Notorious crime boss killed in prison
The informant, 89, was beaten to death by two other inmates
James “Whitey” Bulger, the Boston mobster who was captured after years on the run, is killed in a West Virginia federal prison by at least two inmates.
James “Whitey” Bulger, the South Boston mobster who was captured after years on the run, was killed in a West Virginia federal prison by at least two inmates, according to two Federal Bureau of Prisons employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public.
Bulger, 89, had been transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, W.Va., on Monday and was beaten to death shortly after his arrival, according to two of the prison workers. One of the workers said the inmates were thought to be “affiliated with the mob,” but did not know the specifics of the association. Transferred over threat
A senior law enforcement official who oversees organized crime cases but was not involved in the investigation into Bulger’s death, said he was told by a federal law enforcement official that an organized crime figure was believed to be responsible for the killing.
A prison worker said Bulger, who had been serving a life sentence for 11 murders, had been transferred to the Hazelton prison after he had threatened a staff member at the Coleman prison complex in Sumterville, Fla.
The death of Bulger was announced by the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Tuesday, but a cause was not provided. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified and an investigation has been initiated,” the news release said. “No staff or other inmates were injured, and at no time was the public in danger.”
Bulger had just been moved to the West Virginia penitentiary. It was the latest in a series of prison transfers for him. He had been incarcerated in Arizona, Oklahoma and Florida, prison officials have said, without giving reasons for the moves.
A shortage of correctional officers has become chronic under President Donald Trump, leaving some prison workers feeling ill-equipped and unsafe on the job, according to a New York Times investigation published this year. Some prisons are so pressed for correctional officers that they regularly compel teachers, nurses, secretaries and other support staff to step in.
The Hazelton prison in particular has been plagued by violence. The prison has regularly assigned support staff to guard duty since mid-2016, though it recently tried to curtail the practice. Last year, the Times found, the prison had 275 violent episodes, including fights among inmates and major assaults on staff, an almost 15 percent increase from 2016. In April, an inmate was killed in a fight. Local news media reported that an altercation between inmates led to another inmate’s death last month.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., had recently joined other officials in sending a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions voicing concerns over staffing levels at federal prisons, including Hazelton. “Unfortunately, our states, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, have seen firsthand how dangerous continual understaffing can be to both BOP staff and the inmates they supervise,” he wrote.
Bulger, who had been serving two life sentences for 11 murders, was found unresponsive at 8:20 Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the federal Bureau of Prisons. It said that lifesaving measures were initiated but that he was pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner. Arrested in 2011
To the families of those he executed gangland-style and to a neighborhood held in thrall long after he vanished, in 1994, Bulger’s arrest in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011 and his conviction and life sentence for gruesome crime brought a final reckoning of sorts, and an end to the career of one of America’s most notorious underworld figures, the heir to a nation’s fascinations with Dillinger, Capone and Gotti.
For years before details of Whitey Bulger’s criminal history became known in trials, books, newspapers and congressional hearings, popular myths in South Boston portrayed him as an Irish Robin Hood, giving out turkeys on Thanksgiving and protecting his own from the hated police and outsiders.
A troublemaker from an early age, Bulger ran with a gang, stole cars, mugged people and was sent to reform school. He joined the Air Force at 20, but was discharged after going AWOL. He robbed banks in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Indiana and served nine years in federal prisons. Back in South Boston, he became an enforcer for an Irish mob. In 1979, he and an associate, Stephen Flemmi, took over the infamous Winter Hill Gang, which had dominated crime there for years.
While he apparently never married, Bulger had a long relationship with a Quincy waitress and another with Theresa Stanley, who had several children from a previous relationship. Stanley fled with Bulger when he disappeared in 1994, but within weeks returned to her children. Bulger was then joined by Catherine Greig, who spent the fugitive years with him.
After their capture, Bulger and Greig were returned to Boston to face trials. Greig was charged with harboring a fugitive and as part of a 2012 plea agreement in federal court in Boston was sentenced to eight years in prison and a $150,000 fine. She later was sentenced to an additional 21 months in prison for refusing, even with a grant of immunity from prosecution, to testify before a grand jury investigating whether other people had helped him while he was a fugitive. Sentenced to two life terms
Bulger was charged with complicity in 19 murders, racketeering, extortion, money laundering and other crimes. A parade of former associates testified against him in a two-month trial, telling of killings of rival hoodlums and others who had been identified by the FBI as informers. Witnesses told of guns in victims’ faces and crotches, of shakedowns and demands for cash for the privilege of doing business on Bulger turf.
On Nov. 14, U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper sentenced Bulger to two life terms plus five years. She also ordered him to pay $19.5 million in restitution to his victims’ families and to forfeit $25.2 million to the government, although it was unclear if any of the millions he stole would be retrievable.
“The testimony of human suffering that you and your associates inflicted on others was at times agonizing to hear and painful to watch,” the judge said into the stillness of a courtroom filled with sobbing relatives of the killer’s victims. “The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes are almost unfathomable.”