Nee was born in Ros Muc, an Irish language speaking village in Connemara, County Galway.
[4] Their cousins drove them down to Cork, where they boarded an RMS Britannic for the trip to America, settling in South Boston, Massachusetts.
Not long after coming home from Vietnam, his brother Peter Nee was gunned down by Kevin Daily outside a bar.
Instead of killing Bulger, however, Nee arranged for the dispute to be mediated by Howie Winter and Patriarca crime family captain Joseph Russo.
After a meeting at Chandler's restaurant, in the South End, Boston, the two gangs joined forces, with Winter as the overall boss.
It was business, and contrary to media stereotype, we weren't a bunch of lowlifes who sat around drinking beer all day and all night.
Nee responded by relocating to Charlestown, Massachusetts and concentrating his energy on raising money and smuggling guns to the Provisional IRA.
Barrett was a bank robber who was believed to have large amounts of untraceable cash and valuables that Nee and his gang wanted to extort from him.
James Martorano used his friendship with Barrett to convince his friend to come to Nee's house to look at some stolen diamonds.
Between 1999 and 2003, US Attorneys in Boston immunized two of Nee's associates who were present with him at his house that day and thus learned the details of Barrett's murder.
Nee remained an occasional associate throughout the years and masterminded a 1984 attempt to smuggle seven tons of AK-47 assault rifles to the Provisional IRA.
However, the Irish Government had learned of the scheme via Sean O'Callaghan, a police informant in the IRA's Southern Command.
[citation needed] Nee admitted to bringing McIntyre to the South Boston house where Bulger, Stephen Flemmi, and Kevin Weeks were waiting for him.
He claims that he believed they were only going to talk to him and that he was disgusted to return later and find the trio about to bury McIntyre's corpse in the basement.
[citation needed] On November 30, 1984, Nee picked up McIntyre from a bar and lured him to his house with a case of beer and a promise of a party.
At this time, Nee knew that McIntyre was cooperating with federal law enforcement in re the smuggling of 7.5 tons of automatic weapons, machine guns, rocket launchers, plastic explosives, bullet proof vests, and ammunition aboard the Valhalla.
[citation needed] After his release, in 1989, Nee was motivated increasingly by Irish republicanism, to cut his links to Bulger.
He was arrested by the FBI during an armored car robbery in Abington, Massachusetts on January 13, 1990; he was masked and in possession of another machine gun, which again carried a mandatory life sentence.