James Whitey Bulger

Bulger was a troublemaker as a child, and even lived out the childhood fantasy of running away with the circus when he was 10 years old.

Bulger was first arrested when he was 14 years old, for stealing, and his criminal record continued to escalate from there.

As a youth, he was arrested for larceny, forgery, assault and battery, and armed robbery and served five years in a juvenile reformatory.

Upon his release, he joined the Air Force where he served time in military jail for assault before being arrested for going AWOL.

Nonetheless, he received an honorable discharge in After returning to Boston, Bulger embarked upon a life of crime. His offenses grew increasingly large in scale, culminating in a string of bank robberies from Rhode Island to Indiana.

In June , he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. He ended up serving nine years, including stints in Atlanta, Alcatraz and Leavenworth.

Regardless, after he did his time, Bulger returned to Boston to resume his life of crime. After Killeen was gunned down in , Bulger joined the Winter Hill Gang, where he quickly rose up in the ranks.

By , Bulger had become a preeminent figure in Boston's organized crime scene. That year, Howie Winter, the boss of the Winter Hill Gang, was sent to prison for fixing horse races, and Bulger assumed the gang's leadership.

Over the next 16 years, he came to control a significant portion of Boston's drug dealing, bookmaking and loansharking operations.

During this same time from to , unbeknownst to even his closest associates, Bulger was an FBI informant.

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Boston, MA. At one point, Whitey wrote that he developed a ' morbid fear of LSD ' and felt if he had any more of it, ' it would push me over the edge.

In , while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project that was researching a cure for schizophrenia.

For our participation, we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project. Retrieved September 22, Archived from the original on September 23, Retrieved August 17, Seelye August 23, New York: W.

United States". October 6, New York Times. Archived from the original on June 10, Similar coercion, just about everyone figured, accounted for Whitey's lottery score.

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The Seattle Times. September 3, Archived from the original on July 20, Retrieved September 3, Bulger, the former head of the notorious Winter Hill Gang and an FBI informant, fled in January , after being tipped by a former Boston FBI agent that he was about to be indicted on federal racketeering charges.

He was later charged in connection with 19 murders. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on August 7, June 24, Retrieved October 9, October 10, Retrieved December 2, The Moth.

Retrieved November 22, Archived from the original on October 31, Retrieved October 30, Retrieved September 30, James 'Whitey' Bulger, the Boston mobster arrested in California last month after 16 years on the run, pleaded not guilty to 48 charges including racketeering, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury, and weapons violations.

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James A. Johnston — Edwin B. Swope — Paul J. Madigan — Olin G. Blackwell — Cecil J. Shuttleworth — Edward J. Miller — Paul J. Blackwell — Arthur M.

Dollison — Richard J. Willard — Acting on a tip from the FBI agent, Bulger lured suspected informers to a house in South Boston, chained them to a chair for interrogation, shot them in the head and buried them in the basement.

In , Connolly gave Bulger advance warning that state and federal law enforcement officers were poised to arrest him. The crime boss fled Boston in advance of a January racketeering indictment and became Public Enemy Number One after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

While his informer was on the run, Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Reported sightings came in from around the world until his capture in a rent-controlled apartment blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California, where he lived with his long-time girlfriend.

Two years later, a jury found Bulger guilty of participating in 11 murders, and he was imprisoned with two life sentences. During the trial, Bulger acknowledged his involvement with racketeering, gambling, loansharking and drug dealing—but never of being an informer.

Bulger was taken to U. Two inmates were killed there during separate altercations earlier this year. Politics Coronavirus U. Follow NBC News. Pete Williams.

Tom Winter. Rich Schapiro.