The death of Whitey Bulger is making national headlines, but this story means something different for a lot of people in Boston, where Bulger terrorized the city and his neighborhood of South Boston for six decades before he went on the run. A former gangster from Springfield is now considered a key suspect in his murder. Emily Rooney, host of WGBH's Beat The Press, covered Bulger for years and joined Joe Mathieu on WGBH's Morning Edition to discuss Bulger's death, what it means for Boston, and the attention it's received from the media. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Does this deserve the coverage it's getting locally and nationally?
Emily Rooney: Oh absolutely. I mean this is — what are we, Saudi Arabia? Is this Jamal Khashoggi? I mean, this man was murdered in federal protective custody, and I have to say, he was only there for less than 24 hours. They open the cell at 6:00 a.m., and they just happened discover him at 8:30? I'm not lamenting his passing, as it were. And I totally understand and am sympathetic to the victims in this case. But he was murdered in federal protection, and they have to discover what happened. And it sounds like a setup. They opened his cell and just left him there, unprotected, with nobody watching.
Mathieu: That would be considered a big prize for some inmate, right?
Rooney: Yeah, I mean they mutilated him, apparently, they tried to gouge his eyes out. I mean it was bad.
Mathieu: And the line this morning is, you know, you got what you deserved.
Rooney: Well, I'm not I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying that anybody should be lamenting his passing, but this is not right. Not in federal protection.
Mathieu: Are you surprised by the reaction that we're getting in the neighborhood? For instance, WGBH's Maggie Penman was in Southie last night talking to people — we're hearing good riddance from most people. Does that suggest the whole Robin Hood myth is gone?
Rooney: Well, that was gone. That was a myth perpetrated by Whitey Bulger himself and the Winter Hill gang, that they gave out turkeys at Thanksgiving. Sure they did, after they shook down people, after they extorted people, after they terrorized the neighborhood, as you said. He acted like he was protecting his kind, that only the Irish were the good, but he terrorized everybody. You know, remember Stippo's, the liquor store? It didn't matter what your denomination was.
Mathieu: It wasn't that long ago a movie came out, though, with Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger, where they were playing with that theme a little bit, that he kept drugs out of the neighborhood, that he looked out for his neighbors.
Rooney: And that turned out to be a farce. He was dealing drugs, I heard former Police Commissioner Ed Davis on the radio last night saying he was running drugs and heroin in Lowell. And so it wasn't just locally. He had a franchise, basically, up and down the East Coast.
Mathieu: We're talking with Emily Rooney this morning on WGBH radio. Bring us back to covering Whitey when he was in his prime, if I can even use that term. Did you or others who you worked with fear covering him?
Rooney: Some people did. Ron Gollobin did, he was a reporter for Channel 5. Of course, Howie Carr did, who's still with the Boston Herald. I mean, he taunted people, and he sent messages through people. So I mean, even then, back in the late 70s early 80s, there was this mystical presence about him, even when he was around. I mean, I never met him. I never saw him in person. We knew his brother quite well, of course, William Bulger, who was the Senate president and then the head of the University of Massachusetts. But he was always elusive, even then. And a lot of crime was ascribed to Whitey that you never really knew if he did. Remember that Jai Alai murder, Roger Wheeler? That got very complicated. Turns out he was involved in that, but you know, it took decades and decades to connect all those dots.
Mathieu: That's true. You know I mentioned the movie. There is a kind of a different story line nationally when you talk about this, because people are fascinated by mobsters in Boston, even though there really aren't any anymore.
Rooney: Not anymore. But there were. I mean, we were home to, you know, Joe Barbaro, I mean, you know, we home grew a lot of [mobsters] — the Patriarca family from Rhode Island, so it was very much, you know, it wasn't on the level, maybe, as New York City, but Boston, Rhode Island —
Mathieu: But somehow they're not making all these New York mobster movies anymore, a lot of people still think that is Boston. They're going to watch that rally today.They're going to see the Red Sox parade —
Rooney: Not as many mobsters were as clever as Whitey Bulger. They got themselves in trouble by murdering other mobsters, they ended up in jail, where they got murdered themselves. Whitey was elusive, and being on the run for 16 years gave him even a greater mystical aura.
Mathieu: Jay Carney his lawyer in federal court issued a statement, which I'm sure you've seen, suggesting he was a victim of the system.
Rooney: He was.
Mathieu: That goes back to your original remark.
Rooney: Yes, I mean, they brought him into a prison, allegedly to transfer him to another prison. Would you leave a prisoner like that, that had been only in your custody in that in West Virginia for less than 24 hours without somebody protecting him?
Mathieu: Knowing what a prize that would be.
Rooney: Knowing that there are other people in that prison who wanted him dead. It's almost as if — I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but there's something else going on here. Why was he being moved in the first place? He was in Florida, they put him in this holding center in West Virginia, he was allegedly going somewhere else, I think we're going to discover there was a reason why, and it had nothing to do with his health.
Mathieu: So you do think we will learn why?
Rooney: I do. As I said earlier, we can't let this be our Jamal Khashoggi. What are we, Saudi Arabia? The federal prison, the Bureau of Prisons doesn't talk, they don't tell us what's going on. We aren't like that.
Mathieu: So it's going to take more journalism, it's going to take more reporting to find out.
Rooney: Already there's been some good journalism. I heard yesterday some of the details that the Globe is reporting today about the fact that they were gouging his eyes out. I mean, they know who did this.
Mathieu: As you said, mutilated. As we learn further details about all of this, it does make you wonder is the storyline though, as I said, I kind of consider you the ombudsman of WGBH News. Is the storyline correct so far, not just here but around town? The way this is being covered the day after.
Rooney: I think so. I mean, if he had just died in prison, it would have been kind of ho-hum. He's 89 years old. We figure he was going to die in prison anyway. But, when I first heard it yesterday, I thought that had to be a misspoke. They're using the term killed. And I was going, 'You mean, died?'
Mathieu: Then we heard beaten.
Rooney: Yeah, well, later they said beaten. But the early reports just said killed, and it wasn't clear, so I was saying, 'That can't be right,' but it turns out it was.
