Whitey Bulger Meets Jigsaw Seen Frontman

Dennis Davison of beloved west coast  pop maestros the Jigsaw Seen - who  puts new meaning into the lyric, "If you don't know how to do it, I'll show you how to walk the dog" - learns he was a neighbor of the notorious Boston mob boss. FBI, meanwhile, has no comment on the band.

By Jud Cost

Sugarcoat all the "news" stories in the world about indie-rockers, and most of them won't be worth the junk-mail catalogs stacked up inside a hillbilly's outhouse waiting to perform a vital function. It's celebrities (even those whose only talent is for being a celebrity) that people want to read about, these days.

Take Dennis Davison, for example. By day, a gentle Los Angeles Kings hockey fan who plays in an adult hockey league and walks dogs for a living, all over greater Tinseltown. By night, it's his wiry, evil-choirboy vocals alongside the guitar wizardry of Jonathan Lea that have kept the Jigsaw Seen (below; Davison is on the right) in business for over 20 years, with yet another new album, Winterland, due out later this year on the band's Vibro-phonic label. Admit it: pretty boring stuff.

On Wednesday, Davison hit the celebrity-sweepstakes lottery when an armada of LAPD and federal vehicles descended upon the 3rd St. neighborhood in Santa Monica where he was walking a trio of bulldogs. Next morning, Davison almost swallowed his Dubble Bubblegum as he opened the front page of the L.A. Times and saw the mug shots of two people he'd known casually for years who had just been taken down by law enforcement. James "Whitey" Bulger, 81, was recently moved up to the FBI's number one Most Wanted slot after the May 3 execution of Osama Bin Laden. Bulger (mugshot below) and longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, 61, had been on the lam since 1995.

"I know these people!" Davison blurted out to his wife Michele Krupkin, choking on his cornflakes. "I talk to them at least three times a week," he says. "They'd be out walking in the neighborhood and stop me to compliment me on how well-behaved my dogs were, compared to other people who jerk the leash. They take care of their neighbor's cats and asked me for advice." It was a case, says Davison, of instantly forming a bond with a pair of really nice people. "They seemed very cultured and, with their thick Boston accents, almost out of place around here. I remember thinking they should be spending their retirement years in Cape Cod, instead of here."

Bulger, longtime boss of Boston's Irish mafia, has already waived extradition and is headed back to Massachusetts to face 19 murder counts along with extortion, money-laundering and drug-dealing charges. Greig will be charged with aiding a fugitive. Bulger's story formed the backbone of Martin Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-nominated movie The Departed.

It's truly amazing that Davison, who's penned such Jigsaw Seen classics as "My Name Is Tom" (about the nocturnal creep of a peeping-Tom rapist) and "Fiddlesticks" (exhuming the sordid career of cannibalistic mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer) didn't recognize an alleged real-life sociopath when he met one. When asked about the $2 million reward for information leading to their capture, Davison is quick to reply. "I've thought about that. It's a lot of money. But, you know, I don't think I would have turned them in. They were really nice people."