Boston mob boss ‘Whitey’ stashed his cash in Birmingham
FEARED mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger, the Mafioso who ruled the roost over America’s underworld, salted away the blood money from his life of organised crime in Birmingham, it has been revealed.
The revelation, which appears in FBI files, has heightened speculation the Boston hitman, inspiration for Hollywood movie The Departed, made frequent forays to the city while on the run to syphon his stash, sealed in a safe deposit box. Bulger, who ruled Boston’s brutal Winter Hill Gang in the 70s and 80s, was tried on 32 counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion and weapons charges – including complicity in 19 murders – in 2013.
Convicted on 31 counts, he received two consecutive life sentences plus five years. But the feared gangster was beaten to death by inmates in 2018.
He was 89 and wheelchair-bound at the time of the attack.
In the early 1990s, the FBI were investigating reports the gun-for-hire, dubbed The Last Shamrock Gangster, was ensconced in one of Birmingham’s Irish communities.
An official at the bureau’s London office confirmed: “There were sightings of Bulger in the UK. The FBI cannot disclose where in the UK that was, but it is possible that was the Midlands.”
The location and contents of the safe deposit box have not been revealed, but the cache is believed to have comprised cash, jewellery and a fake passport. The killer had another box crammed with booty in London.
A former senior West Midlands CID officer revealed he believed the safe deposit box was located in Harborne.
“I’d bet my life savings on it. In my time, that was a favourite spot for criminals. I’d even place a bet on the road.”
The former police officer added: “They use safe deposits because they always expect a knock on the door.
“And if he had a safe deposit box here, he must have been travelling here. You don’t trust other people with keys to those things.”
The hitman topped the FBI’s most wanted list when he fled Massachusetts in 1994 after being tipped off the net was closing.
He was finally snared in Santa Monica, California, in 2011.
As he was led away from the Boston courtroom, one heckler in the gallery aimed an imaginary machine gun at the Don and taunted him: “Rata-tat-tat, Whitey.” The drama drew the curtain on a two-month case that gripped America.
Bulger was said to have greased the palms of FBI agents and police, doling out Christmas envelopes crammed with cash.
From 1975 to 1990, Bulger, product of a housing project ghetto, fed the bureau info on rival crime syndicates. Yet he screamed expletives from the dock when branded a rat.
While Bulger cut a swathe through the underbelly of American culture, younger brother William rose to become a high-ranking politician.
The machine-gun toting mobster, who grew fat on extortion, money-laundering and drug dealing, was eventually put to the sword by his own lieutenants.
Gangster Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, hitman John Martorano and Kevin Weeks, described as Bulger’s protege, all testified for the prosecution.