| The FBI 10 Most Wanted Poster page for Whitey Bulger lists him as captured shortly after his arrest was announced. (FBI/Associated Press) |
A notorious Boston gangster on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list for his alleged role in 19 murders, was captured Wednesday near Los Angeles after living on the run for 16 years, authorities said.
James (Whitey) Bulger, 81, was arrested along with his longtime girlfriend, 60-year-old Catherine Greig, in the early evening at a residence in Santa Monica, said a law enforcement official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The arrest was based on a tip from the recent publicity campaign that federal authorities had regenerated, according to the official.
The two were arrested without incident, the FBI said. The FBI had been conducting a surveillance operation in the area where the arrest was made, Santa Monica police Sgt. Rudy Flores said.
FBI agents still swarmed around Bulger's building late Wednesday, hours after the arrests in a neighbourhood of two- and three-storey apartment buildings. Bulger lived on the third floor of The Princess Eugenia, a three-storey, 28-unit building of one and two-bedroom apartments three blocks from a bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.
Barbara Gluck lives on the same floor as Bulger and Greig. She said she didn't know their names but recognized them after she heard news of their arrest from photos on the internet.
Gluck described Greig as "sweet and lovely" and said they would have "girl talk" when they ran into each other in the building. Bulger became angry whenever he saw the two of them talking, and would say, "Stop talking to her," Gluck said.
"He was nasty," she added. "At one point, she [Greig] said he [Bulger] has a rage issue," Gluck said.
Bulger was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang when he fled in January 1995 after being tipped by a former Boston FBI agent that he was about to be indicted. Bulger was a top-echelon FBI informant.
Embarrassment for FBI
Over the years, the FBI battled a public perception that it had not tried very hard to find Bulger, who became a huge source of embarrassment for the agency after the extent of his crimes and the FBI's role in overlooking them became public.
Prosecutors said he went on the run after being warned by John Connolly Jr., an FBI agent who had made Bulger an FBI informant 20 years earlier. Connolly was convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for protecting Bulger and his cohort, Stephen (The Rifleman) Flemmi, also an FBI informant.
Bulger provided the Boston FBI with information on his gang's main rival, the New England Mob, in an era when bringing down the Mafia was one of the FBI's top national priorities. But the Boston FBI office was sharply criticized when the extent of Bulger's alleged crimes and his cozy relationship with the FBI became public in the late 1990s.
Along with Flemmi, he led the violent Winter Hill Gang, a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets in the Boston area. U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern said in 2000 that the two were "responsible for a reign of intimidation and murder that spanned 25 years."
The government has connected Bulger to a series of ruthless killings. One victim was shot between the eyes in a parking lot at his country club in Oklahoma. Another was gunned down in broad daylight on a South Boston street to prevent him from talking about the killing in Oklahoma. Others were taken out for running afoul of Bulger's gambling enterprises.
He has been the subject of several books and was an inspiration for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film The Departed.
During his years on the run, the FBI received reported sightings of Bulger and Greig from all over the United States and parts of Europe. In many of those sightings, investigators could not confirm whether it was actually Bulger who was spotted or simply a lookalike.
But in September 2002, the FBI received the most reliable tip in three years when a British businessman who had met Bulger eight years earlier said he spotted Bulger on a London street.
After the sighting, the FBI's multiagency violent fugitive task force in Boston and inspectors from New Scotland Yard scoured London hotels, internet cafes and gyms in search of Bulger. The FBI also released an updated sketch, using the businessman's description of Bulger as tan, white-haired and sporting a gray goatee.
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