Feds: Crime boss' girlfriend was a willing participant, shouldn't be let out on bail

BOSTON - An FBI agent yesterday portrayed Catherine Greig, the longtime girlfriend of former Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger, as a willing companion who changed her identity, made clandestine phone calls and moved from place to place during their years on the run together.

The testimony came during a bail hearing for Greig, 60, who was apprehended with Bulger last month in Santa Monica, Calif., more than 16 years after Bulger fled Boston. Greig's attorney has asked that she be released on bail while awaiting trial, but prosecutors want her to remain behind bars.

Bulger, now 81, the former leader of the notorious Winter Hill Gang, was one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives. He is charged in a racketeering indictment with participating in 19 murders. Greig is charged with harboring a fugitive.

During detailed testimony yesterday, FBI Special Agent Michael Carazza portrayed Greig as a woman who fled Boston willingly with Bulger and then became an active participant in his quest to elude authorities.

Responding to questions from Assistant U.S. Attorney James Herbert, Carazza said that Greig used fake identities to buy prescription drugs for Bulger and herself, and was seen handing him prepaid phone cards while he made calls from a pay phone at a Walmart in Louisiana.

Carazza said Bulger's former top lieutenant, Kevin Weeks, told authorities that Bulger initially fled Boston in late 1994 with another longtime girlfriend, Teresa Stanley, but returned in early 1995 to drop her off and pick up Greig. Carazza said Greig's twin sister, Margaret McCusker, drove Greig to a park in South Boston, where she was picked up by Weeks, who brought her to another park, where Bulger was waiting.

McCusker has offered to help get her sister released on bail by putting up her Boston home as collateral.

Carazza said Bulger and Greig used false identities as fugitives. When they were captured in California, authorities found that the couple had more than a dozen fake IDs.

From early 1995 through late 1996, the couple spent time in two small Long Island towns, Selden and Holtsville, and in Chicago, and also spent months in Grand Isles, La. Carazza said the FBI found that Bulger had a safe-deposit box in Dublin and another in London, where a phone number for his brother, former Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger, was listed as a contact.

Carazza said authorities seized more than $800,000 from the apartment in Santa Monica, where Bulger and Greig had lived for much of the last 16 years.