You can’t squeeze blood from one of those stone statues on Boston Common any more than you can squeeze Catherine Greig for the whereabouts of Whitey Bulger’s buried treasure.
But that won’t stop the feds from slapping Greig with a new charge of criminal contempt. The feds want to know how she and Whitey managed to go from Malibu Beach in Dorchester to Santa Monica Beach in California, where they hid in plain sight for 16 years.
The petite 64-year-old woman stepped into a federal courtroom yesterday wearing blue scrubs, her silver hair pulled into a short bob. But for her escort of U.S. marshals and the cuffs on her wrists, Cathy Greig could have been mistaken for an ER nurse.
“They’re not going to get anything out of her,” said Kevin Reddington, the lawyer who stood beside Greig during a brief arraignment.
“It’s not a matter that she has anything to hide, or to give up. She’s just not going to cooperate with the government, that’s all. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know where the money is,” Reddington said.
For almost a year Greig has remained Sphinx-like before a federal grand jury seeking the location of the White Man’s fabled fortune, the part that wasn’t found buried with the $822,000 in the wall of their rent-controlled apartment near the Santa Monica beach.
More than two years into an eight-year stretch of aiding and abetting Whitey, Greig has said bupkis about who helped them on their fugitive journey.
Outside the courthouse yesterday, Reddington alluded to a kind of street loyalty that once defined South Boston in a time when Whitey was king of thieves, long before there were $10 million condos above the waterfront where this lawyer stood.
“Even if somebody had helped them,” Reddington said, “someone who was, say, family or a friend, or whatever … you wouldn’t give up family or friends to this government, not for the borderline harassment that’s going on here.”
Reddington makes a valid point. There is something crazy about putting the screws to Greig, piling on as much, and possibly more, jail time than the 12 years John Martorano got for killing 20 people.
“It’s not a matter that she knows something, or is hiding something,” Reddington added. “She knows nothing. She’s done nothing wrong. She has no basis for a Fifth Amendment (plea). And never intended to take it.”
Reddington was not allowed to accompany Greig into the grand jury room, but said he’ll file a motion for access to the transcripts.
A young fed prosecutor told U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler yesterday that she anticipated a trial for Whitey’s paramour would last two days and feature just one government witness.
A sly smile lit up Reddington’s face when I asked who he thought that one government witness might be.
“I’m guessing Fred,” he said, as in Fred Wyshak, dean of the Whitey Bulger prosecutors.
“I’d love the chance to cross-examine Fred.”