Mob boss Whitey Bulger ‘killed by fellow inmate with Mafia ties’ in US prison

Notorious US gangster James "Whitey" Bulger has been found dead behind bars allegedly killed by a fellow inmate with Mafia ties.

The former mob boss on Boston’s notorious south side was “whacked” after recently arriving at the high-security penitentiary USP Hazelton in West Virginia.

The 89-year-old, who was found dead yesterday, was convicted of killing at least 11 people and was serving a life sentence.

“The FBI will be conducting an investigation into the death of James Bulger. No other information will be released at this time,” Stacy Bishop, a spokeswoman for William J. Powell, the US attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, said in a statement.




Sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a fellow inmate with Mafia links was being investigated for the killing.

The feared former leader of the Winter Hill Gang was listed as an inmate at the prison after being transferred from a jail in Florida via one in Oklahoma City on Monday.

Before that, he was held at a facility in Tucson, Arizona.

Last week officials and his attorney declined to comment on why he was moved.

Bulger, the head of Boston’s Irish mob and an FBI informant, was serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2013 of a litany of gangland crimes in the 1970s and ’80s.

He was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in Santa Monica, California.

His case became an embarrassment for the bureau as corrupt agents accepted bribes and protected him.



The story was the basis for the 2015 Johnny Depp film "Black Mass."

In October 2016, the Supreme Court turned down Bulger’s appeal of his racketeering convictions and life sentence.

At one point in the hunt for Bulger the only man with a higher price on his head was Osama bin Laden, yet for 16 years he managed to evade the FBI at every single turn.

That was until 2011 when a cat ultimately led agents to America’s most feared mobster after a friend of his partner, Carol Grieg, recognised him on television.

The two women’s friendship was formed over the feeding of a neglected cat called Tiger.

Bulger, who inspired Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed, once boasted to having “killed more than 40 men”.

During his trial five years ago, the families of his victims were told by prosecutors to prepare for the most harrowing details as his former lieutenants, all murderers themselves, prepare to give evidence against him.

In his 60 year reign, Bulger’s brutality knew no bounds pulling out the teeth and tongues of his victims before they were killed.



One brutal case left one man pleading with Bulger to kill him as he was in so much pain.

Born in September 1929 to a stevedore father and an Irish American mother Bulger’s life of crime began when he was aged 14-years-old.

Whereas his brothers excelled in school, young James, or Jimmy to his friends, got his education on the streets.

After a brief spell in borstal and much to his struggling parent’s relief, he joined the US Air Force but life in the military failed to straighten him out.

Within years of leaving in 1952, he was sentenced to federal prison for armed robbery and hijacking.

But faced with the prospect of 25 years inside after being told he could get his sentence reduced Bulger volunteered to take part in an experiment by the CIA to investigate the effects of LSD.

It is said the tests had a lasting affecting on him making him prone to bouts of insomnia, violent nightmares and hallucinations.

The nine years behind bars, including a stint in Alcatraz, provided Bulger with a criminal education.

He read books about military tactics and strategies which he would later use in the countless killings he was responsible for.

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