Ready to run

Whitey Bulger strolls on Castle Island in S. Boston in 1994 (above). Catherine Greig holds her two poodles, Gigi and Nikki.

Penny Gautreaux is not the only one to see the good in Whitey Bulger. At the Mary Ellen McCormack housing project in South Boston where Bulger, the eldest of six children, was raised, people recall acts of kindness. They say he delivered turkeys to poor families at Thanksgiving, and once bought a puppy for a little boy whose dog had been hit by a car.

And for years while fraternizing with local mobsters, Bulger was secretly working for ''the good guys.''

The FBI admitted last year in federal court that Bulger was an FBI informant from 1971 through December 1990. He's been credited with leaking information that helped the FBI send the hierarchy of the New England Mafia to prison.

But when the Massachusetts State Police began building a case against Bulger, the FBI joined the probe that resulted in the current federal racketeering indictment.

On Jan. 4, 1995 - three years ago today - a federal warrant was secretly issued for Bulger's arrest. Bulger, his longtime associate Stephen ''The Rifleman'' Flemmi, and reputed New England Mafia boss Francis ''Cadillac Frank'' Salemme were charged with extortion.

Racketeering indictments followed a week later, alleging that Bulger was shaking down drug dealers and collecting weekly payoffs from bookmakers.

A tip that the trio was planning to flee sent the FBI and State Police scrambling to arrest them on Jan. 5, 1995, but only Flemmi was nabbed that day. Salemme was captured seven months later hiding out in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Where was Whitey? On vacation.

Investigators now know that Bulger and another girlfriend, Theresa Stanley, a woman he'd lived with for 30 years in South Boston, were traveling around the country. They had spent time in San Francisco and were staying at Le Richelieu Hotel in New Orleans' French Quarter from Dec. 26, 1994, through Jan. 2, 1995.

''They were driving back to Boston when he heard there was a warrant for him and turned around,'' said one investigator.

Investigators suspect Bulger and Stanley stayed at a hotel in Connecticut or western Massachusetts for several days while he figured out what he was going to do. Surrendering was not an option. He had spent nine years in federal prisons, including Alcatraz, for bank robbery from 1956 to 1965, and was determined never to return. He was ready for a life on the run; he already had an alias.

So when the FBI issued a nationwide alert for James J. Bulger of South Boston, he quickly became Thomas F. Baxter of Selden, N.Y., a town on Long Island.

Investigators said Bulger began using Baxter's identity long before he was on the run, even before the real Thomas F. Baxter of Woburn died in January 1979. Bulger obtained a Massachusetts license with his own photograph and Baxter's name, birth date, and Social Security number. He renewed it every four years.

In 1990, Bulger obtained a New York driver's license as Thomas Baxter, then renewed it in 1994. For his address, he used the Selden home of cousins of a trusted South Boston associate.

But while Bulger was prepared for the fugitive life, sources say Stanley was not. In mid-January 1995, Bulger returned to the Boston area and dropped off Stanley in Hingham.

Then he promptly picked up Catherine Greig, a dental hygienist who grew up in South Boston and was living on Hillcrest Road in Quincy. Bulger had been having an affair with Greig for more than a decade while living with Stanley, according to investigators.

Bulger and Greig surfaced Jan. 17, 1995, in Selden, where he bought a new black 1994 Mercury Grand Marquis under the name Tom Baxter. He paid $13,000 by bank check and traded in a 1991 Mercury Sable.

Three days later, Bulger and Greig were in Grand Isle, an island that advertises itself as ''The Cajun Bahamas'' and brags that it is one of the world's 10 best fishing spots.

Most of its 1,500 year-round residents - a population that swells to more than 6,000 in summer - earn their living shrimping or working on offshore oil rigs. There are seven full-time police officers; the chief never wears a uniform.

It's only 3 feet above sea level, so homes are built on pilings, some at least 9 feet high in case of flooding.

There are a couple of small supermarkets, and two restaurants open during the off-season. There are no banks, just one ATM. The island is connected to the mainland by a long drawbridge.

''The only people who go there are going there,'' FBI Supervisory Special Agent Cassano said. ''You can't find it by accident. There's only one way onto the island and the same way off. It's an odd place for them to be.''

Blending in

Chrisel Page recognizes the photo of Catherine Greig in her beauty salon where Greig came to get her hair done.

Police Chief Roscoe Besson Jr. smiles ruefully at the memory. When FBI agents arrived here last January with posters offering a $250,000 reward for Whitey Bulger, he recognized the fugitive's photo right away.

Twice in 1996, Besson was slowing traffic outside the elementary school at 7 a.m. when he stopped cars on Louisiana Highway 1 to let Bulger cross the street.

''I stopped the traffic and let $250,000 get across the street,'' he said. Bulger nodded politely once and waved another time. ''If he had taken off running, I'd have been on him like gravy on rice.''

But Bulger didn't run. He strode confidently toward the beach for his morning walk.

''If I see a guy with long stringy hair, nasty looking, I stop them,'' Besson said. ''I want to know who they are. Tom [Bulger] was clean-cut. I'd see him walking. This is a tourist community. He and Helen were just traveling around.''

In fact, Greig frequently went to the police chief's daughter, Chrisel Page, to have her hair cut and colored - L'Oreal light ash blonde or extra light platinum blonde.

Greig walked alone to Page's salon. And now, Page speculates that Bulger stayed away when he saw the police car belonging to her husband, a deputy for the Jefferson Parish sheriff's department, parked in the driveway outside the shop.

Greig was a nice lady and a generous tipper, Page said: ''I enjoyed her company.''

It's unclear how long Bulger and Greig stayed here during their first visit, but in June 1995 they were driving their Grand Marquis with New York plates in Sheridan, Wyo., where they bought jewelry on an Indian reservation. Three months later, they were spotted in Gulfport, Miss. And from Sept. 25 through Oct. 1, 1995, they were back on Long Island, N.Y., staying at a Best Western motel in Holtsville.

Then in October 1995, while the FBI was chasing tips that Bulger was as far away as Ireland or as close as Cape Cod, the cocky fugitive was back in South Boston.

From a pay phone inside Conley Terminal, a freight dock, Bulger called the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., to speak to an official who dealt with Bulger when he was an informant.

''You double-crossing [expletive],'' Bulger screamed at John A. Morris, who once supervised the FBI's organized crime squad in Boston and was then assigned to the training academy.

Bulger accused the FBI of trying to smear his brother, then-Senate President William M. Bulger, by falsely suggesting that the brothers were in contact while he was on the lam.

A search for Bulger in South Boston, prompted by that call, was fruitless. The first week of November 1995, Bulger was back in Grand Isle, staying at the Water Edge Motel.

A television segment devoted to Bulger on ''Unsolved Mysteries'' aired later that month. But if anybody here watched the show, they didn't recognize polite Tom Baxter as the wanted gangster from Boston.