Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
INFORMANT
Bulger had been an FBI informant for decades.
The former head of South Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, played by Johnny Depp in movie Black Mass, was convicted in 2013 of killing at least 11 people.
Bulger had talked about being under constant threat in jail. His lawyer JW Carney Jr said: “He was sentenced to life in prison, but as a result of decisions by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that sentence has been changed to the death penalty.”
Sources say that in recent months Bulger had been talking about outing people in the top tier of the FBI informant programme to get himself better privileges in prison.
Geas is serving a life sentence after he was ratted on for the murders of a mob boss and an associate in 2003. Officials have not said who else may have been involved in the murder of Bulger at the high security jail – United States Penitentiary Hazelton – in Preston County, West Virginia.
Mobster Paul Weadick, 63, was sent there after being convicted this year of murder alongside Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme.
Bulger’s one-time right-hand man Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi was the star witness in the prosecution of Weadick and Salemme.
Though Flemmi also testified against Bulger in 2013.
Flemmi, 84, does not appear in the online Federal Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator, suggesting he is being held under an alias to protect him from reprisals.