Whitey Bulger is in a maximum security prison in Florida. He is 85 years old now. The gangster was on the run for 16 years before finally being captured in 2011, sentenced to two life terms plus five ears, and locked away for good.
Now Johhny Depp has a new movie about Whitey Bulger called Black Mass that many think is a return to form for the actor who has spent much of the last 10 years playing pirates, cartoonish figures, and a few forgettable normal ones.
But Whitey Bulger killed people. And those people have families. And some of those family members think that Johnny Depp’s new movie is a really bad idea.
One of those people is Steven Davis. His sister Debra was strangled to death by White Bulger and dumped into a shallow grave.
“A lot of the families are very, very upset about this,” Steve Davis told The Globe about the new Whitey Bulger film. “I don’t like it one bit. . . . Everybody seems to be profiting off it. It’s sad for the movie industry, it’s sad for the actors. The movie industry and the actors, they’re the ones making the money. It’s another (expletive) slap in the face, that’s what we’re getting paid. Another slap in the face.’
Davis argues that it is too soon to do a film about Whitey Bulger. It’s too much hurt still going on. It’s still too new to the heart for people.”
Steven Davis’ sister Debra was only 26 when Whitey Bulger killed her. Her boyfriend was Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, Bulger’s second lieutenant. Apparently Flemmi told his girlfriend more than Bulger wanted her to know. Flemmi was supposed to kill her, but couldn’t do it. So he brought her to Bulger.
Whitey Bulger strangled her, then took a nap while Flemmi cleaned up the mess.
Whitey Bulger got away with as much as he did because he was an FBI informant. But Steven Davis calls him something else.
“He was a piece of shit,” Davis said. “The only reason he had the power to do what he did was because the FBI was protecting him.”
The film stars Johhny Depp as Whitey Bulger himself. Bulger’s longtime girlfriend Lindsey Cyr is played by Dakota Johnson, fresh off 50 Shades of Grey. Whitey’s brother Billy Bulger is played by Benedict Cumberbatch.