Whitey Bulger's Reign Reached a Wellesley School, New Book Says

While sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial, James “Whitey” Bulger recalled how his reign as the leader of the Winter Hill Gang once touched Wellesley, according to “Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice.”

The authors of that book, Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy will be at an author talk at the Wellesley Free Library on April 11 at 7 p.m. The event is co-sponsored with Wellesley Booksmith.

In September 1974, Bulger threw a Molotov cocktail into Kingsbury Elementary School in Wellesley, damaging the building so badly students had to be moved to another school for two months. The incident is detailed in a chapter of Cullen and Murphy's book.

Bulger, apparently angry at a court decision to desegregate schools by busing students from his South Boston neighborhood to Roxbury schools, attacked the building because of its connection to the case, according to the book.

Judge W. Arthur Garrity, who issued the ruling, lived in a Wellesley home Bulger knew was being guarded, according to the book. Instead of directly attacking the judge, Bulger chose to damage the school as symbol of his anger with the decision, according to the book.

On the night of the attack, Bulger drove to the school, broke a window and tossed the Molotov cocktail through it, according to the book. Two classrooms sustained damage, but firefighters knocked the fire down.

The day after the attack, Bulger phoned the Wellesley Fire Department, and without identifying himself, and told officials where to find the gas can he used to make the cocktail.

“I’m gonna burn down every school in Wellesley,” he told the department, according to the book. 

Fire investigators never found the person who set the fire, but Bulger made his motive — the busing issue — clear.

Around 40 students were displaced to another school while workers repaired the damage, according to the book. The school was closed in 1975, but the building was later converted into condos, according to Images of America: Wellesley.

Garrity died in his Wellesley home in 1999, according to his obituary published in the New York Times.

As for Bulger, his trial is scheduled to begin on June 6, according to Boston.com.