The New York Times bestselling author of The Westies and Paddy
Whacked offers a front-row seat at the trial of Whitey Bulger, and an
intimate view of the world of organized crime--and law enforcement--that
made him the defining Irish American gangster.
For sixteen years, Whitey Bulger eluded the long reach of the law. For
decades one of the most dangerous men in America, Bulger--the brother of
influential Massachusetts senator Billy Bulger--was often romanticized
as a Robin Hood-like thief and protector. While he was functioning as
the de facto mob boss of New England, Bulger was also serving as a Top
Echelon informant for the FBI, covertly feeding local prosecutors
information about other mob figures--while using their cover to cleverly
eliminate his rivals, reinforce his own power, and protect himself from
prosecution. Then, in 2011, he was arrested in southern California and
returned to Boston, where he was tried and convicted of racketeering and
murder.
Our greatest chronicler of the Irish mob in America, T. J. English
covered the trial at close range--by day in the courtroom, but also, on
nights and weekends, interviewing Bulger's associates as well as
lawyers, former federal agents, and even members of the jury in the
backyards and barrooms of Whitey's world. In Where the Bodies Were
Buried, he offers a startlingly revisionist account of Bulger's
story--and of the decades-long culture of collusion between the Feds and
the Irish and Italian mob factions that have ruled New England since the
1970s, when a fateful deal left the FBI fatally compromised. English
offers an authoritative look at Bulger's own understanding of his
relationship with the FBI and his alleged immunity deal, and illuminates
how gangsterism, politics, and law enforcement have continued to be
intertwined in Boston.
As complex, harrowing, and human as a Scorsese film, Where the Bodies
Were Buried is the last word on a reign of terror that many feared
would never end.
