Do you suppose Stevie Flemmi watched any of his old nemesis Hank Brennan’s
latest courtroom
humiliations in Dedham last week?
Probably not — the serial-killing partner of Hank’s late client (and hero) Whitey Bulger is 91 now. Stevie is locked away for life in some secret federal prison reserved for treacherous rat bastards like both Flemmi and Bulger.
But let the record show that it was “the Rifleman” who at Bulger’s 2013 trial was the first witness to make a complete ass of Hank Brennan during one of his trademark nonsensical cross examinations.
Now Brennan is the $250,000 “special” persecutor in the second Karen Read murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court.
Traditionally, a prosecutor is supposed to be a white hat — a good guy or, failing that, at least honest and truthful.
It is a role for which Hammered Hank Brennan is spectacularly miscast. And so it was that he melted down at the end of the trial, first in another series of disastrous cross examinations, and then in a bumblingly bad
closing argument
to the jury.
In his interminable closing, Hank continued his unrelenting assault on the English language, at one point telling the jury that “the timeline is not in dis-poot.”
Not dispute, dis-poot.
He also forgot the names of his own two fork-tongued expert witnesses, Shanon Burgess and Judson Welcher. He combined their names into a composite “Shanon Welcher.”
At least he didn’t get into dental issues. Earlier in the week, with a forensic physician, Brennan inquired about teeth that he called “inscissors.” Not incisors, inscissors.
They’re not making Mob mouthpieces like they used to. Nor are the traditional Norfolk County jury-intimidation tactics working anymore.
At Read’s first trial last year, thug ex-Boston cop Brian Albert and his punk nephew, Colin Albert, showed up to glare at the jury during closings. Both Alberts were no-shows Friday. Instead, the jurors had to file by a different Keystone Kop, State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik.
Bukhenik is the as-yet unfired member of the “detective” unit that strung up Karen Read
back in 2022
. Yuriy materialized at the courthouse Friday in a black suit with pants cuffs absurdly above his ankles.
The suit looked like something off the rack from KGB Haberdashery, to be worn only to a USSR commissar’s funeral in Vladivostok in 1977.
Even more preposterous than Yuriy’s Sunday-go-to-meeting duds were his striped white socks.
Black suit and white socks. Seriously, it was a full Kyiv. He looked like one of the old Wild and Crazy Guys on SNL.
When Karen Read’s lawyers spotted him lurking around the hall, glowering at the jury and channeling his sinister Iron Curtain heritage, they complained.
Finally, the hulking moron fled back into his boss DA Meatball Morrissey’s lair. Maybe someone called 911 to report a suspicious rubber ducky sighting somewhere in Norfolk County, and he had to scramble to Milton with sirens blaring.
Or perhaps a housewife in Avon had posted something mean about Meatball Morrissey on Facebook, and needed a good talking-to, in Yuriy’s broken English, about a witness-intimidation rap.
This is how Bukhenik earns the big bucks — $211,960 last year. He loves screaming at young rubber ducky-wielding moms almost as much as he relishes those $750-a-shift no-heavy-lifting F Troop details at the airport.
Despite fleeing his homeland, he now poses as a big Ukrainian patriot. Invincible in peace, invisible in war, that’s Yuriy.
He’s big into the war effort, although oddly, he prefers banging on the hoods of double-parking motorists dropping off their kids at Terminal C to returning to the old USSR to toss grenades at Russian tanks.
Maybe that’s why Yuriy was roundly booed by Karen Read supporters outside the courthouse as he took it on the lam Friday afternoon. Or perhaps the crowd was just appalled by his unfortunate sartorial choices.
But getting back to Hank Brennan, I knew back in 2013 what a crappy lawyer he was when he got his head handed to him by Stevie Flemmi. The Rifleman was testifying against his partner in pedophilia and murder, Whitey Bulger.
On cross, Hammered Hank just kept yelling at Flemmi. The prosecutor finally complained to the judge that Brennan had no interest in questioning Flemmi, and was merely trying to “embarrass, humiliate, demean and badger the witness over and over and over again.”
Sound familiar? You can’t teach an old Bulger hack new tricks.
During cross examinations, Hank abandons himself to a bizarre obsession with food. Last week, with FBI witness Dr. Andrew Rentschler, he couldn’t stop asking him about ham sandwiches. He returned to the subject again in his closing. Ham sandwiches.
In 2013, with Flemmi, Brennan became fixated about the alleged gourmet dining in WITSEC, the federal prison system for snitches.
Brennan: “It’s like the Club Med of federal facilities?”
Flemmi: “You really think so?”
Brennan: “You have a store at your prison that doubles as a delicatessen.”
Flemmi: “That is absolutely ridiculous.”
Brennan: “Can you get rib-eye steak?”
Flemmi: “If I gave some of that food to my dog, he’d bite me.”
It was comic gold. And it wasn’t like Flemmi couldn’t have been dusted up.
In 2018, he was back in federal court in Boston as a witness in a different Mob murder case. On cross-examination, the first question Flemmi was asked was how many murders he’d participated in over the decades.
He had to think about it, add them all up in his head.
“Probably about 50,” Flemmi finally answered.
After that admission, how much more did the jury need to know?
Brennan could have come up with a decent question like that, or at least a less ridiculous one than jailhouse steaks. But that would have required some thought. And as everyone can now see, to a battle of wits, Hammered Hank Brennan comes unarmed.
On that fact, there can be no dis-poot.
One last question before the verdict, this one for Yuriy Bukhenik.
Comrade, how long do you have to wear those white socks to win the bet?
Follow the Karen Read on Howie’s radio show on WRKO AM 680, 2-6 weekdays.
