by Andrea Estes, Boston Herald

Monday, December 27, 1999

He's single, 70 and has money to burn.

But unlike other swinging seniors who live out their golden years moored to a beach chair on some sandy shore, James ``Whitey'' Bulger can't sit still.

``He doesn't stay in any one place more than a week at a time, two weeks the most,'' said Tom Cassano, an FBI agent whose reason for being is finding Bulger - the Winter Hill gang boss who has embarrassed an army of agents by keeping them at bay.

Come Jan. 5, Bulger will have been gone five years.

In January 1995, he and his pal, Stephen ``The Rifleman'' Flemmi, hitman John Martorano and reputed Mafia boss Francis ``Cadillac Frank'' Salemme were indicted for racketeering.

Prosecutors say Bulger, Flemmi and Salemme were alerted to the coming indictment by then FBI agent John Connolly, who himself was indicted last week. Bulger and Salemme fled, but only Salemme was caught.

And though the FBI added Bulger to its Ten Most Wanted List last summer, Cassano, the FBI Supervisory Agent who runs the Violent Fugitive Task Force, said he's no closer to catching him than before.

``We've looked at it upside down and backwards,'' said Cassano. `There's nothing new.''

Lots of leads - about 100, he said - but none of them has developed into a definite sighting. Most of the tips come from the Southeast, but Cassano isn't sure whether he's really there or people just know he's been in the vicinity before.

Bulger's photo and that of traveling chum Catherine Greig, 48, hang in post offices around the country. A $250,000 reward has been offered for their arrest. Their faces have been shown on `America's Most Wanted.''

But still they manage to elude detection by amateur photographers and professional policemen alike.

The task force has tracked him to West Palm Beach, Fla., Chicago, Louisiana and New York City, and they believe he's been to Italy, Ireland and Canada.

But he's always one step ahead.

Last year he was spotted in Sloane, Iowa, when Grieg panicked and fled a convenience store where she was trying to buy a pre-paid phone card.

``I've changed my mind,'' Greig was quoted as saying before leaving the store and getting into a car with a white man.

``He just blends in,'' said Cassano. ``He looks like everyone else. He stays out of trouble. He has never been arrested for anything since 1995 and he uses strictly cash.''

He cruises the country by car, usually Fords, and charms the people he meets.

``Convinced'' tipsters call to report they've seen him strolling a beach somewhere, Cassano said, but those leads are impossible to follow.

And because he's likely a multimillionaire - from years of gambling, loansharking and drug dealing - he never needs to work or call home for cash.

Agents believe he knew he'd have to flee someday and be prepared: He stashed money in safe deposit boxes around the country and created four or five new identities.

One, Thomas F. Baxter of Selden, N.Y., he used even before he took off, agents say.

Authorities have tried to squeeze family and friends here, but so far have gotten nowhere.

Last year two women were convicted for lying about phone calls they'd gotten from Greig during the couple's first two years on the run. Greig's twin sister, Margaret McCusker, and Kathleen McDonough, who has been staying rent-free in Greig's South Boston apartment, pleaded guilty to perjury.

But they were never forced to help authorities find Whitey.

And while his former organization here crumbles - Flemmi languishes in prison and his handpicked successors, Kevin Weeks and Kevin O'Neil, are also behind bars - agents don't think he necessarily cares.

``He's strictly out there trying to survive and stay out of jail,'' said Cassano, adding that if Bulger calls anybody here, it's from a pay phone. Nobody but Whitey, he insists, knows where Whitey is.

``He's self-sufficient, not relying on anybody back here,'' adds Barry Mawn, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Boston office.

Authorities believe Weeks, who along with O'Neil was charged with racketeering in November, may have gotten calls from Bulger at a Dorchester physical therapist's office in 1996. The first thing state troopers reportedly asked when they arrested the pair in November was, ``Where's Whitey?''

Since Flemmi admitted in court that he and Bulger were double agents - criminals as well as FBI informants digging up dirt on the Mafia - many wonder whether the now embarrassed FBI really wants to find the crafty criminal.

Cassano and Mawn, his boss, want to prove them wrong.

``It's our job to do the very best we can to locate him and bring him back to justice,'' said Cassano. ``He's a very smart person. He's not stupid. But we will find him. No doubt about it.

``It's become personal.''

AmericanMafia.com
div. of PLR International
P.O. Box 19146
Cleveland, OH 44119-0146
216 374-0000

Copyright © 1999 PLR International