Post by earl on Oct 17, 2008 15:14:41 GMT
Galway-born Pat Nee hung out with gang boss 'Whitey Bulger'. His CV runs from extortion, to gun running, to attempted murder. Gareth Murphy caught up with the career criminal whose life is to be revealed in a TG4 documentary.
PAT NEE'S mother always said that her greatest regret was not throwing him off the back of the ferry as they crossed the Atlantic in 1952. It would have, Julia Nee reminded Pat throughout his adult life, saved her much heartache over the years.
While they say there is no love like a mother's love, Pat Nee did his best to test that. Soon after the Nee family emigrated from Rosmuc, in Galway, to begin a new life in south Boston, Massachusetts, Nee began to run with the area's vicious Irish gangs.
An early teenage life of crime was interrupted by a six-year stint in the Marine Corps. After seeing out his time, he returned to Boston in 1966 and soon fell back into old ways. Having first hung with the Mullen gang in his early teenage years, he graduated to become a seasoned criminal, later forming an uneasy alliance with James 'Whitey' Bulger, the notorious Irish-American mob boss, who is still on the FBI's 10 most wanted list, with a $2million (€1.4million) bounty on his head.
Nee's story and his own criminal activities -- largely consisting of extortion, armed robbery and gun running for the IRA -- are the subject of the next episode of Mobs Mheiricea, TG4's acclaimed six-part series, which tells the story of the Irish Mob in the US over the last century.
Now 65, Nee has retired from the criminal life, a decision made for him after he was sentenced to 37 years for his part in an attempted armed robbery in Abington, Massachusetts, in January 1990. Released after serving eight years and in the autumn of his life, Nee decided to go straight.
Frank and direct, Nee discusses his criminal history with remarkable candour. Although reluctant to lay blame for his past at anyone's door but his own, Nee says that the murder of his younger brother, Peter, in 1969 had a profound impact.
"I ain't looking for no sympathy or anything like that," he says in his thick south Boston accent, all traces of Galway lilt long since eradicated. "But when Peter was murdered, that changed pretty much everything.
"I had already decided that work didn't pay enough, so I had gone back to being a thief. But my brother was different. He'd survived two tours in Vietnam, only to be shot a couple of months after he got home over something stupid. It wasn't right."
By his own admission, "something snapped" in Nee the night he went with his father to identify his brother's body in the morgue. Discovering that a fellow Vietnam veteran, Kevin Daley, was responsible for the killing, Nee decided to exact his own form of revenge. Remarkably, his family, including his mother, were all in agreement, intent on seeing that Daley was punished.
"My mother was a tough old lady and said that she wanted 'the situation taken care of'. I was never in any doubt as to what she meant so I started hunting the guy down. I watched him for seven months before I finally got him. I wanted to pick a spot and time where I could get him."
That chance came on November 10, 1969, a date Nee clearly remembers because it was the 194th anniversary of the founding of the Marines -- a day celebrated by all those who have served in the Corps.
"He showed up at a Marines party in Boston and I decided that that was the night. I had a guy there who was filling me in on how drunk he was getting. As soon as he left to drive home, I got moving."
With two friends in a stolen car, Nee picked up a shotgun and went to Daley's house to await his arrival.
"He pulled up in the alleyway in his Volkswagen and I crept up. When he got out and turned to go into the house, I was right there in his face. And -- please excuse the vulgarity -- but I said to my brother's killer: 'Now it's your turn, you c***sucker'. I started shooting him there and then. I shot him five times, kicked his teeth out and spat on him. And I left. He lived."
But you intended to kill him?
"You bet your ass I wanted to kill him. I shot him five times -- over the heart, under the heart ... I blew out his right lung and put a couple in his stomach. I spat on him, which I wouldn't do now," he says, before apologising for his behaviour.
Oddly, Nee seems to have more remorse for the fact that he spat on his brother's killer rather than the actual attempted murder. Despite the ferocity of the attack, Daley survived after crawling into a doorway and ringing apartment bells.
Since the critically injured Daley gave the police a 'dying declaration' as to the identity of his assailant, Nee was quickly arrested. Held on attempted murder charges, it was two months before Nee was brought to court. However, pressure was exerted on Daley and he refused to testify that Nee was at the scene.
"You could say he was persuaded to change his story," he chuckles. "Even then, the judge didn't want to let me go. But he had to. Anyway, Daley's trial was coming up for shooting my brother."
Although he'd be the first person the Boston police would arrest should anything happen to Daley, Nee wasn't finished yet. He still harboured ambitions of revenge.
