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"If they found him in Sicily, they would make a new dish called canary cacciatore out of him," Martorano said.
Is it Whitey or just a look-alike? FBI wants to know
Images in Italy were shot by DEA agent
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | September 15, 2007
A federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent on vacation in the Sicilian resort of Taormina shot video in April of a couple who might have been fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, according to law enforcement officials.
But sources familiar with the search for Bulger said yesterday that the DEA agent did not confront the couple or immediately notify Italian authorities. Instead, they said, he waited until he returned from vacation about a week later to turn the video over to another DEA agent in Boston.
It was nearly a month after the April 10 sighting before investigators from the DEA, FBI, and Massachusetts State Police traveled to Italy to work with Italian police, who searched hotels, marinas, bars, and ferries in Sicily to try to find and identify the couple.
Yesterday, the FBI posted a portion of the video and still photos from the clip on its website, fbi.gov, and launched a media blitz in Italy and throughout Europe, saying it wanted to draw international atten tion to Bulger, 78, one of its 10 Most Wanted, and Greig, 56, who is believed to be traveling with him.
Neither the FBI nor the DEA would comment yesterday on the circumstances of how the video was shot or even acknowledge it was shot by a DEA agent.
Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, said investigators got mixed reviews on whether the man in the video was Bulger when they showed the video to former associates of the gangster and investigators who had tracked him for years.
A facial recognition analysis was conducted, but proved inconclusive, according to a statement issued by the office of US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan.
Bamford urged anyone who visited Italy during March, April, and May and either saw or had contact with the couple shown in the video to call the FBI.
"This could be Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Iowa on vacation in Sicily for all we know, and that's why we're asking for help," he said. "We're all at a dead end here, and it's time to put the video and pictures out to the public."
If it is Bulger, it would be the first confirmed sighting of the South Boston gangster since he was spotted in September 2002 strolling alone down a busy street near Piccadilly Circus in London, according to the FBI.
Bulger, a longtime FBI informant, was warned to flee just before his January 1995 federal racketeering indictment in Boston by his former handler, retired FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. Bulger has eluded authorities ever since, despite a worldwide manhunt. In the years since he fled, he has been charged with 19 homicides. The FBI is offering a $1 million reward for information that leads to his capture.
Anthony Pettigrew, a spokesman for the DEA in Boston, would not discuss any aspect of how the video was shot or passed on to the FBI, referring all calls to the bureau. Bamford declined to identify the source of the video or discuss the delay in notifying the FBI.
"My primary goal is to get the public to this website, to look at this video, and see if they can help us identify these people," he said.
But three sources familiar with the investigation said the DEA agent was on vacation with his wife and children when he spotted the couple and filmed them because he thought they resembled Bulger and Greig.
"When you have suspicions, but you're not sure, you're cautious," said one of the sources, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the agent was in a foreign country where he had no authority to stop the pair.
Retired Massachusetts State Police Colonel Thomas J. Foley, who spearheaded the Bulger probe that led to the murder charges against him, said the DEA agent was familiar with Bulger only from wanted photos and had not been sure if he was looking at just another look-alike.
"It was the right way to handle it, and it was a safe way to handle it," Foley said, adding, "You can't just go out and start ripping people off the street."
Foley, who saw the video, said, "It's definitely a good likeness."
But, several of Bulger's former associates disagreed.
Former Winter Hill gang leader Howard T. Winter, who interceded in a gang war to save Bulger's life in the 1970s, said that Bulger, a physical fitness buff, would not let himself get as heavy as the man on the video.
"It's definitely not him," he said in a telephone interview. "The whole facial structure is different."
Patrick Nee, a longtime associate of Bulger's from South Boston, said, "There's a facial resemblance, but the guy didn't look miserable enough to be Whitey."
Former Winter Hill gang member James Martorano, whose hit man brother implicated Bulger in numerous slayings, said the white-haired man in the video "has more hair on his head than Whitey had 20 years ago."
He was also skeptical that Bulger, who was touted by the FBI as an invaluable informant against the New England Mafia, could be hiding in Sicily, the birthplace of La Cosa Nostra. "If they found him in Sicily, they would make a new dish called canary cacciatore out of him," Martorano said.
But Robert Long, a retired State Police detective lieutenant who chased Bulger every day for a year during a 1980 surveillance operation, said some of the movements by the man in the Sicily video appeared to be vintage Bulger, including a moment when he looked directly at the camera.
"Whoever that person was looked at the camera like they knew they might be looking at him," said Long, adding, "It certainly appears to be one of the most interesting sightings they've had to date."
But Charles "Chip" Fleming, a retired Boston detective who worked on the Bulger task force and saw Bulger a couple of days before he skipped town in December 1994, said, "It's just not him, I can tell by the way he walks."
Shelley Murphy can be reached at shmurphy@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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