Kevin Weeks
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Kevin "Two" Weeks (b. March 21, 1956, South Boston, Massachusetts) is a former Irish-American mobster, and former lieutenant to Mob boss James Bulger of the Winter Hill Gang, an organized crime family from South Boston, Massachusetts.
After his arrest and imprisonment in 1999, he became a cooperating witness. His testimony is viewed as responsible for the convictions of John Connolly and Stephen Flemmi. Since his release from prison, he has written the memoir, Brutal; My Life in Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (ISBN 0-06-112269-6).
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[edit] Background
Kevin Weeks was born in South Boston, Massachusetts to a working class family of mixed Irish and Welsh descent. He was the fifth child in a family of six and grew up in the Old Colony Housing Projects.
His father, John Weeks, originally hailed from Brooklyn, New York. His mother, a full-time homemaker, suffered from severe arthritis and went about the family's tenement on crutches. John Weeks changed tires for a living and later obtained a position with the Boston Housing Authority. He trained his sons in boxing and earned extra money by coaching prizefighters.
Kevin's brother, William, has described the atmosphere of their childhood as follows.
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"Smart was good, but having the ability to beat someone senseless! Now that was real power. Education was often talked about in the apartment, but always with the implied threat that if your marks weren't acceptable, be ready to give up your soul to God because your a-- belonged to our father ... [A]nd As [sic] weren't acceptable." [1]
Throughout high school, Kevin Weeks was involved in extra curricular activities. When he wasn't boxing, he was on a team traveling to swim meets all over New England. His memoirs vividly describe how the busing controversy transformed the previously comparatively peaceful South Boston high schools into zones of race warfare. Weeks also relates how his fights against African-American gang members eventually led him to lose a post-graduation job at a neighborhood high school.[citation needed]
[edit] Criminal career
In 1976, after he gave up on college, Weeks became a bouncer at a popular neighborhood bar, "Triple O's". This was a frequent hangout of the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish-American crime family which was then bossed by the infamous James "Whitey" Bulger. It was here that Weeks first met Bulger, as well as Bulger's Italian-American partner Stephen Flemmi. Beginning in 1978, Weeks began working for Bulger part-time as muscle and a personal driver. Impressed by Weeks' knack for making money and genuinely liking him, Bulger decided to bring him in closer than any other associate. Meanwhile, Weeks turned to running a loansharking business on the side.
In 1982, just four years after beginning to work as part of the Winter Hill Gang, Weeks left his legitimate jobs and became a full-time mobster.
[edit] The Halloran murder
On the night of May 11, 1982, Bulger was told the whereabouts of a former associate turned Federal informant, Edward Brian Halloran, known on the streets as "Balloonhead". After arriving at the scene, Weeks staked out the Pier Restaurant, where Halloran and construction worker Michael Donahue were dining together. As Donahue and Halloran drove out of the parking lot Weeks signaled Bulger by stating, "The balloon is in the air", over a hand held radio. Bulger drove up with a masked man armed with a silenced Mac 10; Bulger himself carried a .30 caliber carbine. Bulger and the other shooter opened fire and sprayed Halloran and Donahue's car with lead. Donahue was shot in the head and killed instantly. Halloran lived long enough to identify his attacker as James Flynn, a Winter Hill associate, who was later tried and acquitted. Flynn remained the prime suspect until 1999, when Weeks agreed to cooperate with investigators.
[edit] The Three Murder House
Between 1983 and 1985 Weeks has also confessed to three additional murders; all of which took place between 1983 and 1985. Each killing was carried out at the same house, 799 East Third Street in South Boston.[citation needed]
The first murder was that of Arthur Barrett, a safe-cracker and major drug trafficker reporting to Joe Murray of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Three years earlier, Barrett had masterminded a $1.5 million bank robbery in Medford, Massachusetts. Instead of paying protection to Bulger, Barrett had given $100,000 to Frank Salemme, a "Made man" in the Patriarca crime family and close friend of Flemmi. Out of courtesy to Salemme, Bulger held off on shaking Barrett down. In 1983, however, Bulger learned that Barrett was involved in selling stolen diamonds. Bulger persuaded Weeks to pose as a diamond fence and lured Barrett to a meeting at the house on East Third Street. Bulger then tied him to a chair and spend hours grilling him on Murray's drug business. After he had all the information he needed, Bulger shot Barrett in the back of the head. Flemmi then cut off his feet and hands and pulled his teeth out with a set of pliers. Weeks covered the corpse with lime and buried him in the basement.[citation needed]
The second murder was that of John McIntyre, a 32-year-old drug runner who, like Barrett, reported to Joe Murray. Like many of Boston's Irish-Americans, he was an avid supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). In 1984, Bulger and Weeks were collaborating with Winter Hill associate Patrick Nee in an attempt to smuggle seven tonnes of arms to the IRA aboard the Valhalla, a fishing trawler from Gloucester, Massachusetts. McIntyre was a member of the crew which carried the guns to a secret rendezvous off the Irish coast.[citation needed]
However, the British, American, and Irish governments had been warned by an MI6 mole in the PIRA's Kerry Brigade (reputedly Sean O'Callaghan). As a result, the cargo was intercepted off the Irish coast by a combined force of the Irish Navy and the Garda Siochana. The Valhalla's crew was arrested by U.S. Customs agents upon their return to port. Broken under interrogation, McIntyre revealed all he knew and agreed to wear a wire on his associates. Bulger was immediately notified by John Connolly. On November 30, 1984, McIntyre met with Murray and Nee on the South Boston waterfront. He was taken to the East Third Street house and turned over to Bulger. Bulger grilled him for hours before offering to smuggle him to South America.[citation needed]
Changing his mind, Bulger walked McIntyre to the basement and shot him in the back of the head with a .22 caliber rifle.[citation needed] Flemmi then put his head to McIntyre's chest and reported that he was still alive. Flemmi responded by picking McIntyre up by his hair as Bulger fired five or six more shots directly into his face. Weeks was yet again assigned to digging duty and buried McIntyre's remains.[citation needed]
In 1985, Flemmi walked into 799 East Third Street with a 26-year-old woman by the name of Debra Hussey. Debra, the estranged daughter of Flemmi's common law wife Marion Hussey, had been working as a stripper in the Combat Zone in Boston. Even more serious from Flemmi's perspective, she had also been bringing African-American men to the house Flemmi shared with her mother in suburban Milton, Massachusetts. To make matters even worse, she had threatened to tell her mother about her past affair with Flemmi. Weeks was in a separate room of the house and did not enter the parlor until he heard a thud. When he did so he saw Bulger on the floor with his arms wrapped around Hussey's throat and legs wrapped around her torso. After Bulger released his grip, Flemmi insisted that she was still breathing. Flemmi then garrotted her with a length of clothesline. Just as in the previous murders inside the house, Flemmi and Weeks buried her remains in the basement.[citation needed]
Debra Hussey was the last person murdered inside the house on East Third Street; six months later, the house was sold. On Halloween weekend in 1985, the three bodies - Barrett, McIntyre and Hussey - were relocated to an isolated gully overlooking the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
[edit] Narcotics
Beginning in the early 1980s Bulger, Weeks, and Flemmi began to partake in the illegal narcotics trade. Their involvement began with shakedowns of major traffickers and branched out into actually micromanaging the New England drug trade.
