Glass
24th July 2013, 02:40 AM
curiosity, clicked the link and read the story. Thought yeah ok, a tale of intrigue, crooks with catchy nick names, gruesome murders, alliances, back stabbing, turning states witness. It looks like a current story.
The date on the story is July 24, 2013. That's around about today by my reckoning. So then I thought who is this "The Rifleman" guy they are talking about. I like to google the main characters and see whats they've been doing. I thought maybe he was a sniper guy, like the washington dupes.
It's the cold hard headline that gets the punters in. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
James 'Whitey' Bulger took a nap after each murder!
James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston mobster, strangled his accomplice's stepdaughter before going upstairs for his customary post-murder nap, a court has been told.
Several members of the jury looked shaken as Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, who is serving life sentences for 10 murders, incriminated Bulger in a series of gruesome killings.
"Maybe he was physically exhausted from it, I don't know...Maybe he would get high on it."
Particularly harrowing was Flemmi's account of the death of Deborah Hussey, his stepdaughter, who he said worked as a prostitute to pay for her drug habit. He testified that he drove 26-year-old Miss Hussey to a house where Mr Bulger was waiting and watched as he strangled her. Flemmi then pulled the teeth from her skull with pliers and buried her beneath a dirt floor cellar next to two other alleged Bulger victims.
link (http://www.theage.com.au/world/james-whitey-bulger-took-a-nap-after-each-murder-court-told-in-boston-mobster-trial-20130724-2qinn.html)
so in googling the rfileman character I find another article which is basically the same story as above. Intrigue, people going turncoat on each other. People doing deals for imminuty from the DP and so on. But this was written in 2003. This is not big news but it does strike me as odd and I like to know the reasons for odd because when something is odd there is usually a good reason for it.
FREEDOM WATCH
Why does the FBI believe Flemmi?
BY HARVEY SILVERGLATE The plea bargain that the feds, in conjunction with state prosecutors from Oklahoma and Florida, have entered into with confessed serial killer Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi — triggerman for the infamous fugitive Boston organized-crime honcho James "Whitey" Bulger — proves the truth of the cliché "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
The FBI’s vaunted Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program (TECIP), begun under the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and continued under his successors, has a long history of abuse and corruption — a history recently revealed by intrepid investigative journalists and confirmed in marathon court hearings before US district-court judge Mark L. Wolf. But the Flemmi plea bargain offers perhaps the most ironic — and outrageous — act in the long and horrendous TECIP comedy of errors. Why the most outrageous act, given FBI agents' spectacular disclosures of being co-opted and even bribed by murderous hoodlums and racketeers the feds thought they were using to "fight organized crime"? Because by now the feds should know better than to think you can get the truth out of a hood — or anyone else, for that matter — by making him the proverbial "offer he can’t refuse." Put under enough pressure, and offered sufficiently attractive inducements, many human beings — let alone vicious and calculating criminals — will learn "not only to sing, but also to compose," to borrow a phrase from Alan Dershowitz.
All this is brought to mind by the latest step in the danse macabre among the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and a rogues’ gallery of hoods. It was disclosed in a federal-court hearing last week that Flemmi had negotiated a deal to plead guilty to 10 murders that took place in federal, Florida, and Oklahoma jurisdictions, as well as to drug trafficking, racketeering, and extortion charges, in exchange for a life prison term. The Rifleman will also become a federal witness against his allegedly corrupt former FBI handlers, including 78-year-old retired FBI agent H. Paul Rico. Indeed, just prior to the public announcement of Flemmi’s conversion into a government witness, Rico was arrested at his beachfront condo in Florida and held for extradition to Oklahoma, where he faces the death penalty for conspiring in the 1981 murder of Roger Wheeler. Wheeler was the Tulsa businessman and owner of World Jai Alai, the Miami-based pari-mutuel wagering company where Rico procured a job as head of security after his retirement from the FBI in 1975.
Issue Date: October 24 - 30, 2003
link (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/03266632.asp)
So how come it is 10 years down the track and this is only going to court now? Whats up with that? Do we need some juicy stuff in the news.
