Notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger is KILLED behind bars by ‘fellow inmate with Mafia ties’, shortly after being transferred to federal prison in West Virginia to continue serving life for 11 murders
- James Joseph ‘Whitey’ Bulger Jr, 89, was killed in prison overnight on Tuesday
- Bulger had recently been transferred to USP Hazelton in West Virginia
- He was slain inside the prison in Bruceton Mills shortly after the transfer
- Sources tell DailyMail.com Bulger was about to dish on FBI informant program
- Fellow inmate with connections to the Mafia is under investigation in the murder
- Bulger was notoriously said to be an FBI informant but had always denied it
- Correction officers’ union at the prison complained of chronic under-staffing
- There were at least three homicides at Hazelton in recent months, union says
- Bulger was at the top of the FBI’s most wanted for 16 years until his 2011 arrest
- Character Frank Costello in the 2006 film The Departed was based on Bulger
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger has reportedly been killed in a federal prison in West Virginia
Boston gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger Jr. has been killed behind bars shortly after he was transferred to a federal prison in West Virginia. He was 89.
Bulger was found dead overnight on Tuesday at USP Hazelton, a high-security prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Bruceton Mills.
It emerged in Bulger’s 2013 trial that he had served as an FBI informant as far back as 1975, though he always denied the claim.
Law enforcement sources tell DailyMail.com that Whitey had been talking about outing people in the FBI – people in the top echelon of the informant program.
The sources said he hadn’t even been processed at the West Virginia facility when he was killed. But someone who knew he was being transferred put the word out – the killer had to know he was coming.
It may not be a coincidence that Rep. Stephen Lynch is from Southie, Bulger’s old turf. The Massachusetts Democrat last year introduced the Confidential Informant Accountability Act – which calls for congressional oversight into the selection and use of confidential informants. It’s possible that Bulger was set to open up to someone on Lynch’s team with claims of abuses in the program, and word got out.
Bulger’s brother John told the Boston Globe on Tuesday that the family had not yet been notified of his death.
Meanwhile, a fellow inmate with Mafia connections is being investigated in the homicide, three sources briefed on the investigation told the Globe.
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, right, is seen after a hearing in 2011 as he is escorted from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to a waiting vehicle at an airport in Plymouth, Massachusetts
The entrance to USP Hazelton in West Virginia is seen in a file photo. Bulger had recently been transferred to the facility when he was killed
-
The man who brought down the New England Mafia: Federal…
‘Whitey’ Bulger refuses to testify for ‘innocent man’…
Share this article
It is unclear who the suspect might be. Notably, mobster Paul Weadick was sent to Hazelton this summer after his murder conviction alongside Francis ‘Cadillac Frank’ Salemme – Bulger’s codefendant in a sweeping federal racketeering indictment in 1999.
Salamme and Weadick were convicted in June of the 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro, a nightclub owner in South Boston.
Bulger’s right-hand man, Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, was the star witness in the prosecution of Salamme and Weadick – though Flemmi also testified against Bulger himself in 2013.
Crime boss Bulger was convicted in 2013 of killing at least 11 people and was serving a life sentence at the time of his death.
He was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in Santa Monica, California.
Bulger arrived at Hazelton on Monday, and was found unresponsive at the prison at 8.20am on Tuesday, the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement
‘Life-saving measures were initiated immediately by responding staff. Mr. Bulger was subsequently pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner,’ the agency said.
The BOP said that no other staff or inmates were injured and that an investigation was underway.
Boston-based reporter Michele McPhee was the first to break news that Bulger had been killed.
Bulger is pictured left and right in undated photos. He was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in Santa Monica, California.
Richard Heldreth, the president of the corrections officers’ union at Hazelton, told WVNews that a male inmate had been slain there overnight, but was unable to immediately confirm the inmate’s identity.
Bulger had recently been moved Hazelton from a prison in Florida after a stint in a transfer facility in Oklahoma City.
Bureau of Prisons officials and his attorney declined last week to comment on why he was being moved.