"When Daley went on trial for my brother's killing, I wouldn't let anyone testify against him. I couldn't get him in jail so I wanted him on the streets. In the end, he pleaded out to a manslaughter beef. He did six months.
"When he got out, he disappeared. I later understood that he moved to Florida.
"I actually bumped into him recently and we were civil to each other. I don't want to get him anymore. Too much has happened since then and there's been too much killing."
Nee says his distaste for bloodshed was hastened by his association with James 'Whitey' Bulger. One of the more colourful and violent characters in Boston Mob lore, Bulger was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, ruling much of New England for almost two decades before he was indicted by the Department of Justice and the FBI. In December 1994, just before he was due to be arrested, Bulger fled Boston and remains at large.
"Whitey was a nasty piece of work. Very nasty. He destroyed the Irish in Boston. After the war between the Mullens and the Killeens [the two major crime families in Boston in the 1960s], Whitey rose up quickly through the ranks. But he was very good at dividing and conquering people.
"When he took over what was left of the Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s, it all went downhill from there. He was completely ruthless and he just didn't care who got in the way."
Several years ago, rumours abounded that Bulger was hiding out in Ireland, largely due to the fact that he once spent time living outside Galway.
"I don't think he's in Ireland," says Nee. "With a $2m bounty on his head, local criminals and the gardai would have been very interested in him. Anyway, it's not easy hiding out in Ireland.
People are too nosy in the country for him to hide out there and I can't see him in Dublin. But someone's helping him, that's for sure. He's been on the run for 14 years. It's not an easy thing to do -- you need lots of help and money. I still think he's alive, though. His partner's sister lives next-door to us and she's never seemed all that concerned about Theresa's welfare.
"When he gets too old or too sick, I think Whitey will come back to the old neighbourhood. It wouldn't surprise me if he got someone close to him to turn him in. That way, his family would get the $2m and he'd have the last laugh on the federal government."
Nee says that he began to distance himself from Bulger after the crime lord revealed himself as an FBI informant.
"He told me one day that he was an informant. I don't know why he told me, but I got a real sick feeling inside. I couldn't show any emotion but I remember thinking: 'you son of a b****, you destroyed the Irish in Boston'."
Largely cutting his ties with Bulger, Nee found an outlet in the IRA's struggle in Northern Ireland. Desperate to help, Nee decided to help smuggle arms to the North.
"We really started in the mid 1970s getting arms for the guys in Ireland. I had really gotten interested with the 1969 civil rights struggle. My parents and grandparents were strongly involved with the cause. After I met the guys from Ireland, we became friends and part of my involvement was built on friendship and part of it was built on my desire to see the Brits out."
Nee was involved in several armed shipments being smuggled from the US to Ireland, culminating in the Valhalla case in 1984. Seven tons of assault weapons, intended for the IRA, were stowed on a fishing trawler out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Intercepted by the Irish Navy and Garda Siochana, the Valhalla's crew was arrested.
Nee was forced to go on the run for 18 months. After being arrested in 1987 and serving 18 months for his part in the Valhalla case, Nee decided to up the ante when it came to smuggling for the IRA. Ultimately, this led to Nee's downfall, as he was caught in advance of an armoured car robbery in Abington, Massachusetts, in 1990.
Released in 1998, Nee worked as a construction labourer. These days, he's largely retired, working part-time as a contractor for a demolitions company. With plenty of free time on his hands, he's now making a docu-drama on south Boston.
He's aggrieved that the realities of the Mob life are rarely truly depicted. Jack Nicholson's character, Frank Costello, in the Academy Award-winning movie, The Departed, was said to be based on Whitey Bulger, but Nee says it doesn't bear any resemblance to him.
When asked if he has any regrets, Nee is candid. "I wish I'd have killed Whitey Bulger. I regret not doing that when I had the chance. Are you asking do I have a conscience? No, I don't. I got rid of that a long time ago. Looking at my life now, I don't see what I could change.
"Everyone has moments of reflection. The only things I would have done differently are killing Whitey and I would have stayed out of prison so I would have had more time with my kids. But apart from that, nothing."
So do you miss the old days?
"I miss the rush, the buzz, the money, the lifestyle. There were times when we were doing armed robberies -- and we never hurt any of the guards -- that we didn't get anything. That didn't bother me. I enjoyed the rush, being out there in the mix.
"Nowadays I give talks to kids in schools and I tell them that if they want to be a criminal, they should get a college education and steal with a pen. There is no future in crime, you will always get caught and have to do the time."
