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James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. (; September 3, 1929 – October 30, 2018) was an American organized crime boss and FBI informant who led the Winter Hill Gang in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city directly northwest of Boston. Federal prosecutors indicted Bulger for nineteen murders based on the grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates. On December 23, 1994, Bulger fled the Boston area and went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. Bulger remained at large for sixteen years.
Although adamantly denied by Bulger, the FBI admitted that he served as an informant for several years starting in 1975. Bulger provided information about the inner workings of the Patriarca crime family, his Italian-American Mafia rivals based in Rhode Island. In return, Connolly, as Bulger's FBI handler, ensured that the Winter Hill Gang effectively went ignored. Beginning in 1997, the news media exposed various criminal misconduct by officials tied to Bulger from federal, state, and local law enforcement. This caused great embarrassment to each of these agencies, but none more so than the FBI.Bulger was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1999, and was considered the most wanted person on the list behind Osama bin Laden. He was finally apprehended along with his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig outside an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California on June 22, 2011. By then he was 81 years old. Bulger and Greig were then promptly extradited to Boston and taken under heavy guard to the United States Courthouse, which had to be partially closed for their arrival. 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 on June 12, 2013. He was tried on 32 counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion and weapons charges, including complicity in nineteen murders. On August 12, Bulger was found guilty on 31 counts, including both racketeering charges, and was found to have been involved in eleven murders. On November 14, he received two consecutive life sentences plus five years for his crimes by U.S. District 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 murdered by inmates on October 30, 2018, within hours of his arrival at Hazelton.

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