I'm wondering if there are possibly other names that might slip out, perhaps if someone doesn't toe a line. I'm easily mystified BTW.
The date on the story is July 24, 2013. That's around about today by my reckoning. So then I thought who is this "The Rifleman" guy they are talking about. I like to google the main characters and see whats they've been doing. I thought maybe he was a sniper guy, like the washington dupes.
It's the cold hard headline that gets the punters in. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
James 'Whitey' Bulger took a nap after each murder!
James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston mobster, strangled his accomplice's stepdaughter before going upstairs for his customary post-murder nap, a court has been told.
Several members of the jury looked shaken as Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, who is serving life sentences for 10 murders, incriminated Bulger in a series of gruesome killings.
"Maybe he was physically exhausted from it, I don't know...Maybe he would get high on it."
Particularly harrowing was Flemmi's account of the death of Deborah Hussey, his stepdaughter, who he said worked as a prostitute to pay for her drug habit. He testified that he drove 26-year-old Miss Hussey to a house where Mr Bulger was waiting and watched as he strangled her. Flemmi then pulled the teeth from her skull with pliers and buried her beneath a dirt floor cellar next to two other alleged Bulger victims.
link (http://www.theage.com.au/world/james-whitey-bulger-took-a-nap-after-each-murder-court-told-in-boston-mobster-trial-20130724-2qinn.html)
so in googling the rfileman character I find another article which is basically the same story as above. Intrigue, people going turncoat on each other. People doing deals for imminuty from the DP and so on. But this was written in 2003. This is not big news but it does strike me as odd and I like to know the reasons for odd because when something is odd there is usually a good reason for it.
FREEDOM WATCH
Why does the FBI believe Flemmi?
BY HARVEY SILVERGLATE The plea bargain that the feds, in conjunction with state prosecutors from Oklahoma and Florida, have entered into with confessed serial killer Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi — triggerman for the infamous fugitive Boston organized-crime honcho James "Whitey" Bulger — proves the truth of the cliché "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
The FBI’s vaunted Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program (TECIP), begun under the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and continued under his successors, has a long history of abuse and corruption — a history recently revealed by intrepid investigative journalists and confirmed in marathon court hearings before US district-court judge Mark L. Wolf. But the Flemmi plea bargain offers perhaps the most ironic — and outrageous — act in the long and horrendous TECIP comedy of errors. Why the most outrageous act, given FBI agents' spectacular disclosures of being co-opted and even bribed by murderous hoodlums and racketeers the feds thought they were using to "fight organized crime"? Because by now the feds should know better than to think you can get the truth out of a hood — or anyone else, for that matter — by making him the proverbial "offer he can’t refuse." Put under enough pressure, and offered sufficiently attractive inducements, many human beings — let alone vicious and calculating criminals — will learn "not only to sing, but also to compose," to borrow a phrase from Alan Dershowitz.
All this is brought to mind by the latest step in the danse macabre among the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and a rogues’ gallery of hoods. It was disclosed in a federal-court hearing last week that Flemmi had negotiated a deal to plead guilty to 10 murders that took place in federal, Florida, and Oklahoma jurisdictions, as well as to drug trafficking, racketeering, and extortion charges, in exchange for a life prison term. The Rifleman will also become a federal witness against his allegedly corrupt former FBI handlers, including 78-year-old retired FBI agent H. Paul Rico. Indeed, just prior to the public announcement of Flemmi’s conversion into a government witness, Rico was arrested at his beachfront condo in Florida and held for extradition to Oklahoma, where he faces the death penalty for conspiring in the 1981 murder of Roger Wheeler. Wheeler was the Tulsa businessman and owner of World Jai Alai, the Miami-based pari-mutuel wagering company where Rico procured a job as head of security after his retirement from the FBI in 1975.
Issue Date: October 24 - 30, 2003
link (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/03266632.asp)
So how come it is 10 years down the track and this is only going to court now? Whats up with that? Do we need some juicy stuff in the news.
I'm wondering if there are possibly other names that might slip out, perhaps if someone doesn't toe a line. I'm easily mystified BTW.