Emily McIntyre is suing the FBI for allegedly setting up her son to be killed as an informer on IRA gun-running. She talks to Seán O'Driscoll in Boston
'Can you imagine what it was like to be me? To try to tell the world that your son was killed by the brother of one of the most powerful politicians in the state, that it was done in co-operation with the FBI, that they wanted to stop the truth about a shipment to the IRA? Can you imagine what that is like?"
Emily McIntyre is sitting in the kitchen of her Quincy, Massachusetts home sipping a cup of tea, waiting for a family visit. She refuses to listen to the local news, which is gripped by her $50 million (€39.5 million) lawsuit against the FBI for its part in the killing of her son, John.
In other courts, federal prosecutors have admitted that a corrupt FBI agent set up the killing but the agency has put up an intense fight against Emily McIntyre's case, fearing an avalanche of lawsuits from other victims.
John McIntyre, a Vietnam veteran, was a crew member of the Valhalla gun-running ship which passed on seven tonnes of guns to the IRA in 1984. The shipment was organised by the notorious Whitey Bulger crime gang in south Boston and the guns and explosives were picked up off the Co Kerry coast by the Marita Ann, which was skippered by IRA leaders and future Sinn Féin TD for Kerry North, Martin Ferris.
The Naval Service caught the ship and Ferris was jailed for 10 years.
JOHN MCINTYRE HAD co-operated with the FBI, hoping to lessen his sentence and escape the grip of Bulger, who enjoyed killing and boasted of the sexual kick he got from torturing victims. Unknown to McIntyre, FBI agent John Connolly had been working for the Bulger gang, and tipped them off that a Valhalla crew member was a government informant.
For the first time, details of McIntyre's death were outlined in a Boston courtroom last week.
Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, Bulger's second in command, who is serving life imprisonment for the McIntyre murder and nine others, outlined how Bulger had lured McIntyre to a safe house. Bulger tried to strangle McIntyre with a boat rope as a suitable punishment for the capture of the Marita Ann. He wasn't strong enough to kill McIntyre and, out of breath, asked McIntyre if he wanted a bullet to the head.
McIntyre replied "Yes, please," and was shot by both Bulger and Flemmi.
Bulger lackey Kevin Weeks told the court that he helped dump the body in a wasteland along with other Bulger victims.
FBI agent Connolly is now serving 10 years in prison for informing Bulger in 1995 that the FBI were finally about to crack down on his criminal empire. Bulger fled and has never been seen since, leading to one of the biggest manhunts in the history of the US.
Bulger's brother, Billy, meanwhile, continued his successful career as president of the Massachusetts Senate before becoming president of the University of Massachusetts. He resigned in 2003 under enormous political pressure when he pleaded the Fifth Amendment at a Congressional hearing into FBI co-operation with his brother.
Emily McIntyre sighs deeply as she recounts the tale in her measured tones, still touched with a German accent despite her many years in the US. She is a different woman from when I last interviewed her in March, 2004, when she had just launched her lawsuit. Then, she was bright, articulate and energetic. Now that the case is being heard, and crime reporters and Hollywood scriptwriters have rushed to the court, she seems resigned and forgetful. She retains her formality and politeness, even for Whitey Bulger, to whom she refers as "Mr Bulger".
"This case is so difficult because Mr Bulger is out in Europe or somewhere and it is unlikely that he will ever be located," she says.
SHE CANNOT BRING herself to describe what she has heard about the killing of her son, an act that still haunts her dreams at night, when her son comes to her, telling her that he has lost his hands and feet.
She talks of "Mr Bulger and his friend, Stephen Flemmi, who was the other . . ." her voice trails off before she finally adds: "the other kidnapper of my son".
Although she has avoided Flemmi's gruesome testimony, she realises she will have to return to court soon. "It's very difficult emotionally. I just have to go through with it. I cannot go around it but I just have to prepare myself. I'm glad I am not reading the details of the case, I couldn't stomach it," she says.
She grew up in Munich and worked in a bakery during the second World War. Her job included delivering bread to Jewish slave labour camps and munitions factories.
"It was appalling," she says. "These adult women barely able to stand, so, so emaciated. It taught me that war is a stupid, stupid lie." She fell in love with an Irish-American serviceman and moved with him to the US.
"When I came to America, I thought I was leaving all the madness behind. Here was a court that had rules of law and the police there to administer justice. I could never, ever have imagined that the police could be criminals."
Like his late father, John McIntyre joined the military, serving in bombing co-ordinates during the Vietnam war from a command post in Europe.
'I think that affected him very deeply," she said. "He wanted to do the right thing but realised that he was helping to cause great destruction in Vietnam." He moved on to soft drugs when he came back home and seemed to drop out of society. He took part-time work as a fisherman and began to drift into Irish republicanism and Irish organised crime.
Emily describes her son's decision to ship guns for the IRA as "one dumb choice".
"It was a real shock to me," she says. "From the time he disappeared, I had to learn all about the IRA, who they were, what they wanted and then about Mr Bulger and all his people." She despises, she says, the Bulger hero worship practised in south Boston's Irish neighbourhoods where some still view Bulger as a folk legend.
"I haven't been there in many years because of such ridiculous beliefs. If they knew what he had done, if they knew how he made people suffer, they would not say such things," she says.
None of that will stop the huge media frenzy surrounding the Bulger story. In March alone, four new books came out about the Bulger gang, three of them written by members of the gang. One was written by Kevin Weeks, who described the disposal of McIntyre's body; another was written by Patrick Nee, a Bulger gang member and former IRA sympathiser who described seeing McIntyre's body and the blood on the floor.
ON THE BIG screen, the Bulger story is one of the hottest stories this year. Martin Scorsese's movie, The Departed, based on the Bulger/Connolly story, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg, is in post-production. The Showtime TV network is launching a series, Brotherhood, this summer, starring Fionnula Flanagan, Sylvester Stallone and a few Sopranos actors, that is based on the Billy and Whitey Bulger story.
Wahlberg hopes to make his own movie on the life of Bulger gang member and there are advanced plans for a movie on the powerful Bulger crime book, Black Mass.
Emily McIntyre is sickened by the Bulger gang's ability to cash in on the killings.
"They don't want to admit it, especially Patrick Nee. He is such a . . . He has used such language about my son's death that I cannot allow myself to even think about it . . ." Her voice trails off and begins to quiver.
I tell her it's best not to think about it.
"Well, that's easily said but when you're a mother, you cannot help but think about it." She takes another sip of tea.
"You know something - this is never really going to end. Mr Bulger was supposed to be in London in 2002 but the FBI didn't really want to check it out. They don't want him caught because he knows too much about too many things. Finding him would be a disaster. They want to keep this going forever."