Whitey Bulger and Kevin Weeks (right) in an undated surveillance photo.
Credit: US Attorney’s office
Kevin Weeks said he was upstairs in a South Boston home when he heard a thud, looked downstairs and saw James “Whitey” Bulger on top of a woman, choking her for about four minutes until her lips turned blue and her eyes rolled back into her head.
The graphic testimony was given as Weeks, 57, answered questions Tuesday for a second day on the witness stand. Weeks was a member of the Winter Hill Gang, which Bulger, 83, is accused of leading.
As Bulger sat at a table surrounded by his lawyers, Weeks recounted the murders that he said he saw Bulger commit, including the strangling death of Deborah Hussey.
Hussey was fellow gang member Stephen Flemmi’s step-daughter.
Weeks said that she brought down to the basement of the East Third Street home when Flemmi discovered she wasn’t dead. He put a rope around her neck and twisted a stick around it until she finally died.
“After that it was basically the same routine. Her teeth were pulled and she was put in a hole,” Weeks said.
That same routine was carried out twice before, Weeks testified, on two men who had previously been buried in the basement. Hussey was buried partially on top of one of the men Bulger allegedly previously killed and buried.
“We were kinda running out of room down there,” Weeks said.
Weeks also recounted several other murders that he said he saw Bulger commit or that he said Bulger told him he committed.
Weeks was also questioned about the tip from a corrupt FBI agent that indictments were imminent and that led Bulger to flee the state. He remained a fugitive for 16 years until his arrest in Santa Moncia in 2011.
Bulger’s lawyer J. W. Carney Jr., began his cross examination of Weeks at about 10:30 a.m. and spent the first half hour quizzing Weeks not on the murders, but on Bulger’s informant status. Under cross examination, Weeks said Bulger paid for information from authorities and that Bulger hated informants.
“We killed people for being informants,” Weeks said.
Bulger’s lawyers have repeatedly denied that he was a FBI informant.
