Killing psychotic Bulger gave him the easy way out

Despite being stood in sub-zero temperatures on Boston’s notorious south side, listening to Kevin Weeks talk about his past sent real shivers through me.

Three years ago I met the former mob enforcer to discuss his life as notorious US gangster’s James “Whitey” Bulger’s key lieutenant.

To this day I remember him recalling how his boss revelled in extreme unbridled violence and that it was his own form of therapy.

Weeks told me: “Once Jimmy had killed, he’d be calm for months after. It was, he said, what kept him sane.”

He spoke as Bulger was serving two life sentences for the 11 murders he was convicted five years ago.

Last week, the notorious mobster died the way he lived – the apparent victim of a gruesome prison murder.

By the code of the streets, he got what he deserved.

Hundreds of relatives of the dozens of men and women who died at the hands of Bulger would agree.

It was for them a fitting and violent end to an extraordinarily violent life.

For decades, relatives waited for the justice that had long eluded them.

That pain and suffering for some was now satisfied by his death, sending away their tormentor for life. But his imprisonment was not just the justice he was serving for his victims in the US but also for those he helped kill in the UK too.

It was no secret Irish-american Bulger was an IRA sympathiser but his actions went much further than simply agreeing with “the cause”.

For years he was involved in the shipment of arms, ammunition and explosives that were used to kill.

One, in September 1984 saw a seven-tonne arsenal comprising of 163 assault rifles, 71,000 rounds of ammunition, a ton of military explosives, and a dozen flak jackets.

Weeks later the IRA bombed Brighton and came within inches of wiping out Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet. Five people were killed.

But it wasn’t only weapons Bulger sent to Ireland but also millions of pounds in support through stolen art snatched in Boston then shipped to Ireland.

Their value is said to have put boosted the IRA’S coffers by as much as €440million.

Bulger never faced justice for helping the terrorist organisation.

Instead, like some 30 other killings, he boasted to friends about carrying out but was never convicted of, he literally got away with murder.

Following his death, it is all too easy to dismiss why it was he was allowed to be killed inside.

Like the deaths inside of Harold Shipman and Fred West, the penal systems failings are the real betrayal of justice.

These days you cannot say hello to someone on the street without surveillance cameras recording your every move, but somehow the 89-year-old sociopath was killed without it being detected.

The screams of him being bludgeoned with a lock in a sock, having his eyes gouged and his tongue cut would surely have alerted guards.

Instead, his bloody body lay undiscovered for hours until he was found.

Such premature deaths in prison are unforgivable.

Undoubtedly the world is a better place without Bulger, West and Shipman but life behind bars stripped of all freedoms while awaiting their death is the ultimate in retribution.

Prison authorities owe an apology for allowing them the easy way out.

For decades relatives waited for justice that eluded them