Whitey Bulger
James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. was an American organized crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish mob group based in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston. On December 23, 1994, Bulger went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. He remained at large for sixteen years. After his 2011 capture, federal prosecutors tried Bulger for nineteen murders based on grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates.
Although he adamantly denied it, the FBI stated that Bulger had served as an informant for several years starting in 1975, providing information about the inner workings of the Patriarca crime family, his Italian-American Mafia rivals based in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. In return, Connolly, as Bulger's FBI handler, ensured that the Winter Hill Gang was effectively ignored. Beginning in 1997, press reports exposed various instances of criminal misconduct by federal, state and local officials with ties to Bulger, causing embarrassment to several government agencies, especially the FBI.
Five years after his flight from the Boston area, Bulger was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list; he was considered the most wanted person on the list behind Osama bin Laden. Another twelve years passed before he was apprehended along with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, outside an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California. Bulger and Greig were extradited to Boston and taken to court under heavy guard. In June 2012, Greig pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud and conspiracy to commit identity fraud, receiving a sentence of eight years in prison. Bulger declined to seek bail and remained in custody.
Bulger's trial began in June 2013. He was tried on thirty-two counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion and weapons charges, including complicity in nineteen murders. On August 12, Bulger was found guilty on thirty-one counts, including both racketeering charges, and was found to have been involved in eleven murders. On November 14, he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years by U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper. Bulger was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Florida.
Bulger was transferred to several facilities in October 2018; first to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma and then to the United States Penitentiary, Hazelton, near Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. Bulger, who was in a wheelchair, was beaten to death by inmates on October 30, 2018, within hours of his arrival at Hazelton. In 2022, Fotios Geas, Paul DeCologero and Sean McKinnon were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Bulger's death.
Early life
Whitey Bulger's father, James Joseph Bulger Sr., hailed from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, the son of Irish parents. After settling in Everett, Massachusetts, he married Jane Veronica "Jean" McCarthy, a first-generation Irish immigrant. The second of six children, James Joseph Bulger Jr., was born on September 3, 1929. The family moved to Boston shortly after his birth.Bulger's father worked as a union laborer and occasional longshoreman. The family fell into poverty after he lost his arm in an industrial accident. In May 1938, the Mary Ellen McCormack Housing Project was opened in South Boston, an insular, working-class Irish American neighborhood. The Bulger family moved into the housing project and the children grew up there. While his younger siblings, William Bulger and John P. Bulger, excelled at school, James Bulger Jr. was drawn into street life.
Early in his criminal career, local police gave Bulger the nickname "Whitey" because of his blond hair. Bulger hated the name; he preferred to be called "Jim", "Jimmy" or even "Boots". The last nickname came from his habit of wearing cowboy boots, in which he used to hide a switchblade.
Early criminal career
Bulger developed a reputation as a thief and street fighter fiercely loyal to South Boston. This led to him meeting more experienced criminals and finding more lucrative opportunities. In 1943, fourteen-year-old Bulger was arrested and charged with larceny. By then he had joined a street gang known as the "Shamrocks" and would eventually be arrested for assault, forgery and armed robbery. Bulger was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for these offenses.Shortly after his release in April 1948, Bulger joined the United States Air Force where he earned his high school diploma and trained as a mechanic. Despite the regimented military life, he had not reformed. Bulger did time in military prison for several assaults and was arrested by Air Force police in 1950 for going absent without leave. In June 1951, while stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, he was arrested and charged with rape after being caught in a hotel with a fifteen-year-old girl. He had also been arrested several months prior after getting into bar fights. Nevertheless, Bulger received an honorable discharge in 1952 and returned to Massachusetts.
Prison
In 1956, Bulger served his first term in federal prison at Atlanta Penitentiary for armed robbery and truck hijacking. He later told mobster Kevin Weeks that while there, he was used as a human test subject in the CIA-sponsored MKUltra program. Bulger later complained that the inmates had been "recruited by deception" and were told they were helping to find "a cure for schizophrenia," when in fact they were being used to research mind control. Bulger's story was later confirmed when CIA documentation emerged.Bulger and eighteen other inmates, all of whom had volunteered in exchange for reduced sentences, were given LSD and other drugs over an eighteen-month period. Bulger later described his experience as "nightmarish" and said it took him "to the depths of insanity," writing in his notebooks that he heard voices and feared being "committed for life" if he divulged his ordeal to anyone.
