Whitey Bulger: "One Less Scumbag On This Earth"
UPDATED
Flipping on the street is supposed to be the end of a gangster's story, but for Whitey Bulger, it was only the start....
He ratted out rivals -- he murdered, he extorted, and he double-crossed, time and again. He (and partner Stephen Flemmi) killed women -- at least two.
When a tipoff told him it was time to face the music, he ran and hid and stole 16 more years, as a pretend human being. He'd certainly had lots of success pretending to be a gangster. And in the end, even after he was caught, Bulger strenuously denied ever being a federal informant.
Those who followed his exploits back in South Boston were not surprised at how this story ended.
“Anyone in criminal activity with him feels grossly betrayed that he was informing on them while he was supposedly their comrade and friend,” Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor from Boston who also once represented the family of one of Mr. Bulger’s murder victims, said. “And anyone committed to law enforcement wouldn’t consider him a legitimate informant, because he just manipulated law enforcement to carry out criminal activity — including murders.”
Bulger belonged in a separate category. Only Greg (The Grim Reaper) Scarpa, a made member of the Colombo crime family who flipped in 1960, before Joe Cago Valachi, could possibly be lumped with Whitey. (No Flemmi, who's still testifying, belongs there, too.) Scarpa also killed a woman, allegedly to protect a higher-up. Like Bulger Scarpa had a long history as an FBI informant who provided information about his Mafia rivals to help protect his own violent criminal enterprise.
Bulger may have gotten the punishment one would've feared most late at night when sleep was elusive and the darkness pressed too tightly. He could hide from the law for 16 years, but he couldn't hide from himself.
Or them, apparently....
Bulger was brutally killed in what seems to be a mob hit. Supposedly they even tried to carve his eyes out after beating him to a bloody dead pulp.
Now “(t)here’s one less scumbag on this earth,” as one victim of Bulger's violence said of him. Her husband had been gunned down by Bulger in 1982 on the Boston waterfront while he was driving Bulger.
“They say you die the way you live, you know? I’m glad that he’s dead, and I’m glad that he died the way he did.”
Billy St. Croix, whose sister was killed by Bulger and St. Croix’s father Stephen Flemmi, told the Globe he was surprised that Bulger had been placed in general population at a prison with Mafia members and associates among its incarcerated.
“He obviously made a lot of enemies,” he said. “I get it, but it doesn’t give me or my family any comfort. It doesn’t bring my sister back.”
Whitey’s insider knowledge of the Patriarcas—the New England crime family that the Angiulos were part of—was considered too valuable to keep locked in a cell. So he became an informant in a partnership that ended in the mid-1990s when a joint taskforce, operating independently of the FBI, targeted him. Only by then Bulger was one of America’s most wanted fugitives—eluding arrest until 2011...
(Meanwhile, the case expanded into Connecticut, where jai alai gambling venues were infiltrated by the Winter Hill Gang. While investigating unsolved gangland homicides -- the bodies really started piling up in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s -- a determination was made in 1999 that the Boston FBI bureau had been compromised. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh enlisted John Durham and others to get to work.)
The FBI’s tolerance extracted a grizzly toll.
During his crime spree, Whitey murdered 19 people. Among them was a 26-year-old named Debra Davis. Flemmi's longtime girlfriend had discovered that both Bulger and Flemmi were FBI informants.
Bulger was infuriated. Debra could report them to law enforcement and end their relationship with the FBI. She could end their lives too. Connolly was too great an asset to lose, so Flemmi conceded to Bulger’s demands to eliminate Debra. The two hatched a plan: Bulger would take Debra to the mall, then lure her to a designated location, whereupon Bulger would kill her.
Years later, in chilling detail, the Rifleman described how in 1981, Bulger allegedly orchestrated and carried out the murder, strangling her with his bare hands as he dragged her down a flight of stairs, and making Flemmi dig a grave along the Neponsit River.
Nineteen years later, her remains were found.
No charges have been announced in the violent attack. Fotios “Freddy” Geas and at least one other inmate had been placed in lockdown pending an investigation, a source has told the Boston Globe, Whitey 's hometown paper.
Geas reportedly "played an integral role" in the killing of the man called America’s most notorious gangster.
Bulger had been sent to the West Virginia facility after he was incarcerated at a Florida prison for several years.
His health reportedly was declining, prompting speculation that he was going to be moved to a federal medical facility.
Bulger was being held in the general population housing unit of the prison, which has come under scrutiny in recent months. Bulger is the third to die there recently -- two inmates were killed in fights, in September and April. One alleged reason is that this was due to the prison being understaffed.
After a federal jury convicted Bulger in 2013, he was sent to a high-security penitentiary in Arizona but because of an inappropriate relationship with a female psychologist in 2014, he was transferred to US Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Fla.
Bulger fled Boston just before his January 1995 racketeering indictment and was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list until his capture in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011.
He and girlfriend Catherine Greig had spent those 16 years posing as a retired couple.
They lived in a rent-controlled apartment.
It was located near a beach.
Walking distance...
Flipping on the street is supposed to be the end of a gangster's story, but for Whitey Bulger, it was only the start....
 |
| Bulger denied who he was until the end |
When a tipoff told him it was time to face the music, he ran and hid and stole 16 more years, as a pretend human being. He'd certainly had lots of success pretending to be a gangster. And in the end, even after he was caught, Bulger strenuously denied ever being a federal informant.
