Links to mafia in Bulger’s demise
JAMES “Whitey” Bulger, the murderous Boston gangster who benefited from a corrupt relationship with the FBI, has died in federal prison at 89.
He gained notoriety after spending 16 years as one of America’s most wanted men.
Bulger was found unresponsive yesterday at the US penitentiary in West Virginia where he had just been transferred, and a medical examiner declared him dead shortly afterwards. Authorities did not immediately release a cause of death but said the FBI was notified and was investigating.
Reports circulated that the gangster had been killed.
A fellow inmate with mafia connections is being investigated in the homicide, three anonymous sources briefed on the investigation told the Boston Globe.
Bulger, the model for Jack Nicholson’s ruthless crime boss in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie, The Departed, led a largely Irish mob that ran loansharking, gambling and drug rackets.
He also was an FBI informant who ratted on the New England mob, his gang’s rival, in an era when bringing down the mafia was a top national priority for the FBI.
Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 after his FBI handler, John Connolly Jr, warned him he would be indicted.
With a $2.8 million reward on his head, Bulger became one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted criminals, just below Osama bin Laden.
When the extent of his crimes and the FBI’s role in overlooking them became public in the late 1990s, Bulger became a source of embarrassment for the FBI. During the years he was a fugitive, the FBI battled a public perception that it had not tried very hard to find him.
After more than 16 years on the run, Bulger was captured at age 81 in Santa Monica, California, where he had been living in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach with his girlfriend.
In 2013, he was convicted of 11 murders, as well as extortion, and money-laundering after a sensational racketeering trial that included graphic testimony from three former Bulger cohorts: a hit man, a protege and a partner.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years.
Bulger had just been moved to USP Hazelton, a high-security prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
He had been in a prison in Florida before a stopover at a transfer facility in Oklahoma City.
Federal Bureau of Prisons officials and his lawyer had declined to comment on why he was being moved.