Jurors View Whitey Bulger's FBI Informant Card
BOSTON (CBS) - James "Whitey" Bulger has steadfastly maintained he was never a government informant, but today the jury in his federal trial saw his FBI informant card. Prosecutors say that is just one piece of evidence that will prove Bulger and some of friends worked with investigators for years.
Steve Davis, whose sister is one of Bulger's alleged victims, called it "soothing, real soothing" to finally view written evidence of Bulger's cooperation.
Jurors took a long look at the small index card that once lived deep in the FBI files.
James J. Bulger was referred to by a secret code: BS1544-OC. He was not referred to by his never his name so that his status as a top echelon informant would always be hidden.
According to Special Agent James Marra, who testified as an investigator with the US Department of Justice, calling Bulger "top echelon" meant "he'd be considered to be a very valuable source of information".
Also Friday, jurors got a look at some new surveillance photos of Bulger associates taken by Brookline police in the 1980s.
They show meetings with Winter Hill leaders George Kaufman, Steve Flemmi, Frank Salemme, and others. But as the defense pointed out to the jury none of them showed Whitey Bulger.
Before that, there was chilling testimony from Frank Capizzi, who says he survived a Winter Hill-ordered attack in 1973 that was meant to kill a friend of his, Al Notorangeli.
Capizzi, described the moment his car was surrounded by gunfire out of nowhere.
"A firing squad hit us," he said. "Multiply that by about a hundred. For two and a half minutes about a hundred slugs hit the automobile, and it imploded."
To escape what he felt was the wrath of Bulger and associates, Capizzi moved to Arizona and used aliases.
"My wife and children were living in the throat of the dragon for 40 years without any help from anyone," he said
Bulger, typically, made almost no eye contact with anyone testifying against him today.