Those who followed his exploits back in South Boston were not surprised at how this story ended.
“Anyone in criminal activity with him feels grossly betrayed that he was informing on them while he was supposedly their comrade and friend,” Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor from Boston who also once represented the family of one of Mr. Bulger’s murder victims, said. “And anyone committed to law enforcement wouldn’t consider him a legitimate informant, because he just manipulated law enforcement to carry out criminal activity — including murders.”
Bulger belonged in a separate category. Only Greg (The Grim Reaper) Scarpa, a made member of the Colombo crime family who flipped in 1960, before Joe Cago Valachi, could possibly be lumped with Whitey. (No Flemmi, who's still testifying, belongs there, too.) Scarpa also killed a woman, allegedly to protect a higher-up. Like Bulger Scarpa had a long history as an FBI informant who provided information about his Mafia rivals to help protect his own violent criminal enterprise.
Bulger may have gotten the punishment one would've feared most late at night when sleep was elusive and the darkness pressed too tightly. He could hide from the law for 16 years, but he couldn't hide from himself.
Or them, apparently....
The Angiulos ran the Mafia from a tiny office in the North End from the 1960s to the 1980s. Gennaro “Jerry,” was the boss, Donato “Danny,” a capo; Michele “Mike,” an underling; and Francesco “Frank,” the bookkeeper.
The Boston Irish mob, aka the Winter Hill Gang was then run by Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi (though the gang's roots predated Bulger) who made an arrangement to work with the Angiulo brothers. The problem for the brothers was that Whitey and Flemmi had first begun working with the FBI and were high-echelon informants...
The two commenced snitching on the mob via FBI special agent John Connolly (now in prison), who'd hailed from the same South Boston neighborhood as Bulger. Bulger and Flemmi offered a detailed layout of Angiulo’s Prince Street headquarters, so the agents knew exactly where to place the bugs. ...
Bulger was brutally killed in what seems to be a mob hit. Supposedly they even tried to carve his eyes out after beating him to a bloody dead pulp.
Now “(t)here’s one less scumbag on this earth,” as one victim of Bulger's violence said of him. Her husband had been gunned down by Bulger in 1982 on the Boston waterfront while he was driving Bulger.
“They say you die the way you live, you know? I’m glad that he’s dead, and I’m glad that he died the way he did.”
Billy St. Croix, whose sister was killed by Bulger and St. Croix’s father Stephen Flemmi, told the Globe he was surprised that Bulger had been placed in general population at a prison with Mafia members and associates among its incarcerated.
“He obviously made a lot of enemies,” he said. “I get it, but it doesn’t give me or my family any comfort. It doesn’t bring my sister back.”
Whitey’s insider knowledge of the Patriarcas—the New England crime family that the Angiulos were part of—was considered too valuable to keep locked in a cell. So he became an informant in a partnership that ended in the mid-1990s when a joint taskforce, operating independently of the FBI, targeted him. Only by then Bulger was one of America’s most wanted fugitives—eluding arrest until 2011...
(Meanwhile, the case expanded into Connecticut, where jai alai gambling venues were infiltrated by the Winter Hill Gang. While investigating unsolved gangland homicides -- the bodies really started piling up in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s -- a determination was made in 1999 that the Boston FBI bureau had been compromised. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh enlisted John Durham and others to get to work.)
The FBI’s tolerance extracted a grizzly toll.
During his crime spree, Whitey murdered 19 people. Among them was a 26-year-old named Debra Davis. Flemmi's longtime girlfriend had discovered that both Bulger and Flemmi were FBI informants.
 |
| Debra Davis |
Bulger was infuriated. Debra could report them to law enforcement and end their relationship with the FBI. She could end their lives too. Connolly was too great an asset to lose, so Flemmi conceded to Bulger’s demands to eliminate Debra. The two hatched a plan: Bulger would take Debra to the mall, then lure her to a designated location, whereupon Bulger would kill her.
Years later, in chilling detail, the Rifleman described how in 1981, Bulger allegedly orchestrated and carried out the murder, strangling her with his bare hands as he dragged her down a flight of stairs, and making Flemmi dig a grave along the Neponsit River.
Nineteen years later, her remains were found.
After Bulger’s body was found, roadblocks went up around the prison complex, and the prison was put on lockdown.
No charges have been announced in the violent attack. Fotios “Freddy” Geas and at least one other inmate had been placed in lockdown pending an investigation, a source has told the Boston Globe, Whitey 's hometown paper.
Geas reportedly "played an integral role" in the killing of the man called America’s most notorious gangster.
Bulger had been sent to the West Virginia facility after he was incarcerated at a Florida prison for several years.
His health reportedly was declining, prompting speculation that he was going to be moved to a federal medical facility.
Bulger was being held in the general population housing unit of the prison, which has come under scrutiny in recent months. Bulger is the third to die there recently -- two inmates were killed in fights, in September and April. One alleged reason is that this was due to the prison being understaffed.
 |
| "Gangster" Whitey Bulger |
After a federal jury convicted Bulger in 2013, he was sent to a high-security penitentiary in Arizona but because of an inappropriate relationship with a female psychologist in 2014, he was transferred to US Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Fla.
Bulger fled Boston just before his January 1995 racketeering indictment and was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list until his capture in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011.
He and girlfriend Catherine Greig had spent those 16 years posing as a retired couple.
They lived in a rent-controlled apartment.
It was located near a beach.
Walking distance...
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