Mobs Mheiricea, Thursday 23 October, TG4, 10pm
PAT NEE'S mother always said that her greatest regret was not throwing him off the back of the ferry as they crossed the Atlantic in 1952. It would have, Julia Nee reminded Pat throughout his adult life, saved her much heartache over the years.
While they say there is no love like a mother's love, Pat Nee did his best to test that. Soon after the Nee family emigrated from Rosmuc, in Galway, to begin a new life in south Boston, Massachusetts, Nee began to run with the area's vicious Irish gangs.
An early teenage life of crime was interrupted by a six-year stint in the Marine Corps. After seeing out his time, he returned to Boston in 1966 and soon fell back into old ways. Having first hung with the Mullen gang in his early teenage years, he graduated to become a seasoned criminal, later forming an uneasy alliance with James 'Whitey' Bulger, the notorious Irish-American mob boss, who is still on the FBI's 10 most wanted list, with a $2million (€1.4million) bounty on his head.
Nee's story and his own criminal activities -- largely consisting of extortion, armed robbery and gun running for the IRA -- are the subject of the next episode of Mobs Mheiricea, TG4's acclaimed six-part series, which tells the story of the Irish Mob in the US over the last century.
Now 65, Nee has retired from the criminal life, a decision made for him after he was sentenced to 37 years for his part in an attempted armed robbery in Abington, Massachusetts, in January 1990. Released after serving eight years and in the autumn of his life, Nee decided to go straight.
Frank and direct, Nee discusses his criminal history with remarkable candour. Although reluctant to lay blame for his past at anyone's door but his own, Nee says that the murder of his younger brother, Peter, in 1969 had a profound impact.
"I ain't looking for no sympathy or anything like that," he says in his thick south Boston accent, all traces of Galway lilt long since eradicated. "But when Peter was murdered, that changed pretty much everything.
"I had already decided that work didn't pay enough, so I had gone back to being a thief. But my brother was different. He'd survived two tours in Vietnam, only to be shot a couple of months after he got home over something stupid. It wasn't right."
By his own admission, "something snapped" in Nee the night he went with his father to identify his brother's body in the morgue. Discovering that a fellow Vietnam veteran, Kevin Daley, was responsible for the killing, Nee decided to exact his own form of revenge. Remarkably, his family, including his mother, were all in agreement, intent on seeing that Daley was punished.
"My mother was a tough old lady and said that she wanted 'the situation taken care of'. I was never in any doubt as to what she meant so I started hunting the guy down. I watched him for seven months before I finally got him. I wanted to pick a spot and time where I could get him."
That chance came on November 10, 1969, a date Nee clearly remembers because it was the 194th anniversary of the founding of the Marines -- a day celebrated by all those who have served in the Corps.
"He showed up at a Marines party in Boston and I decided that that was the night. I had a guy there who was filling me in on how drunk he was getting. As soon as he left to drive home, I got moving."
With two friends in a stolen car, Nee picked up a shotgun and went to Daley's house to await his arrival.
"He pulled up in the alleyway in his Volkswagen and I crept up. When he got out and turned to go into the house, I was right there in his face. And -- please excuse the vulgarity -- but I said to my brother's killer: 'Now it's your turn, you c***sucker'. I started shooting him there and then. I shot him five times, kicked his teeth out and spat on him. And I left. He lived."
But you intended to kill him?
"You bet your ass I wanted to kill him. I shot him five times -- over the heart, under the heart ... I blew out his right lung and put a couple in his stomach. I spat on him, which I wouldn't do now," he says, before apologising for his behaviour.
Oddly, Nee seems to have more remorse for the fact that he spat on his brother's killer rather than the actual attempted murder. Despite the ferocity of the attack, Daley survived after crawling into a doorway and ringing apartment bells.
Since the critically injured Daley gave the police a 'dying declaration' as to the identity of his assailant, Nee was quickly arrested. Held on attempted murder charges, it was two months before Nee was brought to court. However, pressure was exerted on Daley and he refused to testify that Nee was at the scene.
"You could say he was persuaded to change his story," he chuckles. "Even then, the judge didn't want to let me go. But he had to. Anyway, Daley's trial was coming up for shooting my brother."
Although he'd be the first person the Boston police would arrest should anything happen to Daley, Nee wasn't finished yet. He still harboured ambitions of revenge.
