Infamous US mob boss, 89, is killed in jail cell
NOTORIOUS mobster James ‘ Whitey’ Bulger has reportedly been killed in his cell hours after being moved between prisons.
The 89-year-old Boston gangster, whose brutal career inspired several Hollywood films, is believed to have been beaten to death by two inmates with Mafia connections.
The Irish-American, serving two life sentences for 11 murders, was found unresponsive yesterday morning and sources said staff had tried to revive him. He had been at the Hazelton high security penitentiary in West Virginia only hours after arriving from a prison in Florida the previous day.
The gangster had led South Boston’s murderous Winter Hill gang and had once tried to smuggle guns across the Atlantic for the IRA.
Bulger and his thugs inspired the 2015 film Black Mass, in which he was played by Johnny Depp, and 2006’s The Departed, starring Jack Nicholson, which won an Oscar for best film.
The mobster, whose nickname came from his blond hair, was an FBI informant and was captured after 16 years on the run.
The son of one of Bulger’s victims said he was ‘surprised and pleased’ to hear about his death.
‘I didn’t think anyone was going to get to kill him,’ Tommy Donohue said. ‘I thought he would die an old man in jail. This is happy news for our family.’
The judge at Bulger’s 2013 trial
‘Do you want one in the head?’
in Boston said he committed ‘ unfathomable’ acts which terrorised the city for three decades from the 1970s.
Jurors heard he was a ‘handson’ killer who tortured and murdered 19 victims before they were dumped in mass graves.
Bulger made millions selling cocaine, extorting money from other drug dealers and paying off corrupt FBI and police officers.
He did not hesitate to kill anyone he saw as a rival or threat, tying them to chairs and torturing them before they were shot.
The trial also heard how Bulger was involved in killing John McIntyre, a crewman on a trawler whose seven-ton shipment of guns and ammunition for the IRA was captured in 1984.
The court heard how Bulger tried to strangle McIntyre with a rope but it was too thick.
A prosecutor said: ‘So Bulger asks him, “Do you want one in the head?”... “Yes, please.” So Bulger shoots him in the head.’
The trial was also told Bulger strangled two 26-year-old women linked to one of his associates because he believed they threatened his crime ring.
He was an FBI informant from 1975 to 1990 before fleeing Boston in 1995 after a tip-off that he was about to be arrested.
He was finally arrested in 2011 in California after living there under an assumed name with his long-time girlfriend.
Nearly two years after his trial, Bulger finally expressed a hint of remorse. In a letter to students who had written to him for a history project, he wrote: ‘My life was wasted and spent foolishly.’
He was reportedly moved as the Florida prison did not have medical facilities to deal with his worsening heart condition.