For kin of Bulger’s victims, wait ends

When his pager went off one night at Boston’s celebrated Bay Tower Room restaurant, a frustrated Flemmi confided to Davis that he had to leave to meet an FBI agent who was a friend of James “Whitey’’ Bulger, according to documents filed recently in court.

That secret cost Davis her life.

Flemmi told investigators that Bulger, a fellow informant, feared that Davis knew too much about their relationship with the FBI and insisted on killing her in 1981 when she tried to break up with Flemmi, according to the documents.

Twenty-eight years after the 26-year-old Davis was strangled and buried along the banks of the Neponset River in Quincy, her family and the families of two other victims are scheduled to go to trial today in federal court in Boston on their wrongful death suits against the government.

The three cases, which include claims brought on behalf of 26-year-old Deborah Hussey (killed in 1985), and 45-year-old Louis Litif (killed in 1980), mark the last of the victim lawsuits involving Bulger and will be tried together. The victims’ families say the FBI is responsible for the slayings because it had a duty to control Bulger and Flemmi. Instead, the families contend, agents protected them from prosecution while knowing they were vicious killers.

“If the government handled it the right way, those two would have been in jail, so they are definitely responsible,’’ said Hussey’s father, Thomas of Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Justice Department lawyers contend in court filings that the FBI did not have a duty to control Bulger and Flemmi and that there is “an absolute absence of any evidence’’ that the FBI knew its informants planned to kill the victims.

The families are seeking unspecified damages for the victims’ pain and suffering and the families’ loss of financial and emotional support. US District Judge William G. Young is presiding over the nonjury trial.

A wave of criminal cases that exposed the FBI’s corrupt relationship with Bulger and Flemmi has triggered 17 lawsuits against the government. Ten were dismissed, mostly on the grounds they were filed too late.

Four cases that went to trial resulted in judgments against the government, ranging from $3.1 million to $6.4 million, and findings that the FBI was to blame for four slayings in the 1970s and 1980s.

The government has made only one payout, and it is considering appeals of the other three judgments.

“These cases have had a real unfortunate history in many ways,’’ said William Christie, the New Hampshire lawyer who represents two families who won awards. He pointed out that some families did not know what happened to loved ones until secret graves were discovered decades later, then endured years of legal wrangling as the government fended off their suits.

“So it is significant that these three cases, which are the last three, are finally getting their day in court,’’ he said.

Davis’s mother, Olga, who filed her suit in 2002, died two years ago. Her children are pressing the case on behalf of her estate.

Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, offered gruesome details of crimes dating to the 1960s in a 146-page report, which was sealed last month, days after it was filed publicly in court.

Flemmi admitted that on Sept. 17, 1981, he lured Davis to an empty South Boston home he had purchased for his parents, then was “emotionally distraught’’ as he watched Bulger strangle her.

Flemmi claims he “contemplated killing Bulger’’ afterward, but instead helped bury Davis’s body, according to the report.

Deborah Hussey was a toddler when her parents split and she and her teenage mother, Marion Hussey, moved in with Flemmi. The couple lived together for more than 20 years and had three children together.

Marion Hussey said she threw Flemmi out of the Milton home they shared in 1982 after Deborah Hussey confided he had been molesting her since she was a teenager, according to court filings.

Flemmi told investigators that he and Bulger decided to kill Hussey because she had revealed the molestation and was frequently getting into trouble because she had a drug problem.

Litif, a South Boston bar owner and bookmaker, was shot to death on April 12, 1980, leaving a wife and two children. No one has been charged with his slaying, but his family asserts that Bulger killed Litif because he was warned that Litif planned to cooperate against him.

Litif, who also was an FBI informant, reported to John J. Connolly Jr., the same corrupt agent who handled Bulger and Flemmi.

Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison in January for leaking information to Bulger and Flemmi that led to the killing of a Boston businessman in Florida in 1982. The former agent was also convicted in 2002 of federal racketeering and of warning Bulger to flee to avoid prosecution.

Bulger, 79, is wanted for 19 killings and has been a fugitive since 1995. He is one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted.