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Whitey Bulger's Death
- Whitey Bulger
- Criminal
- September 3, 1929
- October 30, 2018
- Beating
The life and death of Whitey Bulger:
When is justice served? Does it happen when an 89-year-old is beaten to death in his cell, on only the second day he’s been transferred to a different federal prison Is it justice when his eyeballs get gouged out and his tongue cut out of his mouth, because his alleged killer hated “rats” – or snitches? Does it matter that he himself had the reputation of being a brutal, heartless killer? Some will argue whether this guy’s end was justice. But he certainly had an exit that exemplifies the saying: “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”
James Joseph Bulger was a Boston-based gangster, charged with a staggering 19 murders over a long criminal career.
Best known as "Whitey", he played a very dangerous game of both sides of the fence, serving as an FBI informant, starting in 1975.
The FBI ignored Bulger's criminal activities in exchange for information about the inner workings of the Patriarca Mafia clan. But in 1994, after being tipped off that he was being targeted under a RICO indictment, Bulger skipped town.
After 16 years on the lam, a dozen of which he was listed on the FBI's ten most wanted list; he was finally caught on the other side of the country. He was picked up outside his apartment in Santa Monica, California, where the 83-year-old Bulger was posing as a senior citizen living with longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig.
The two were shipped back to Massachusetts where Greig pleaded guilty to a raft of charges, including harboring a fugitive. Whitey went on trial on June 12, 2013 for 32 counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion and complicity in those 19 murders.
Convicted on 31 counts on August 12, 2013, including involvement in eleven murders, Whitey was sentenced in November 2013 to two consecutive life terms, plus another five years.
Whitey was originally incarcerated in the federal penitentiary in Sumterville, Florida. But in October 2018, he was bicycled around to a prison in Oklahoma and then to the federal lockup in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. He arrived October 29th. He was found unresponsive in his cell the next morning, after being brutally attacked by other inmates just hours after his arrival.
In closing, two trivia points: The Jack Nicholson character in the film "The Departed"…
…was loosely based on Whitey Bulger.
And Johnny Depp played Bulger specifically in the 2015 film “Black Mass”. In this scene, he uses intimidation and terror – but no weapons – on an associate’s wife.
And while Whitey Bulger was breaking laws, his brother Billy was making them, as the former President of the Massachusetts State Senate.
William Bulger also served as President of the University of Massachusetts but was forced to resign in 2003 after refusing to testify about communications he'd had with his brother Whitey.