On the Tuesday before court recessed for the Independence Day holiday, the jury in the trial of James “Whitey” Bulger heard testimony from a former drug dealer who says he worked for Bulger and had a difficult time getting out of the business.
Bulger took Joseph Tower down the stairs of an isolated housing project and made his intentions clear.
Jurists also heard various jailhouse conversations between the defendant and his family that the prosecution played in court to try to demonstrate Bulger's ruthlessness.
For the first time since the trial began, the voice of James Whitey Bulger in conversation was heard on tape- secretly recorded when his niece and nephew visited him in October 2012 at the Plymouth House of Corrections.
According to testimony, backed by a transcript, Bulger is heard imitating the sound of a machine gun in reference to the murder of Eddie Connors.
“Pa-pow-pow-pow,” Bulger says in the tapes.
Bulger prefaced this sound by saying, “they tried to blame this on me as usual.” Connors, a bar owner known as “The Bulldog”, was cut down by automatic gunfire as he stood in a telephone booth on Morrissey Boulevard in South Boston.
Bulger and Stephen Flemmi are alleged to have killed him to keep him quiet.
Karen Smith, the daughter of Eddie Connors, tearfully told the jury of being shaken awake that night by a stranger who informed her that her father had ben killed. She was 7-years-old at the time.
After the court session ended, Smith told reporters she had no doubt that Bulger murdered her father.
In another jailhouse conversation between Whitey Bulger and his brother, James, Bulger recounts a time when he and Flemmi took on three alleged potential robbers.
The liquor store that Bulger was protecting had belonged to Steven Rakes and taken from him, allegedly by the threat of violence, cushioned by a small payment.
“At the time I was scared to death. I was afraid of myself being murdered and my family,” Rakes said.
Bulger, now 83, is charged with 32 counts of federal racketeering, including 19 murders. The trial resumes on July 8.