Whitey Bulger’s indirect hits

We all knew that a majority of the deaths on our list had everything to do with the drug trade in South Boston throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. At the vigil, the church was packed; the line of neighbors holding candles went out the back door of the Gate of Heaven Church. Mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends looked stunned as they approached the altar and said names that a lot of us had not heard mentioned in years. Who knew that we could gather in Southie to remember the names that the gangsters would rather we forget? Simply lighting a candle and naming your dead felt like an act of sedition in a town bred on silence enforced by Whitey Bulger’s organization. On that night the code of silence began to crack.

When Bulger is arraigned today for allegedly killing 19 people, the names of Southie’s young victims of the drug trade won’t be mentioned. We will not hear the names of those who died from overdoses, or the names of drug dealers who were found dead for not paying a cut to Whitey’s organization. We will not hear of the young people who got caught up in organized criminal operations, bank robberies, and truck hijackings.

People like my brother Frankie, a four-time Golden Glove champion boxer with so much promise, who died while involved in an armored car heist. Or my brother Kevin, who was found hanging in his prison cell. Nor will we hear of those maimed in a culture of drugs and silence - such as my sister Kathy, paralyzed and brain-damaged after being thrown off a roof during a fight over drugs.

We won’t hear about those who never got justice because of the code of silence we were raised on by Whitey’s organization. All of these dead shall remain nameless in the prosecution of Bulger, as they were not direct hits.