Boston crime boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger dies in prison
Notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, has reportedly been killed in a US prison.
Notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, one of America’s most infamous gangsters, has died in a US prison, nearly five years after being sentenced to life in jail.
He was found dead at a federal penitentiary in West Virginia, where he had spent just one day after being transferred from a facility in Florida. American media have reported Bulger was killed. He was 89.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified and an investigation has been initiated,” the US Board of Prisons said in a news release.
His criminal history harkens back to a darker time in Boston, when the city was struggling through postindustrial malaise, racial strife and a shrinking population. The city is growing again, and some of his former haunts have been washed away by gentrification.
In 2013, Bulger was convicted of participating in 11 murders in the 1970s and 1980s and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Mary Callahan, whose husband John was killed by the Bulger gang in 1982, told the Boston Globe that Whitey hurt everyone he came in contact with.
“My memory of him is anybody, good or bad, who had anything to do with him got hurt,” she said. “Good people and bad people were hurt by him.
“But he’s a legend, like Al Capone and Billy the Kid. He will always be remembered but in a bad way.
“I was expecting his death, but not like this.”
Tommy Donahue, whose dad Michael was one of Bulger’s victims, told the Globe his family could “finally” put Whitey behind them.
“He will be getting a pitchfork in the ass from the devil now,” said Donahue. “His (expletive) legacy is gone. We can finally put him behind us.”
Bulger’s story has long been the source of grim fascination in Boston and beyond, sparking books and a 2015 film in which Johnny Depp portrayed the crime boss. Bulger’s brother William Bulger was also a major local figure, but in a very different way: He was president of the Massachusetts Senate and, later, the University of Massachusetts.
After Bulger fled Boston in 1994, authorities for years pursued tips of “Whitey” sightings from Mississippi to London to Sicily.
The search finally ended in 2011, when authorities captured him and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, in Santa Monica, Calif., along with a cache of weapons and $822,000 hidden in their apartment.
Ms. Greig, 67, pleaded guilty in 2012 to harboring Bulger, and her sentence was extended in 2016 when she refused to say who else might have helped the gangster while he was on the run. She is currently at a federal prison in Minnesota and scheduled for release in 2020, federal records show.
In 2013, Bulger was convicted of participating in 11 murders in the 1970s and 1980s and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Bulger was the model for Jack Nicholson’s ruthless crime boss in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie The Departed.
With The Wall St Journal, AP
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