Bulger sentence: 2 life terms plus 5 years

BOSTON Notorious mob boss James ‘ Whitey’ Bulger was sentenced Thursday to two consecutive life sentences plus five years for his conviction in a string of murders, as well as racketeering, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice and narcotics distribution, during a reign of terror in the 1970s and ' 80s in South Boston.

“Your conduct merits the most severe penalty,” U. S. federal Judge Denise Casper said in handing down the sentence.

“The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes, are almost unfathomable,” she said in a public tongue- lashing of the former boss of the Winter Hill Gang.

“Your crimes were all the more heinous because they were all about money,” Casper said. “Make no mistake, it takes no business acumen to take money from folks on the other end of the gun.”

The judge also ordered $ 19.5 million restitution for Bulger's victims.

Bulger, who refused to look at the victims during a sentencing hearing Wednesday, stared at the judge as she blasted his brutal life of crime, including killings at close range.

His only comment was to answer, softly, “yes,” when asked if he was aware he had the right to appeal.

It was a short -- but dramatic — end to the long- running saga of the 84- year- old mobster who was arrested by the FBI in Santa Monica, Calif., along with his girlfriend, after 16 years on the run.

“The testimony of human suffering that you and your associates inflicted on others was at times agonizing to hear and painful to watch,” Casper said.

Prosecutors had asked Casper for the stiff sentenced that was imposed in accordance with sentencing guidelines. Bulger's lawyers had declined to recommend a sentence, saying Bulger believes his trial was a “sham.”

Bulger was convicted in August for 11 out of the 19 killings he was charged with participating in. The jury acquitted him in seven killings and issued a “' no finding” in the murder of 26- year- old Debra Davis, the girlfriend of his former partner, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

Casper handed down the sentence one day after a wrenching hearing that included statements by 12 family members who lost fathers, husbands and siblings to gang violence decades ago.

Some called Bulger a “terrorist,” a “punk” and even “Satan” as he sat stone- faced and refused to look at them.

The family members “are the ones who have had to live their lives without their fathers, their husbands, their brothers and their sisters,” said Assistant U. S. Attorney Brian Kelly. “It's all thanks to this defendant, James Bulger. … To him, human life meant nothing.”

Bulger's trial laid bare a life of crime, corruption and unsavory deals between the federal government and the mobster.