In 1959, Bulger was briefly transferred to maximum security at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in California. During his time at Alcatraz, he kept in shape through weightlifting and took advantage of educational opportunities afforded to inmates. He completed various correspondence courses including typing, bookkeeping and business law. He also became a voracious reader, devouring numerous books on poetry, politics and military history. Later in his sentence, Bulger was transferred to Leavenworth Penitentiary and, in 1963, to Lewisburg Penitentiary. Bulger's third petition for parole, in 1965, was granted after he had served nine years in prison. He would not be arrested again for forty-six years.
Killeen–Mullen War
After his release from prison, Bulger worked as a janitor and construction worker before becoming a bookmaker and loan shark under mobster Donald Killeen, whose gang, the Killeens, had dominated South Boston for over twenty years. The Killeens were led by three brothers—Donnie, Kenny and Eddie—along with Billy O'Sullivan and Jack Curran. Their base was the Transit Café in South Boston, which later became Whitey's Triple O's.In 1971, Kenny Killeen, the youngest of the Killeen brothers, allegedly shot and mauled Michael "Mickey" Dwyer, a member of the rival Mullen Gang, during a brawl at the Transit Café. A gang war resulted, leading to a string of killings throughout Boston and the surrounding suburbs. The Killeens quickly found themselves outgunned and outmaneuvered by the younger Mullens. It was during the war that Bulger set out to commit what Weeks describes as Bulger's first murder, of Mullen member Paul McGonagle. However, Bulger instead executed McGonagle's law-abiding brother Donald in a case of mistaken identity.
According to former Mullen boss Patrick Nee, McGonagle ambushed and murdered O'Sullivan on the assumption he was the one responsible for his brother's killing. Bulger, realizing he was on the losing side, is alleged to have secretly approached Howie Winter, the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, and claimed he could end the war by murdering the Killeen leadership. Shortly thereafter, on May 13, 1972, Donald Killeen was gunned down outside his home in Framingham, Massachusetts. Although the killing was attributed to Bulger, Nee later disputed this, saying that Donald Killeen was murdered by Mullen enforcers James Mantville and Tommy King, not Bulger.
Bulger and the Killeens fled Boston, fearing they would be next. Nee arranged for the war to be mediated by Winter and Joseph "J.R." Russo, a caporegime in the Patriarca crime family. In a sit-down at Chandler's nightclub in Boston's South End, the Mullens were represented by Nee and King, and the Killeens by Bulger. The two gangs joined forces, with Winter as overall boss. Soon afterward, the surviving Killeen brother, Kenny, was jogging in the City Point section of South Boston when Bulger called him over to a car and said, "It's over. You're out of business. No more warnings." Kenny would later testify that Winter Hill enforcers Stephen Flemmi and John Martorano were in the car with Bulger.
Winter Hill Gang
After the 1972 truce, Bulger and the Mullens were in control of South Boston's criminal underworld. FBI Special Agent Dennis Condon noted in his log in September 1973 that Bulger and Nee had been heavily shaking down the neighborhood's bookmakers and loan sharks. Over the years that followed, Bulger began to remove opposition by persuading Winter to sanction the killings of those who "stepped out of line." In a 2004 interview, Winter recalled that the highly intelligent Bulger "could teach the devil tricks." During this era, Bulger's victims included Mullen veterans McGonagle, King and James "Spike" O'Toole.According to Weeks:
As a criminal, he made a point of only preying upon criminals... And when things couldn't be worked out to his satisfaction with these people, after all the other options had been explored, he wouldn't hesitate to use violence.... Tommy King, in 1975, was one example.... Tommy's problems began when he and Jimmy had worked in Triple O's. Tommy, who was a Mullins, made a fist. And Jimmy saw it.... A week later, Tommy was dead. Tommy's second and last mistake had been getting into the car with Jimmy, Stevie, and Johnny Martorano.... Later that same night, Jimmy killed Buddy Leonard and left him in Tommy's car on Pilsudski Way in the Old Colony projects to confuse the authorities.
In 1974, Bulger formed a partnership with Flemmi as enforcers for the Winter Hill Gang. As the 1970s progressed, the gang partnered with Anthony "Fat Tony" Ciulla in a lucrative horse race-fixing scheme in which mobsters bribed and threatened jockeys and drugged horses in order to predetermine the outcomes of races across the East Coast. Bulger and Flemmi's role in the scheme involved placing bets with bookmakers around the country.