BULGER TIMELINE
Key events in the life of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, who was convicted Monday of racketeering. for taking part in 11 slayings, and a slew of other crimes:
1956: 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 to serve part of his term.
1965: Whitey Bulger is released from prison. He becomes a top lieutenant to Somerville mobster Howie Winter, head of the Winter Hill Gang.
September 1975: Bulger cuts a deal with John Connolly to provide information on the Italian Mafia in exchange for protection from the FBI, according to testimony from gangster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. (Bulger strongly denied he was an informant.)
1977: Veteran agent John Morris is appointed to oversee Connolly and his underworld informants.
1979: After a former business associate implicates Bulger and Flemmi in a horse race-fixing scheme, FBI agents Connolly and Morris persuade federal prosecutors to leave the two out of the indictment. Twenty-one people are charged, including Winter, whose conviction paves the way for Bulger and Flemmi to assume control of the Winter Hill Gang.
Spring 1982: Bulger and Flemmi allegedly gun down a former henchman to prevent him from telling about a killing. Connolly files a report with the FBI saying rival gangsters made the hit.
December 1994: Bulger disappears on the eve of his indictment on racketeering charges. Indictment comes down in January 1995.
June 22, 2011: Bulger arrested in Santa Monica, Calif.
Aug. 12, 2013: Bulger is convicted. Sentencing is set for Nov. 13.
James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted Monday in a string of 11 killings and dozens of other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant.
Bulger, 83, stood silently and showed no reaction upon hearing the verdict, which brought to a close a case that not only transfixed the city with its grisly violence but exposed corruption inside the Boston FBI and an overly cozy relationship with its underworld snitches.
Bulger was charged primarily with racketeering, which listed 33 criminal acts — among them, 19 killings that he allegedly helped orchestrate or carried out himself during the 1970s and ’80s while he led the Winter Hill Gang, Boston’s ruthless Irish mob.
After 4½ days of deliberations, the federal jury decided he took part in 11 of those murders, along with nearly all the other crimes on the list, including acts of extortion, money-laundering and drug dealing. He was also found guilty of 30 other offenses, including possession of machine guns.
Bulger could get life in prison at sentencing Nov. 13. But given his age, even a modest term could amount to a life sentence for the slightly stooped, white-bearded Bulger.
As court broke up, Bulger turned to his relatives and gave them a thumbs-up. A woman in the gallery taunted him as he was led away, apparently imitating machine-gun fire as she yelled: “Rat-a-tat-tat, Whitey!”
Outside the courtroom, relatives of the victims hugged each other, the prosecutors and even defense attorneys.
Patricia Donahue wept, saying it was a relief to see Bulger convicted in the murder of her husband, Michael Donahue, who authorities say was an innocent victim who died in a hail of gunfire while giving a ride to an FBI informant marked for death by Bulger.
Thomas Donahue, who was 8 when his father was killed, said: “Thirty-one years of deceit, of cover-up of my father’s murder. Finally we have somebody guilty of it. Thirty-one years — that’s a long time.” He said that when he heard the verdict, “I wanted to jump up. I was like, ‘Damn right.’”
“Today is a day that many in this city thought would never come,” U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said. “This day of reckoning has been a long time in coming.” She added: “We hope that we stand here today to mark the end of an era that was very ugly in Boston’s history.”
Bulger attorney J.W. Carney Jr. said Bulger intends to appeal because the judge didn’t let him argue that he had been granted immunity for his crimes by a now-dead federal prosecutor.
But Carney said Bulger was pleased with the trial and its outcome, because “it was important to him that the government corruption be exposed, and important to him to see the deals the government was able to make with certain people.”
Prosecutors at the two-month trial portrayed Bulger as a cold-blooded, hands-on boss who killed anyone he saw as a threat, along with innocent people who happened to get in the way. Then, according to testimony, he would go off and take a nap while his underlings cleaned up.
Among other things, Bulger was accused of strangling two women with his bare hands, shooting two men in the head after chaining them to chairs and interrogating them for hours, and opening fire on two men as they left a South Boston restaurant.
Bulger skipped town in 1994 after being tipped off — by a retired FBI agent, John Connolly, it turned out — that he was about to be indicted.
He spent 16 years on the run and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list before he was finally captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif.
About the Author
