Ex-Partner: This Is How Bulger Murdered His Stepdaughter...

Says Whitey Bulger strangled her, then buried body in basement
By Ruth Brown,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 22, 2013 3:43 PM CDT
Ex-Partner: This is How Bulger Murdered His Stepdaughter...
This courtroom sketch depicts Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, upper right, on the witness stand as defendant James "Whitey" Bulger listens, seated middle.   (AP Photo/Jane Flavell Collins)

Testifying in court today, Whitey Bulger's alleged former partner-in-crime gave a graphic account of how he says Bulger murdered his longtime girlfriend's daughter. According to Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, Deborah Hussey, who was 26 when she died in 1985, "had become a problem"—taking drugs, hanging out in a bar where they did their business, and stealing $800 from a bookmaker. So Bulger brought her to his home, "grabbed her by the throat and started strangling her," Flemmi alleged, per the Boston Globe. "It didn’t take long," he added. "She was a very fragile woman."

Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, says Bulger then took a nap while he and another person removed Hussey's clothes and teeth to make her harder to identify, then dug a hole in the basement and buried the body there, Reuters reports. Flemmi claimed he was more of a father to Hussey than Bulger, and that she called him "Daddy"—but also admitted to having oral sex with her twice, the Globe reports. He rejected the defense's accusations that he was the one who strangled her. Flemmi also described the murder of Arthur "Bucky" Barrett, a thief and safecracker he says Bulger shot and buried in the basement; and John McIntyre, an informant he alleges Bulger strangled with rope, then shot when the rope was too thick. (More Whitey Bulger stories.)

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