William M. Bulger smiled as his older brother walked into the courtroom after 16 years as a fugitive, and he got a smile back from the grandfatherly version of the wiry rebel he grew up with in a $29-a-month apartment in the Old Harbor projects in South Boston.
Boston’s most notorious gangster, a bearded James “Whitey’’ Bulger, offered a simple greeting. “Hello,’’ he mouthed, nodding slightly to the former president of the Massachusetts Senate, who sat in the second row.
The Bulger brothers — once feared and powerful forces who reigned over their respective fields of politics and organized crime — were reunited yesterday, just blocks from where they grew up.
William, a 77-year-old lawyer, has never condemned Whitey, his 81-year-old brother, whose decades of mayhem put him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Instead, William has said that he felt no obligation to help the authorities find Whitey. And in that context, William’s appearance in the courtroom yesterday was not a surprise. One friend said it was an example of the fierce loyalty of their old Irish-American neighborhood.
Brian Kelly, a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office, said Bulger was a danger to the community, might try to threaten witnesses and should be detained.
Prosecutors also challenged Bulger's request for a court-appointed lawyer, pointing to the stash of money found in his apartment. Kelly also suggested that Bulger's brother William, a former president of the Massachusetts state Senate, could help him financially.
William Bulger sat in the courtroom during the proceedings; he smiled slightly when James Bulger, dressed in a white hooded shirt and Levis, nodded toward him but left afterward without comment.
Bulger voluntarily consented to detention; he and Greig are to file financial statements Monday.
Bulger appeared relaxed, but Greig at times seemed uneasy, her voice barely audible as she answered questions from Magistrate Judge Jennifer Boal. A bail hearing for her is set Thursday.
Thomas Duffy, a retired state police major who worked on the Bulger case for more than a decade - before and after he fled - came to court Friday to see the case through.
"It's a day I've waited for for a long time," Duffy said. "He's where he belongs. He's going to be prosecuted. He belongs in custody."
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