Local Writer Makes Bulger Feature, 'The Couple in 303'

Neighbors told Gideon Brower amazing stories when he started interviewing them about their relationships with James Whitey Bulger.

Brower himself lived just across the street from the South Boston mob boss. For 15 years, Bulger went unrecognized while in Santa Monica with .

Brower compiled the neighbors in radio feature, titled The Couple in 303, that airs Friday evening—the first anniversary of Bulger's arrest in connection with 19 murders—on KCRW.

"Whitey wasn't a good guy in Boston.. but he was a pretty good neighbor here in Santa Monica," Brower said.

The feature will play at 7:30 p.m. Friday and again 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, or listen above.

Santa Monica Patch: What compelled you to produce The Couple in 303?

Gideon Brower: This is my first radio piece. I'm a playwright and screenwriter, and I do a little freelance work for Warren Olney's shows on KCRW. But I'm a fan of radio documentary and storytelling. I love This American Life and Radiolab. When this major news event happened on my block—Bulger lived 100 yards from my front door—I borrowed some audio equipment from a friend and started interviewing my neighbors. 

Patch: How long did you live in the building across the street? Did you ever interact with Greig or Bulger?

Brower: I've lived in the Embassy Hotel Apartments for 15 years. I didn't know Charlie/Whitey, but I do remember talking to Carol/Catherine when she fed the neighborhood stray cat outside the building. She was very devoted to that cat.

Patch: You interview neighbors who recall vividly the night of Bulger's arrest. Were you home, too? What was that experience like for you?

Brower: I was home, surfing the web. I saw a bulletin that Whitey Bulger had been arrested in Santa Monica. I vaguely knew who Bulger was—the Jack Nicholson character in "The Departed" was based on him. I didn't realize he'd been arrested at the Princess Eugenia across the street until a friend called and told me. Even then I assumed he'd been visiting someone. I didn't think he lived there, let alone that he'd been there for 15 years.

Patch: Throughout the piece, you call Bulger by his alias "Charlie," for Charles Gasko, why is that?

Brower: My piece is really about the Gaskos, Charlie and Carol. Those are the people my neighbors knew, and that's who they described to me. Now we all wonder whether we really knew them at all. Some of my neighbors actually miss the person they knew as Charlie. They feel that Whitey Bulger is someone else, a person from Boston they hear about in the news. The question of who lived in Apartment 303—Charlie or Whitey—is one of the central questions of the documentary.

Patch: There have been lots of interviews with Bulger and Greig's neighbors. Were you able to reveal in anything new in this piece?

Brower: The press mostly grabbed a few quick quotes, fairly standard stuff about being shocked. (The Boston media spent more time and dug deeper.) I wasn't working on a deadline and I was also exploring my neighbors' experience of suddenly finding themselves in the eye of a media hurricane. That's something I'd witnessed firsthand. Because I had known some of the people I interviewed for many years, I think they were more comfortable talking to me at length. There are details about Bulger and Greig in the piece I haven't seen anywhere else. Beyond that, my non-criminal neighbors are pretty interesting, too, and I think that comes out in the piece.

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