Notorious gangster beaten to death in jail
Bulger a killer, informant, film inspiration
• James “Whitey” Bulger, the murderous Boston gangster who benefited from a corrupt relationship with the FBI before spending 16 years as one of America’s most wanted men, has been found beaten to death in a U.S. federal prison.
Bulger, 89, was found unresponsive Tuesday morning in his cell at the Bruceton Mills, W. Va., penitentiary where he’d just been transferred the day before. A medical examiner declared him dead shortly afterward, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
A police source told the TMZ website that Bulger, who needed a wheelchair, was approached by three other inmates who wheeled him into a corner that could not be seen by cameras.
They then reportedly beat him with a lock hidden in a sock, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to gouge his eyes out — a classic Mafia punishment for informants.
The Boston Globe reported the killer was an inmate with Mafia ties.
A prison union official says Bulger’s death is being investigated as a homicide.
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 loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets. He also was an FBI informant who ratted on the New England mob, his gang’s main rival.
Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 after his FBI handler, John Connolly Jr., warned him he was about to be indicted. With a $2-million reward on his head, Bulger became one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” criminals, with a place 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 agency. During the years he was a fugitive, the FBI battled a public perception that it had not tried to find him.
After more than 16 years on the run, Bulger was captured at age 81 in Santa Monica, Calif., where he had been living in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig.
In 2013, he was convicted of participating in 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 nearly five years ago to two consecutive life sentences plus five years.
Bulger grew up in a gritty South Boston housing project and became known as one of the most ruthless gangsters in Boston. His younger brother, William Bulger, became one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts, leading the state Senate for 17 years.
Bulger had a kind of Robin Hood-like image among locals, but authorities said he would put a bullet in the brain of anyone who he suspected of double-crossing.
“Killing people was his first option. They don’t get any colder than him,” said Tom Duffy, a retired state police major who investigated Bulger after his 2011 arrest.