OH, A WISEGUY: Whitey Bulger and onetime girlfriend Teresa Stanley on a tour of Alcatraz, where he was once a con. The fugitive Boston mob boss was caught in 2011 and convicted yesterday. (
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BOSTON — James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted yesterday in a string of 11 killings and other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant.
The 83-year-old Bulger 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 in the Boston FBI and an overly cozy relationship with its underworld snitches.
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!”
Bulger was charged primarily with racketeering, including 33 criminal acts — among them 19 murders that he allegedly helped orchestrate or carried out himself during the 1970s and 1980s while he led the Winter Hill Gang, Boston’s ruthless Irish mob.
After 4 1/2 days of deliberations, the jury decided he took part in 11 of those murders, along with nearly all the other crimes.
Bulger could get life in prison at sentencing Nov. 13.
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 killed while giving a ride to an FBI informant.
“He’s guilty of murdering my husband. There’s nobody that said that,” his widow said. “It brings out a lot of emotion, and when it finally happens, it’s kind of hard.”
During the two-month trial, federal prosecutors portrayed Bulger as a coldblooded 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 take a nap while his underlings cleaned up.
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.
“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 — that he was about to be indicted.
For 16 years, Bulger was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. He was finally captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., where he had been living in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach with his longtime girlfriend.