James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the most-wanted fugitives in the U.S., was convicted Monday in a string of 11 killings and 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 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 murders 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. The racketeering charge also included acts of extortion, conspiracy, money-laundering and drug dealing.
After 4{ days of deliberations, the jury decided he took part in 11 of those murders, along with nearly all the other crimes, as well as a laundry list of other counts, 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. His attorney said Bulger would appeal.
One woman in the gallery taunted Bulger as he was being 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 as the verdict was read, 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.
During the two-month trial, federal prosecutors portrayed him as a cold-blooded, hands-on boss who killed anyone he saw as a threat, along with innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then, according to testimony, he would go off and take a nap while his underlings handled the cleanup.
Bulger, the model for Jack Nicholson's sinister crime boss in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie “The Departed,” was seen for years as a kind of benevolent tough guy who bought Thanksgiving turkeys for fellow residents of working-class South Boston and kept hard drugs out of the neighborhood. But that image was shattered when authorities started digging up bodies.
“This is not some Robin Hood story about a guy who kept angel dust and heroin out of Southie,” prosecutor Fred Wyshak told the jury in closing arguments.
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.
During 16 years on the run, Bulger was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. He was finally captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, California, where he had been living in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for helping Bulger evade the law.
Bulger's younger brother, William Bulger, who rose to become one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts as state Senate president, was forced to resign as president of the University of Massachusetts system in 2003 after he testified before a congressional committee investigating the FBI's ties to his brother and acknowledged receiving a call from him after he fled Boston.
Whitey Bulger's disappearance proved a major embarrassment to the FBI when it came out at court hearings and trials that Bulger had been an informant from 1975 to 1990, feeding the bureau information on the rival New England Mafia as well as members of his own gang while he continued to kill and intimidate.
Those proceedings also revealed that Bulger and his gang paid off several FBI agents and state and Boston police officers, dispensing Christmas envelopes of cash and cases of fine wine to get information on search warrants, wiretaps and investigations and stay one step ahead of the law.
At his trial, Bulger's lawyers tried to turn the tables on the government, detailing the corruption inside the FBI and accusing prosecutors of offering absurdly generous deals to three former Bulger loyalists to testify against him.
The defense portrayed the three key witnesses _ gangster Stephen The Rifleman” Flemmi, hit man John Martorano and Bulger protege Kevin Weeks _ as pathological liars who pinned their own crimes on Bulger so they could get reduced sentences.
Bulger's lawyers argued that Connolly, Bulger's supposed handler inside the FBI, fabricated Bulger's thick informant file to cover up his corrupt relationship with the gangster and advance his own career. At the time, bringing down the Mafia was a major priority for the FBI.
Before the trial, Bulger's lawyers said he would take the stand and detail the corruption inside the FBI. Bulger planned to argue he was given immunity for all his crimes by a now-dead federal prosecutor. But Judge Denise Casper disallowed such a defense, and Bulger did not testify.
“I feel that I've been choked off from having an opportunity to give an adequate defense,” he complained to the judge as the trial wound down. “My thing is, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't get a fair trial, and this is a sham, and do what youse want with me. That's it. That's my final word.” (AP)