"When Daley went on trial for my brother's killing, I wouldn't let anyone testify against him. I couldn't get him in jail so I wanted him on the streets. In the end, he pleaded out to a manslaughter beef. He did six months.
"When he got out, he disappeared. I later understood that he moved to Florida.
"I actually bumped into him recently and we were civil to each other. I don't want to get him anymore. Too much has happened since then and there's been too much killing."
Nee says his distaste for bloodshed was hastened by his association with James 'Whitey' Bulger. One of the more colourful and violent characters in Boston Mob lore, Bulger was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, ruling much of New England for almost two decades before he was indicted by the Department of Justice and the FBI. In December 1994, just before he was due to be arrested, Bulger fled Boston and remains at large.
"Whitey was a nasty piece of work. Very nasty. He destroyed the Irish in Boston. After the war between the Mullens and the Killeens [the two major crime families in Boston in the 1960s], Whitey rose up quickly through the ranks. But he was very good at dividing and conquering people.
"When he took over what was left of the Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s, it all went downhill from there. He was completely ruthless and he just didn't care who got in the way."
Several years ago, rumours abounded that Bulger was hiding out in Ireland, largely due to the fact that he once spent time living outside Galway.
"I don't think he's in Ireland," says Nee. "With a $2m bounty on his head, local criminals and the gardai would have been very interested in him. Anyway, it's not easy hiding out in Ireland.
People are too nosy in the country for him to hide out there and I can't see him in Dublin. But someone's helping him, that's for sure. He's been on the run for 14 years. It's not an easy thing to do -- you need lots of help and money. I still think he's alive, though. His partner's sister lives next-door to us and she's never seemed all that concerned about Theresa's welfare.
"When he gets too old or too sick, I think Whitey will come back to the old neighbourhood. It wouldn't surprise me if he got someone close to him to turn him in. That way, his family would get the $2m and he'd have the last laugh on the federal government."
Nee says that he began to distance himself from Bulger after the crime lord revealed himself as an FBI informant.
"He told me one day that he was an informant. I don't know why he told me, but I got a real sick feeling inside. I couldn't show any emotion but I remember thinking: 'you son of a b****, you destroyed the Irish in Boston'."
Largely cutting his ties with Bulger, Nee found an outlet in the IRA's struggle in Northern Ireland. Desperate to help, Nee decided to help smuggle arms to the North.
"We really started in the mid 1970s getting arms for the guys in Ireland. I had really gotten interested with the 1969 civil rights struggle. My parents and grandparents were strongly involved with the cause. After I met the guys from Ireland, we became friends and part of my involvement was built on friendship and part of it was built on my desire to see the Brits out."
Nee was involved in several armed shipments being smuggled from the US to Ireland, culminating in the Valhalla case in 1984. Seven tons of assault weapons, intended for the IRA, were stowed on a fishing trawler out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Intercepted by the Irish Navy and Garda Siochana, the Valhalla's crew was arrested.
Nee was forced to go on the run for 18 months. After being arrested in 1987 and serving 18 months for his part in the Valhalla case, Nee decided to up the ante when it came to smuggling for the IRA. Ultimately, this led to Nee's downfall, as he was caught in advance of an armoured car robbery in Abington, Massachusetts, in 1990.
Released in 1998, Nee worked as a construction labourer. These days, he's largely retired, working part-time as a contractor for a demolitions company. With plenty of free time on his hands, he's now making a docu-drama on south Boston.
He's aggrieved that the realities of the Mob life are rarely truly depicted. Jack Nicholson's character, Frank Costello, in the Academy Award-winning movie, The Departed, was said to be based on Whitey Bulger, but Nee says it doesn't bear any resemblance to him.
When asked if he has any regrets, Nee is candid. "I wish I'd have killed Whitey Bulger. I regret not doing that when I had the chance. Are you asking do I have a conscience? No, I don't. I got rid of that a long time ago. Looking at my life now, I don't see what I could change.
"Everyone has moments of reflection. The only things I would have done differently are killing Whitey and I would have stayed out of prison so I would have had more time with my kids. But apart from that, nothing."
So do you miss the old days?
"I miss the rush, the buzz, the money, the lifestyle. There were times when we were doing armed robberies -- and we never hurt any of the guards -- that we didn't get anything. That didn't bother me. I enjoyed the rush, being out there in the mix.
"Nowadays I give talks to kids in schools and I tell them that if they want to be a criminal, they should get a college education and steal with a pen. There is no future in crime, you will always get caught and have to do the time."
Mobs Mheiricea, Thursday 23 October, TG4, 10pm