By Bonnie Adams, Managing Editor
Marlborough – As a best-selling true crime author who hails from East Boston, Michele McPhee naturally has many thoughts on the various local criminals that have dominated the headlines in recent years. As the guest speaker at the Corridor Nine Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast held at the Best Western Royal Plaza Aug. 15 she regaled the audience with tales of those she has written about including reputed mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang, Neil Entwistle, who was accused of murdering his wife and baby, and the “Craigslist killer, Philip Markoff.
She started off her career as an intern for the Boston Globe and then became a reporter for the New York Daily News where she became the first female police bureau chief. ?She noted that she had befriended many of the city's police officers who later perished in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Ironically, although she has been threatened at gun point and had anonymous threats on her life made at times, it is not terrorism or gangsters who worry her the most.
“I's from East Boston – I can have my friends take care of them, “she joked. “It's the FBI and the political corruption in this state that I's really afraid of!”
McPhee is also a popular sought-after commentator for various television shows, radio show host and an award-winning newspaper columnist who currently writes for the Boston Herald.