Richard Gaines, then a rising star at the Boston Phoenix, was putting the final touches on his story about the incoming Senate president when a colleague at the paper delivered a chilling message.
It came from a television reporter with mob ties, who said he was speaking for James “Whitey’’ Bulger: “Don’t mention [Whitey] in the story if you know what’s good for you.’’
“It is one of those moments that is seared in your memory,’’ said Gaines, who was known at the time for fearless reporting that often drove the news agenda on Beacon Hill.
The threat worked. Gaines and his editors dropped the reference to the Boston mobster from the 1978 profile of William M. Bulger.
“It was a cost-benefit analysis,’’ Gaines, now a reporter with Gloucester Daily Times, recalled late last month, on the same day Whitey Bulger returned to Boston after 16 years to be arraigned.
The potential significance of that decision more than three decades ago was not fully realized until days later, when the television reporter Jack Kelly and four notorious underworld characters were wiped out in the Blackfriars nightclub massacre – gunned down while playing backgammon in the club’s basement after hours.
Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.