Gangster ‘Whitey’ Bulger, aged 89

Notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger has died in US federal custody nearly five years after being sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons said he died yesterday in West Virginia. He was 89. Bulger led a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets in Boston. He was also an FBI informant. He became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives after fleeing Boston in late 1994. After more than 16 years Bulger was captured at the age of 81 in Santa Monica California. In 2013 Bulger was convicted of participating in 11 murders in the 1970s and 1980s and given two consecutive life sentences. He was the model for Jack Nicholson’s ruthless crime boss in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie The Departed. When the extent of his crimes and the FBI’s role in overlooking them became public in the 1990s, Bulger became a source of embarrassment for the FBI. During his years on the run the FBI fought a public perception it had not tried hard to find him. Bulger had just been moved to USP Hazelton, a high-security prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. He had been in a prison in Florida before a stopover at a transfer facility in Oklahoma City. Federal Bureau of Prisons officials and his lawyer had declined to comment on why he was being moved. Bulger, nicknamed “Whitey” for his platinum hair, grew up in a gritty South Boston housing project and became one of the city’s most ruthless gangsters. His younger brother, William Bulger, became one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts, leading the state Senate for 17 years. In working-class “Southie”, Jim Bulger was known for helping old ladies across the street and giving turkey dinners to his neighbours at Thanksgiving. He developed a Robin Hoodlike image among some locals. “You could go back in the annals of criminal history and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone as diabolical as Bulger,” said Tom Duffy, a retired state police major who investigated him. “Killing people was his first option. They don’t get any colder than him,” said Mr Duffy after Bulger was finally captured in 2011.

RUTHLESS: James “Whitey” Bulger