Lawyer: FBI Was Responsible for Mob Hit

In this undated photo released by the FBI reputed New England organized crime figure Stephen K. "The Rifleman" Flemmi is shown. The family of John McIntyre is suing the government for $50 million, claiming the FBI's negligence in its handling of Flemmi and James "Whitey" Bulger led to McIntyre's murder. (AP Photo/Federal Bureau of Invstigation, File) (AP)

BOSTON -- The FBI failed to control two gangster informants and was responsible for the death of a fisherman, an attorney for his family said Thursday during closing arguments in a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government.

About six weeks before his death in 1984, John McIntyre had started talking to U.S. Customs agents in an investigation of the involvement of James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi in a failed plan to send guns to the Irish Republican Army aboard a Gloucester fishing boat.

McIntyre's family claims he was killed by the gangsters after former FBI Agent John Connolly tipped them that McIntyre was talking to authorities.

McIntyre family attorney William Christie said Connolly and his FBI supervisors shielded the gangsters from prosecution for their crimes in order to keep them as informants who provided valuable information against La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia.

During the trial, several former FBI agents testified that bringing down the Mafia was the top priority of the FBI in the 1980s.

Justice Department lawyer Bridget Bailey Lipscomb, said the FBI had no way of stopping Bulger and Flemmi, leaders of the notorious Winter Hill Gang, from committing crimes.

"Law enforcement cannot have a duty to control Bulger and Flemmi because of the nature of the informant relationship," she said.

Lipscomb told the judge, who will decide the case, the McIntyre family had not shown that the FBI's failure to arrest Bulger and Flemmi caused his death.

"The evidence in this record shows that Bulger and Flemmi killed for their own purposes," she said.

Connolly was convicted of warning Bulger to flee on the eve of his 1995 racketeering indictment. He is now serving a 10-year sentence.

Flemmi, who said during the trial he and Bulger killed McIntyre, is serving a life sentence in 10 killings as part of a plea deal that spared him the death penalty.

Bulger, who is wanted in 19 murders, remains on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list.