Lawyer says US not to blame in murders

“She protected, nurtured’’ Flemmi, Justice Department attorney Lawrence Eiser said during opening statements on the first day of trial in a federal wrongful death suit brought by Flemmi’s longtime companion, Marion Hussey, and the families of two other victims.

“She washed his clothes after he cut the teeth out of these people,’’ said Eiser, referring to Flemmi’s admitted practice of pulling his victims’ teeth so they could not be identified. “And she’s going to blame the FBI on this theory. . . . You can’t hold the government liable for failing to arrest people.’’

But lawyers for Hussey and the families of the other victims, Debra Davis and Louis Litif, said the FBI is liable because it knew Bulger and Flemmi had committed prior murders and should have prosecuted them, but protected them because they were informants against the Mafia. The agency also thwarted efforts by other law enforcement agencies that targeted Bulger and Flemmi, attorneys said.

“Instead of controlling Bulger and Flemmi, they conspired to protect them,’’ said Ann M. Donovan, a Newton lawyer who represents Hussey, whose 26-year-old daughter, Deborah, was killed in 1985. “They should have been off the street.’’

Michael Heineman, a Framingham lawyer who represents the family of Davis, 26, who was killed in 1981, said that Bulger and Flemmi were responsible for more bloodshed than the Mafia and that the FBI had a duty to protect the public from them. Instead, Heineman said, “the FBI assisted, protected, and actively participated in criminal acts with Bulger and Flemmi.’’

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

Taking the witness stand yesterday, former Bulger associate Kevin J. Weeks detailed Bulger’s corrupt relationship with the FBI, including the gangster’s cash payoffs and gifts to agents, and offered an eyewitness account of murders. Weeks said he was walking downstairs from the second-floor of a South Boston home when he heard a loud thump, then saw Bulger on the floor strangling Hussey.

“There was no way out of it,’’ Weeks said. “She wasn’t struggling. She was just dying.’’

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, Weeks said. Afterward, Weeks said, Bulger was “laying on the couch, taking a nap.’’

He said they buried Hussey’s body in the basement of the home, where two other victims were already buried. They exhumed the bodies later that year, when the house was being sold, and buried them in Dorchester, he said.

After Weeks was arrested on federal racketeering charges in November 1999, he began cooperating with investigators from the Massachusetts State Police and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and led them to the remains of Hussey and the others.

Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, including those of Davis and Hussey, admitted he and Bulger killed Davis and Hussey and is slated to testify during the trial. Bulger is wanted on murder charges in 19 killings, including those of Davis and Hussey, and has been a fugitive since 1995. The former handler of Bulger and Flemmi, retired FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. , is serving a 40-year prison term for murder, on top of a 10-year sentence for racketeering.

Flemmi told investigators he and Bulger killed Hussey because she told her mother Flemmi had been molesting her and because she was getting into trouble because of a drug problem.

Flemmi told investigators he and Bulger killed Davis, who was Flemmi’s girlfriend, when she tried to break up with him in September 1981 because she knew about the gangsters’ relationship with the FBI, according to court documents.

No one has been charged with killing Litif, 45, a South Boston bar owner and bookmaker shot to death on April 12, 1980.

Edward Berkin - a Boston lawyer who represents Litif’s widow, Anna - said in opening remarks that he will present circumstantial evidence proving Bulger killed Litif because Connolly warned him Litif was an FBI informant and was poised to cooperate against him.