Mobster ‘Whitey’ killed in prison hit
‘Beaten to death’ with lock in sock
NOTORIOUS Irish-amercian gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was found beaten to death in jail yesterday, allegedly on the orders of a crime boss.
The former mob boss on Boston’s infamous South Side was “whacked” after recently arriving at the highsecurity penitentiary USP Hazelton in West Virginia.
The 89-year-old had been convicted of killing at least 11 people and was serving a life sentence.
The US Bureau Of Prison said in a statement Bulger, who had arrived at the facility on Monday, was found unresponsive at at 8.20am.
According to reports, wheelchairbound Bulger was mixing with other inmates when three rolled him into a corner out of view of cameras. There they battered his head with a padlock in a sock and tried to gouge his eyes out with a homemade knife. Spokeswoman for William J Powell, the US attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, Stacy Bishop said: “The FBI will be conducting an investigation into the death of James Bulger.”
The feared former leader of the Winter Hill Gang was listed as an inmate at the prison after being transferred from a jail in Florida via one in Oklahoma City.
Before that, he was held at a facility in Tucson, Arizona. Last week officials and his attorney declined to comment on why he was moved.
Bulger, the head of Boston’s Irish mob and an FBI informant, was convicted in 2013 of a litany of gangland crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. He was one of the FBI’S most wanted fugitives for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in Santa Monica, California. His case became an embarrassment for the Bureau as corrupt agents accepted bribes and protected him.
The story was the basis for the 2015 Johnny Depp film Black Mass.
In October 2016, the Supreme Court turned down Bulger’s appeal of his racketeering convictions and life sentence.
At one point in the hunt for Bulger the only man with a higher price on his head was Osama bin Laden, yet he managed to evade the FBI at every turn.
That was until 2011 when a cat ultimately led agents to America’s most-feared mobster after a friend of his partner, Carol Grieg, recognised him on television. The two women’s friendship was formed over the feeding of a neglected feline called Tiger.
Bulger, who also inspired Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed which won the Academy Award for best picture in 2007, once boasted of having “killed more than 40 men”. During his trial five years ago, the families of his victims were told by prosecutors to prepare for the most harrowing details as his former lieutenants, all murderers themselves, prepared to give evidence against him.
In his 60-year reign, Bulger’s brutality knew no bounds as he pulled out the teeth and tongues of his victims before they were killed.
One brutal case left one man
Number of men Bulger bragged he had killed, exact figure isn’t known
pleading with the evil thug to kill him as he was in so much agony.
Born in September 1929 to a stevedore father and an Irish-american mother, Bulger’s life of crime began when he was just 14. He was one of six children but whereas his brothers excelled in school, young James, or Jimmy to his friends, got his education on the streets.
After a brief spell in a borstal and much to his struggling parent’s relief, he joined the US Air Force but life in the military failed to straighten him out. Within years of leaving in 1952, he was sentenced to federal prison for armed robbery and hijacking.
But, faced with the prospect of 25 years inside, after being told he could get his sentence reduced Bulger volunteered to take part in an experiment by the CIA to investigate the effects of LSD.
It is said the tests had a lasting affect on him, making him prone to bouts of insomnia, nightmares and hallucinations. The nine years behind bars, including a stint in Alcatraz, provided Bulger with a criminal education. He read books about military tactics and strategies which he would later use in the countless killings he was responsible for.
Bulger was feared for his short temper and brutality. Prosecutors said he strangled two women with his hands and tortured a man for hours before shooting him in the head with a machine gun. He was called “Whitey” because of his light blonde hair but was said to detest the nickname and preferred being called Jimmy. Bulger’s brother William was a powerful Democratic politician who became president of the Massachusetts State Senate in 1978 and later the president of the University of Massachusetts.