Whitey Bulger wasnt a monster says his former lover
Is James “Whitey” Bulger, who’s about to stand trial for 19 murders, really just a big softy?
Well, that’s what one ex-lover of the “Southie” gangster would have you believe.
Lindsey Cyr is the mother of Bulger’s only child, a son named Douglas, who died at the age of 6. And though she makes a compelling appearance in “Whitey Bulger: the Making of a Monster” — airing tonight on Investigation Discovery — she’s not happy with the way the documentary depicts her old flame.
“They made him out to be a demon,” Cyr says of the show. “That’s not the Jimmy I knew.”
ARMED: Actors portray Lindsey Cyr and Whitey Bulger tonight on ID.
Bulger’s 2011 mug shot.
Cyr and Bulger met in 1966 in Quincy, Mass. She was just 21 and working the breakfast shift, he was 35 and riding a jackhammer in a nearby construction site. On parole, he’d just served a nine-year stretch at Alcatraz. “He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen,” she says.
Soon the two were dating. But by then Whitey was back in the rackets. And when Cyr told Bulger she was pregnant, “The color just drained from his face,” she says. “We can’t, you’ll be dead,” he told her. “You’re a target, you don’t understand, this will make me an even bigger target.”
Douglas was born in 1967. “His eyes were deep blue just like his father’s,” says Cyr. And fatherhood changed Whitey. “He worshiped the ground his child lived on,” Cyr says.
Off-camera, Cyr told The Post of perhaps Bulger’s most poignant moment. In 1969, the ex-con took his young family to visit the abandoned Alcatraz. “[Jimmy] found his cell and we stood in it. He was holding Douglas in his arms, and then he put his arm around me,” Cyr recalls. “He was very emotional, not something you saw in him very often,” she says.
Five years later, however, the dream turned into a nightmare. Douglas experienced a severe reaction to aspirin after an injection, a condition called Reye’s syndrome. Bulger held vigil by his son’s hospital bed. “I’ll never hurt like this again,” Cyr remembers him saying. After Douglas died, “Jimmy was very controlled,” she says. “Very quiet . . . incredibly cold.”
“In terms of the impact of Douglas’s death on Whitey, I wouldn’t say it made him a killer because he was already killing,” says Dick Lehr who, along with Gerard O’Neill, wrote “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss,” the book upon which tonight’s documentary is based.
After Douglas died, Bulger and Cyr drifted apart. When law enforcement finally closed in, Bulger went on his well-chronicled 16-year lam, which ended in his 2011 arrest in California.
“There’s been no one else that’s really meant anything to me,” says Cyr, who plans to attend Bulger’s trial. Jury selection is set to begin next week. And what about the grizzly charges he faces?
“I don’t believe them,” Cyr says.
Well, that’s what one ex-lover of the “Southie” gangster would have you believe.
Lindsey Cyr is the mother of Bulger’s only child, a son named Douglas, who died at the age of 6. And though she makes a compelling appearance in “Whitey Bulger: the Making of a Monster” — airing tonight on Investigation Discovery — she’s not happy with the way the documentary depicts her old flame.
“They made him out to be a demon,” Cyr says of the show. “That’s not the Jimmy I knew.”
ARMED: Actors portray Lindsey Cyr and Whitey Bulger tonight on ID.
Bulger’s 2011 mug shot.
Cyr and Bulger met in 1966 in Quincy, Mass. She was just 21 and working the breakfast shift, he was 35 and riding a jackhammer in a nearby construction site. On parole, he’d just served a nine-year stretch at Alcatraz. “He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen,” she says.
Soon the two were dating. But by then Whitey was back in the rackets. And when Cyr told Bulger she was pregnant, “The color just drained from his face,” she says. “We can’t, you’ll be dead,” he told her. “You’re a target, you don’t understand, this will make me an even bigger target.”
Douglas was born in 1967. “His eyes were deep blue just like his father’s,” says Cyr. And fatherhood changed Whitey. “He worshiped the ground his child lived on,” Cyr says.
Off-camera, Cyr told The Post of perhaps Bulger’s most poignant moment. In 1969, the ex-con took his young family to visit the abandoned Alcatraz. “[Jimmy] found his cell and we stood in it. He was holding Douglas in his arms, and then he put his arm around me,” Cyr recalls. “He was very emotional, not something you saw in him very often,” she says.
Five years later, however, the dream turned into a nightmare. Douglas experienced a severe reaction to aspirin after an injection, a condition called Reye’s syndrome. Bulger held vigil by his son’s hospital bed. “I’ll never hurt like this again,” Cyr remembers him saying. After Douglas died, “Jimmy was very controlled,” she says. “Very quiet . . . incredibly cold.”
“In terms of the impact of Douglas’s death on Whitey, I wouldn’t say it made him a killer because he was already killing,” says Dick Lehr who, along with Gerard O’Neill, wrote “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss,” the book upon which tonight’s documentary is based.
After Douglas died, Bulger and Cyr drifted apart. When law enforcement finally closed in, Bulger went on his well-chronicled 16-year lam, which ended in his 2011 arrest in California.
“There’s been no one else that’s really meant anything to me,” says Cyr, who plans to attend Bulger’s trial. Jury selection is set to begin next week. And what about the grizzly charges he faces?
“I don’t believe them,” Cyr says.
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/he_no_demon_xbdibfdtzeKgW6tXVaCXPN
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