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Notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger dead at 89
WASHINGTON, Oct 31, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Notorious Boston gangster James
“Whitey” Bulger was found dead on Tuesday at a prison in West Virginia, one
day after he was transferred to the high-security facility to serve the
remainder of two life sentences for a string of brutal crimes, the Federal
Bureau of Prisons said.
According to The New York Times, the 89-year-old Bulger, who was an FBI
informant in addition to being a crime boss, had been beaten “unrecognizable”
by fellow inmates.
There was no immediate confirmation from the authorities that Bulger had
been murdered.
The prisons bureau said the former head of south Boston’s “Winter Hill
Gang” was found “unresponsive” Tuesday morning at the Hazelton penitentiary
in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
“Life-saving measures were initiated immediately by responding staff,” the
bureau said in a statement, but “Mr. Bulger was subsequently pronounced
dead.”
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified and an investigation has
been initiated,” it said.
The prisons bureau said Bulger, who had previously been incarcerated in
Oklahoma and Florida, had been in custody at the Hazelton facility since
Monday.
Bulger was serving two life sentences for 11 murders, racketeering,
extortion, money laundering, possession of firearms and other crimes.
Arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run, Bulger’s life of crime has been
the subject of several books and movies including “Black Mass,” a biopic
featuring Johnny Depp as the Irish-American mobster.
Bulger also provided the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s mob boss
character in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning 2006 gangster film “The
Departed.”
– Ruled Boston underworld –
The subject of a years-long manhunt, Bulger was finally arrested in Santa
Monica, California, where he had been living quietly under an assumed name
with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig.
She was sentenced separately to eight years in prison for aiding and
abetting him.
Police found some $800,000 in cash and an arsenal of weapons in the modest
apartment where Bulger and Greig had lived for years as Charles and Carol
Gasko.
A $2 million reward for Bulger’s capture was doled out to a former
Icelandic beauty queen who tipped off the police to their whereabouts.
A 12-person jury found Bulger guilty in Boston in 2013 of 31 separate
charges.
“The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes, is almost
unfathomable,” Judge Denise Casper said at his sentencing.
Bulger ruled the Boston underworld with an iron fist for nearly 30 years
while also working as an informant for the FBI.
His trial, which featured 72 witnesses and 840 exhibits, produced chilling
testimony worthy of a pulp novel.
It heard harrowing tales of teeth being pulled from the mouths of murder
victims to foil identification and the strangulation of a mobster’s
girlfriend who “knew too much.”
Bulger refused to testify at his trial claiming he had been given immunity
from prosecution by federal agents.
He steadfastly denied being an FBI informant, but close links between some
FBI agents in Boston and Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s and 1980s
have been well documented.
Former FBI agent John Connolly was sentenced to prison after being
convicted in 2002 of effectively becoming a member of the gang.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1020 hrs