley was one of a number of witnesses who were dropped after the judge urged both sides to trim the witness list.

Moreover, in his 1998 interview, Bradley seemed to pull back from his earlier statements. He told investigators that he viewed Connolly's overture as trying to put in a "good word" for a friend.

By 1998, Bradley's own career had ended abruptly, amid controversy. The previous year he had been picked up by police in a sting involving prostitutes; Bradley denied any wrongdoing and retired later in 1997.

Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.