Witness To Alleged Bulger Murder Says FBI Pressured Him To ID Wrong Man
BOSTON (CBS) - A man who says he watched in horror as two of Whitey Bulger's alleged victims were gunned down 30 years ago is breaking his silence. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says the witness, who did not want his name revealed.
It was 1982, when he was driving on Northern Avenue toward South Boston's waterfront to pick up some lobster with his family. That's when he came upon a horrible image on the street. "He was flopping like a flounder," he says. "I stopped, turned my car around, went the opposite direction, and took off."
But before he did that, he says he got a good look at two gunmen only about five feet away. "One of them had black hair that shot the passenger. The other had dirty brownish blonde hair, and he had glasses, gold-framed glasses." He says he didn't know the victims, Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue. He also didn't know the now-famous fugitive mobster Whitey Bulger.
The police report from his FBI interview shows 15 suspects agents asked him to look at. James Bulger is conspicuously missing from the list. The witness tells WBZ FBI agents pressured him to ID someone else named Jimmy Flynn. Flynn was eventually charged with the murders, but was ultimately acquitted.
Widow Patricia Donahue says she has no doubt that FBI agents never brought up Bulger as a suspect, because they were protecting him. She hopes the mysterious witness will shed more light. "He's probably the only real witness that they have," says Donahue.
The witness says he hasn't been called to testify in Bulger's trial so far, and the idea scares him. But he admits, he's lucky to be alive. If the gunmen had seen him 30 years ago, "oh, I would have been done," he says.
