Diksha Sundriyal
In the 2015 crime drama film, ‘Black Mass,’ Johnny Depp dons the character of Whitey Bulger, who made a name for himself due to his ruthless criminal activities. The film charts the meteoric rise of his status in Boston’s criminal underbelly after he becomes an informant for the FBI via John Connolly and uses this connection as a free pass to do whatever he wants. While he had killed people before, the deal with the FBI gives him much more power. Even though he is explicitly told by Connolly not to murder anyone, Bulger goes ahead with it several times. In one of the scenes, we are introduced to the place where he would take his victims to be buried.
Bulger’s Burial Ground was a Real Thing in Boston
One of the scenes in ‘Black Mass’ features the murder of Tommy King, who is brought to a secluded location under the pretense of killing someone else named Suitcase. The scene is a pretty accurate depiction of what really happened to him, along with the detail of his body being taken to the Neponset Riverside to be buried. While King was killed in 1975, his body wasn’t found until 2000 when the authorities carried out a massive operation of digging the clearing near the river. John Martorano, Bulger’s hitman who shot King in the back of his head, revealed in his testimony: “I was driving over Neponset Bridge (in Boston) one day, and Whitey said, tip your hat to Tommy…. He’s over there.”
Another of Bulger’s victims to be found buried alongside the Neponset was Debra Davis, the girlfriend of Stephen Flemmi. More than two decades younger than Flemmi, Debra knew a lot about Bulger and his operations from her boyfriend. So, when she decided that it was time to end the relationship, she was strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave along the river. What made the spot such a popular choice for Bulger’s gang was its proximity to their location. Reportedly, it is less than a hundred yards from Bulger’s condo in Boston. Apart from the Neponset River, a location near Tenean Beach in Dorchester was also used by Bulger and his men to bury dead bodies.
The Authorities Conducted a Massive Search Along the Neponset River and Tenean Beach
When Martorano started talking to the Feds, he revealed all the people he and Bulger had killed and exactly where their bodies had been buried. In 2000, Dr. Ann Marie Mires was a part of the state medical examiner’s office and the team that was sent to different locations to find the bodies. She revealed that, during their search along the Neponset River, they “moved a football field’s worth of dirt 15 feet deep looking for these bodies” because the source “wasn’t sure where they were.” She added: “Construction had changed the landscape, so we had to dig down to the old beach. We found the train tracks from the original train line from the 1860s before we found them.”
In her 7-hour-long testimony against Whitey Bulger, Mires revealed that the remains of Tommy King and Debra Davis were found in two separate graves. She corroborated Martorano’s story about King’s death by revealing that the victim had a bulletproof vest on and a bullet hole was found in the back of his head. Other than this, they also found his blue three-piece suit and Claddagh ring. Debra Davis, on the other hand, had been buried in a plastic bag. When Mires and her team found Davis’ remains, they were inside the bag, which had ropes tied around it. Mires also revealed that they had excavated along Tenean beach for two days before they found Pat McGonagle, who had gone missing in November 1974. The tidal shift of more than two decades deteriorated his remains to the point that the DNA was reported to have dried out of him.
Another location that Mires and her team looked into was a vacant lot across from Florian Hall in Dorchester, where they found the dead bodies of Deborah Hussey, Arthur Barrett, and John McIntyre. Reportedly, all three of them had initially been killed and buried in the basement of one of Bulger’s houses in South Boston. But, in 1984, when the house was put on the market, the bodies had to be moved, and the victims were transferred to a different location, which was revealed to the authorities by Kevin Weeks. Mires and her team had to break frozen ground and worked through the entire night to find the bodies not intact but complete.
Black Mass Creator Scouted Boston Locations for Authenticity
Because Boston is such an integral part of Bulger’s criminal tale, the makers of ‘Black Mass’ found it best to film the movie in Boston. They wanted to keep things as authentic as possible, which is why production designer Stefania Cella took a tour of all the places where Bulger and his associates were known to have gathered or committed heinous crimes. Real places like the Triple O’s Lounge and Bulger’s house in South Boston were recreated quite accurately, and the filmmakers wanted the same with the scene featuring Tommy King’s murder as well.
Cella was committed to making the movie look as period-authentic as possible. While the Neponset River area mentioned in the movie is very real, the warehouse is not. Cella visited the spot along the Neponset River in Quincy, which is featured in the movie. While the movie didn’t film in the exact same spot as the real burial place, the crew did use a highway bridge leading over the Neponset River as the location to recreate the grisly murders. In the same vein, the warehouse was also filmed on location in Quincy.
Read More: Billy Bulger: Where is Whitey Bulger’s Brother Now?
