DEPOSITOR'S TRUST ROBBERY DID COST SOMEONE HIS LIFE
Burglar caught in violent web
Victim made last desperate calls for money
By Shelley Murphy
Globe Staff / March 9, 2000
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Page 2 of 3 --An FBI report of an interview with Murray filed in federal court says, "They held him and went to his house and took $300,000 and then they killed him."
What Elaine Barrett did not know when she last talked to her husband was that he had spent all that day desperately trying to raise money from friends, reportedly to meet the demands of Bulger and Flemmi. Barrett, a master safecracker, had helped a group of corrupt police officers steal $1.5 million in cash and millions more in jewelry from Depositors Trust in Medford during the 1980 Memorial Day weekend.
Intent on grabbing whatever money Barrett had left from the burglary and subsequent ventures, the Bulger crew lured him to a South Boston home on that July day in 1983 on the pretext of looking at jewelry, according to Barrett's former associates.
After calling his wife and ordering her out of the house, Barrett is believed to have been forced to drive to his Quincy home and turn over money he had stashed there to Bulger. Barrett's friends estimate the Bulger crew stole anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million in cash and jewelry from Barrett, but it apparently was not enough.