Taking a Look Back at the Whitey Bulger Trial

(NECN: Greg Wayland) -   It was the summer Boston had only imagined, the trial many never believed they would see.

The storied fugitive in court, in custody, his formerly close criminal cohorts just feet away, implicating him in three decades of extortion, intimidation and violence, punctuated by a few foul, out of order exchanges.

A few who survived the violence got to tell their stories.
Ralph Dimalfi was raiding with mob target William O'Brien back in 1973. They were ambushed, and O'Brien died.

Frank Capizzi, shot in the head, survived a 1973 hit after hitching a ride with Al Plummer and Hugh "Sonny" Shield, telling the jury how "for two and a half minutes, one hundred slugs hit the automobile and it imploded." Plummer was killed.

Louis Lapiana, 28 years a quadriplegic after he, his girlfriend Diane Sussman and their friend Michael Milano, riding in Milano's Mercedes, were mistaken, allegedly by Bulger and other gunman, for the car of a mob target.

Then, after such shocking stories and weeks of testimony comes the anti-climax when Bulger declined to take the stand.

"I didn't get a fair trial," he tells Judge Denise Casper. "And this is a sham. Do what you want with me. That's it. That's my final word"

But Patricia Donahue, who's husband Bulger is accused of killing, had her final words. "You're a coward," she shouted.

Sussman had already spoken her final words on the infamous defendant.

"As far as I'm concerned, he's a no good son of a bleep, and I wish I could just shoot him," she had said.