Ironically, they limited their associates to cocaine, hashish, and marijuana and did not want any other drugs (such as heroin and PCP) on the streets of South Boston. Weeks stated that, according to Bulger, a cocaine addict can still function, while heroin addicts become "zombies".[citation needed] A carefully chosen crew of prizefighters under John Shea handled most of the work of the drug business. Dealers of heroin and PCP were beaten up and driven out of the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Shea and his associates smuggled large amounts of cocaine from Colombian and Cuban-American drug cartels based in South Florida.[citation needed]
Beginning in the late 1980s, a joint task force of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Boston Police Department, and the Massachusetts State Police set out to bring the Winter Hill Gang down. In 1990, "Red" Shea and his entire crew was all rounded up and imprisoned. However, Shea and his associates refused to implicate their bosses.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, Bulger and Weeks listened to reports of the arrests on the radio. Weeks would later describe how the drug trade had been good money while it lasted but how after the arrests, the gang returned to more conventional crimes.[citation needed]
[edit] Mob Boss
On December 23, 1994, after being tipped off by a renegade Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent, John Connolly, "Whitey" Bulger fled Boston ahead of a massive Federal indictment charging him with shaking down bookmakers throughout the Boston Metropolitan Area. Flemmi was arrested less than a month later. The leadership of the Winter Hill Gang then devolved on Kevin Weeks.[citation needed]
For the next five years, Weeks ruled the neighborhood rackets assisted by Kevin O'Neill, one of his former employers from his days as a saloon bouncer.[citation needed] Weeks also remained in frequent touch with Bulger, with whom he had several clandestine meetings in New York City and Chicago.
[edit] Arrest
On November 17, 1999, Weeks, Kevin O'Neill, and other Winter Hill associates were arrested in South Boston by agents of the DEA and the Massachusetts State Police. The next afternoon, he was presented with a 29-count indictment under the RICO Act. At first refusing to cooperate, Weeks was transferred to a Federal penitentiary in Rhode Island.
[edit] The informant
Imprisoned in Rhode Island, it took about two weeks for Weeks to decide to co-operate with authorities, leading some in South Boston to dub him "Kevin Squeals". He has stated that he was approached by one of his fellow prisoners, a Made man in the Patriarca crime family, who asked him, "Kid what are you doing? Are you going to take it up the a-- for these guys? Remember you can't rat on a rat. Those guys have been giving up everyone for thirty years."[2] In addition, Weeks was also deeply affected by the cooperation of John Martorano, a legendary hit man for the Winter Hill Gang.
He led authorities to six different bodies buried by the Winter Hill Gang, including the triple grave of Hussey, McIntyre and Barrett. He implicated Bulger in the murder of Edward Brian Halloran, as well as agreeing to testify against Stephen Flemmi, Special Agent Connolly, and Whitey Bulger. He was then sentenced to five years in federal prison. Upon his release in early 2005, Weeks was given the option of entering the Witness Protection Program, but, he turned the offer down. He has stated that if anyone were to come after him he'd rather face his problems than hide like a coward.[citation needed]
[edit] Family
Kevin Weeks married his longtime girlfriend, Pamela Cavelleri, on April 26, 1980 at the Gate of Heaven Roman Catholic Church in his native South Boston. They have two sons, Kevin Barry Weeks, to whom Whitey Bulger stood as godfather, and Brian Weeks. The couple later separated.
His older brothers, John and William Weeks, both attended Harvard University, but have stated in interviews their father was prouder of Kevin's ranking position in the Winter Hill Gang and his close relationship with Bulger.[citation needed]
[edit] Current status
Weeks was released from Federal prison in early 2005. After a major bidding war over his memoirs, he chose to collaborate with journalist Phyllis Karas (of People magazine). Weeks' account of his life with Bulger and Flemmi was published in 2006 and shot up the bestsellers' list.
[edit] References
[edit] Resources
- Weeks, Kevin (with the assistance of Phyllis Karas). Brutal; The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob.
- Shea, John. Rat Bastards; The Story of South Boston's Most Honorable Irish Mobster. ISBN 0-06-083716-0 (Hardcover), ISBN 0-06-083717-9 (Paperback)