In the past three months, there have been three homicides at Hazelton, with the officers’ union blaming chronic under-staffing.
‘We are very understaffed,’ the union president told WPRI12.
Bulger was born in Boston on September 3, 1929, the son of a longshoreman and his first-generation Irish immigrant wife.
Bulger poses for a mugshot on his arrival at the Federal Penitentiary at Alcatraz on November 16, 1959 in San Francisco, California. Reports have emerged the gangster was slain in prison
Whitey Bulger: Life and crimes of a mob kingpin
Sept. 3, 1929: James Bulger is born to Irish immigrant parents living in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. He is the second of six children. His shock of platinum blonde hair earns him the nickname ‘Whitey.’
1956: Whitey Bulger is sentenced to federal prison for bank robbery. After he’s suspected of plotting an escape from one prison, he’s transferred to Alcatraz.
1960: Bulger’s younger brother, William, is elected to the state House of Representatives. John Connolly, a childhood friend from South Boston, works on the campaign.
1965: Bulger is released from prison returns to Boston. He becomes a top underling to local mobster Howie Winter, boss of the Winter Hill Gang.
1970: William Bulger is elected to the state Senate.
1975: Bulger cuts a deal with Connolly – now a Boston-based FBI agent – to provide information on the Italian Mafia in exchange for protection.
1978: William Bulger becomes president of the state Senate.
1981: Roger Wheeler, owner of World Jai Alai, a gambling enterprise from which Bulger was skimming money, is shot between the eyes in the parking lot of his country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1982: Bulger and Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi gun down a former henchman in broad daylight on a South Boston street to silence him over the Wheeler murder. Connolly files a report with the FBI saying rival gangsters made the hit.
July 1982: Flemmi and Bulger order a hit on John Callahan, the former president of World Jai Alai.
January 1995: Bulger disappears on the eve of his indictment on racketeering charges.
1997: The FBI, under court order, admits that Bulger was a ‘top echelon’ informant launching a federal probe into the agency’s corrupt ties to its mob informants.
June 22, 2011: Bulger is arrested in Santa Monica, CA, with girlfriend Catherine Grieg.
Aug 12, 2013: Bulger is found guilty of a raft of racketeering charges, including his role in 11 murders.
Nov 13 2013: Bulger, aged 84 , is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years. Before announcing her sentence, the judge tells Bulger that the ‘scope, callousness and depravity of your crimes are almost unfathomable.’ She says they are made ‘all the more heinous because they were all about money.’
Johnny Depp (above) portrayed James ‘Whitey’ Bulger in the 2015 film Black Mass
The young crook was arrested as young as age 14, in 1943, when he began running with a street gang called the Shamrocks and was charged with larceny.
Mob films inspired by Whitey Bulger
Black Mass: Johnny Depp portrayed Bulger during his years as an FBI informant.
The Departed: Jack Nicholson’s character Frank Costello was loosely based on Bulger
Police gave young Bulger the nickname ‘Whitey’ early in his criminal career, a reference to his blond hair. Bulger is said to have hated the monicker, but it stuck.
Following a stint in the Air Force, Bulger served his first federal prison sentence starting in 1956 on armed robbery and truck hijacking charges.
Bulger was serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2013 of a litany of crimes, including participating in 11 murders.
The son of one of Bulger’s victims said he was glad to hear the news of the gangster’s death.
‘I’m surprised and pleased. I didn’t think anyone was going to get to kill him. I thought he would die an old man in jail,’ Tommy Donohue told Newsweek.
‘This is happy news for our family.’
View of the door of the apartment 303 of the Princess Eugenia building in Santa Monica, California on June 23, 2011, where James ‘Whitey’ Bulger was arrested the day prior
A 2011 photo hows bundles of cash seized from Whitey Bulger’s apartment in Santa Monica, California, following his arrest. A cache of weapons including a number of handguns, an assault rifle and a sawed-off shotgun were also found during the search
Source: Read Full Article