'Whitey' Bulger Courtroom Includes Widow of His Alleged Victim

The son of one of Bulger's victims plans on testifying in court today.

ByABC News
June 20, 2013, 10:48 AM

BOSTON June 20, 2013— -- The day Patricia Donahue lost her husband is forever emblazoned in her mind. It was May 11, 1982 and Brian Halloran, her South Boston neighbor, had asked her husband Michael for a ride.

Michael never came home. Instead he became one of the 19 people who alleged Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger is accused of killing.

Donahue was one of the many innocent bystanders that a federal indictment says were murdered as Bulger and his alleged associates in the Winter Hill Gang splattered the streets of Boston with the blood of their rivals over a three-decade stretch of violence.

Now Patricia Donahue spends her days in a federal courtroom facing down "the monsters," as she calls Bulger and confessed hitman John Martorano, who was in court for three straight days describing the gruesome hits he is accused of committing with, or on behalf of, Bulger.

Flanked by her sons, Tommy and Michael Donahue, she keeps vigil to make sure that Bulger "doesn't get away with it like he did for more than 30 years."

The federal courthouse is just a few blocks away from the South Boston street where her husband was gunned down in a car with Halloran, a man targeted by Bulger because he had gone to the FBI to complain about Bulger, and corrupt FBI agents passed that information on to the Winter Hill Gang.

"I don't want to see the pictures of my husband dead in the car,'' Patricia Donahue told ABC News. "I don't want to see him lying out on a slab. I want to remember him the way I see him now."

Her son Tommy is expect to address the court as family members are allowed to give brief statements about the impact their loved ones murders have had on their lives.