You guys are fucking soft if you believe whitey didnt run the rackets, early on he had all the typical rackets, extortion, loansharking, bookmaking, robbing banks when he first started, the race fix sceme with the rest of Winter Hill. Pinball machines all over greater boston. He had stakes in bars, clubs. As he became boss he turned to extortion, shakedowns of more than half the criminals around here. Ran a drug empire, and the rest of the crew were still involved in all the mob rackets. Ive never met an incompetent man who made more than 50 million as a crime boss, and a guy who did most of his hits himself, thats someone who knows and believes in what he was doing. Yes he was a very smart business man, you guys just go on thinking he only held sway in Southie. We dont like the man up here or his fucking brother Billy, but you cant deny the fact he was an all powerful money making boss. The guy was on the run for 16yrs, he must have been doing something right to live a life on the lam for so long. You guys obviously dont know shit about how it was in Boston. Howie Winter owed the Italians 250,000 which Bulger and Flemmi inherited. Did they pay that debt, nope, did the Italians try any attempts at killing them, nope. You can try to say they kept them alive cause they wanted their money, but they never ever got it and Whitey and Flemmi basically told them guys you arent getting paid and the all mighty Italians had nothing to say or do about it. And your trying to say he was not powerful. If that happened in New York, the people would have got whacked without a doubt, but Winter Hill became all the more stronger while oweing the North End all that money.