Jailbird Jackie Bulger, who died last week at the age of 88, suffered the worst indignity that can ever befall a member of the Bulger clan.
He was stripped of his kiss in the mail. Bad enough that the runt of the litter had to go to prison, but that comes with the territory.
The worst humiliation for Jailbird Jackie is that while everyone else in his family has been relaxing on the Massachusetts taxpayers’ dime for decades now, Bulger lost his $5,326.16-a-month pension.
Oh, the shame of it!
And it was such an injustice. All he did was plead guilty to two counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice, on behalf of his beloved older brother, the serial-killing, cocaine-dealing, FBI-bribing gangster Whitey Bulger.
What happened was, Jackie was the clerk magistrate of the old Boston Juvenile Court when he lied to a federal grand jury. At the time he committed his atrocious crimes, Whitey was on the lam after his own indictment.
Jackie contended that his fibs under oath “were unrelated to his position as clerk magistrate.”
The Supreme Judicial Court disagreed, saying even though his last name was Bulger, he still had an “unwavering obligation to tell the truth.”
Of course Jailbird Jackie grabbed $300,000 before his pension was pulled. I’m sure he paid back every penny of the ordered restitution – wink wink nudge nudge.
Jailbird Jackie’s paid obituary included a list of his survivors, most of whom collect, or did until their passing, a kiss in the mail from the Commonwealth
Let’s start with his surviving brother, “The Hon. William M. Bulger,” a/k/a The Corrupt Midget. The former Senate president’s annual pension began in 2003 and is now up to $274,539 a year.
Jackie is also survived by a daughter, Beth A. Zodda, retired from “Senate Rules” since February with a pension of $75,968 a year. Her husband, Robert, retired from the MBTA in 2010 at the age of 52 and began collecting an annual pension of $42,822.
Jackie is also survived by a son, Mark Bulger. Mark likewise retired from the MBTA, back in 2010, when he started pocketing $34,732.44 per annum. He was in his mid-40’s when he wrapped up his career in public service.
Notice that they both went to work back in the golden age of the MBTA hackerama, when you could put in 20 years at the T and then go out on your full pension.
Not for nothing did they call the MBTA “Mr. Bulger’s Transportation Authority.” Am I right, Kevin “Two” Weeks?
Jackie Bulger is also survived by a sister, Sheila McKeon. She is married to Bill McKeon, who retired from the state’s Environmental Police in 2004 and has since been the recipient of an annual pension of $70,663 a year.
Jackie was predeceased by his mass-murderer brother Whitey, who did not have a state pension per se. However, until Whitey took it on the lam was pocketing $119,000 a year from the state after “winning” the Mass lottery in 1991.
When the feds froze his “winnings,” his sister Elizabeth Holland sued to get them back – the Bulgers leave nothing on the table, ever. She lost and until her death in 2019, had to subsist on her own “Senate Rules” pension of $22,189 a year.
Jackie’s obituary mentioned that he was the “longtime loving companion of Rosemary Bailey.”
Bailey died in 2021 with her “devoted companion Jack Bulger at her side,” according to the death notice. The obit also noted that Jackie’s heart throb “worked for many years at the Massachusetts State House.”
A nationwide search!
Jackie was married at one point to a woman named Jean Walsh. After their divorce, she somehow ended up on the payroll at the West Roxbury District Court. She retired in 2002 and has since been collecting $33,917 a year.
Do you think Jackie Bulger in his dotage ever agonized about any of this – how everyone else in his orbit had retired wealthy through their hack connections, while he was left holding the bag, like he was Michael Proctor or somebody.
In his early life, Jackie used to work at a fish store in Roslindale Square. But he wanted to be somebody, in the old South Boston sense of the word — somebody who didn’t have to work. He wanted to be… a hack, like everybody else in the family.
The clerk of the Boston Juvenile Court was another payroll patriot named Paul Heffernan. You don’t have to be a lawyer to be a clerk, so it was a sinecure made to order for Jackie.
Only problem was, they had to get rid of Paul Heffernan. I’m sure Whitey could have handled it, but a different exit was arranged. Heffernan became a judge, his clerkship was open, and Jackie got it.
Another nationwide search!
Years later, Heffernan’s appalling daughter, Mary Beth, got her own judgeship. It was 2013, and she admitted she hadn’t even set foot in a courtroom since 1995, but so what? She was… Bulger-adjacent.
And so, farewell then, Jackie Bulger.
To his obituary, I would only add a couple of details, one of which would be the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) number he was known by during his incarceration: BOP #23986-038.
And, to “Predeceased by his brother, James,” I would have added Whitey’s own BOP number #02182-748.
You can’t tell the Bulgers without their numbers.