Age, Biography, and Wiki
James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. was born on September 3, 1929, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a prominent figure in organized crime, leading the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish mob group based in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Boston. Bulger's criminal career spanned decades, involving extortion, drug trafficking, and murder.
| Occupation | Criminals |
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| Date of Birth | 3 September 1929 |
| Age | 95 Years |
| Birth Place | Everett, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Virgo |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 30 October, 2018 |
| Died Place | N/A |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited information available about Whitey Bulger's physical measurements. However, he was known to be of average height and weight during his active years.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Bulger was in a long-term relationship with Catherine Greig, whom he met in the 1970s. Greig accompanied Bulger during his time in hiding from 1995 until his arrest in 2011.
Five years after his flight from the Boston area, Bulger was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list; he was considered the most wanted person on the list behind Osama bin Laden. Another twelve years passed before he was apprehended along with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, outside an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California. Bulger and Greig were extradited to Boston and taken to court under heavy guard. 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.
Whitey Bulger's father, James Joseph Bulger Sr., hailed from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, with Irish parents. After settling in Everett, Massachusetts, he married Jane Veronica "Jean" McCarthy, a first-generation Irish immigrant. The family moved to Boston shortly after his birth.
Bulger's father worked as a union laborer and occasional longshoreman. He lost his arm in an industrial accident and the family was reduced to poverty. In May 1938, the Mary Ellen McCormack Housing Project was opened in the neighborhood of South Boston. The Bulger family moved in and the children grew up there. While his younger siblings, William Bulger and John P. Bulger, excelled at school, James Bulger Jr. was drawn into street life.
FBI supervisor John Morris was put in charge of the Organized Crime Squad at the FBI's Boston field office in December 1977. Morris not only proved himself unable to rein in Connolly's protection of Bulger, he even began assisting him. Under pressure from superiors to cultivate informants who could be used against the Mafia, Connolly and Morris falsely portrayed Bulger and Flemmi as invaluable sources in order to advance their careers. Connolly and Morris convinced their superiors that Bulger and Flemmi were indispensable as informants in their crusade to take down the Patriarca family, and the FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi by shielding them from prosecution for crimes they had committed. In reality, however, Bulger and Flemmi were far less valuable as informants than their handlers purported them to be. In exchange for the agents' protection, Bulger and Flemmi bribed Connolly and Morris during frequent meetings. By 1982, Morris was "thoroughly compromised", to the point of having Bulger purchase plane tickets for his then-girlfriend Debbie Noseworthy to visit him in Georgia while he was being trained for drug investigations. Even after 1983, when Morris was transferred to head up the Boston FBI's anti-drug task force, he remained an accomplice to Connolly and Bulger.
In 1988, Bulger's status as an FBI informant was revealed publicly when the Globe's "Spotlight" team, led by journalist Gerard O'Neill, published a series of articles detailing the numerous crimes committed and attributed to him while nominally under the protection of the Bureau. Rumors had abounded long before then, since it was unheard of for a criminal of Bulger's stature to go years without a single arrest. Prompted by his guilty conscience, Morris, speaking as an anonymous source, told the Globe of the "special relationship" between Bulger and the FBI which helped the Bureau infiltrate the Patriarca family. Bulger denied that there was any truth to the articles, telling his underlings that the Globe had fabricated the story. Given his street credibility, Bulger's gang dismissed the articles as false.
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Net Worth and Salary
Bulger's net worth was estimated to be around $50 million before he fled from law enforcement in the mid-1990s. However, prosecutors later claimed that his earnings from criminal activities totaled $25,162,800. At the time of his arrest in 2011, $822,000 in cash was found hidden in his Santa Monica apartment.
Career, Business, and Investments
Bulger's career in organized crime was marked by his involvement in extortion, particularly targeting drug dealers. He enforced a policy requiring all narcotics traffickers in South Boston to pay tribute to the Winter Hill Gang. Additionally, he was involved in importing cocaine into Boston from Florida and utilized his connections with corrupt FBI agents to maintain control over the local drug trade.
Bulger's business ventures were largely illicit, focusing on drug trafficking and extortion. There is no record of legitimate business investments.
Early in his criminal career, local police gave Bulger the nickname "Whitey" because of his blond hair. Bulger hated the name; he preferred to be called "Jim", "Jimmy", or even "Boots". The last nickname came from his habit of wearing cowboy boots, in which he used to hide a switchblade.
In 1959, Bulger was briefly transferred to maximum security at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in California. During his time at Alcatraz, he kept in shape through weightlifting and took advantage of educational opportunities afforded to inmates. He completed various correspondence courses including typing, bookkeeping, and business law. He also became a voracious reader, devouring numerous books on poetry, politics, and military history. Later in his sentence, he was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and, in 1963, to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. Bulger's third petition for parole, in 1965, was granted after he had served nine years in prison. He would not be arrested again for 46 years.
Bulger and the Killeens fled Boston, fearing they would be next. Nee arranged for the dispute to be mediated by Winter and Joseph "J.R." Russo, a caporegime in the Patriarca crime family. In a sit-down at Chandler's nightclub in Boston's South End, the Mullens were represented by Nee and King, and the Killeens by Bulger. The two gangs joined forces, with Winter as overall boss. Soon afterward, Donald's sole surviving brother, Kenny, was jogging in Boston's City Point neighborhood when Bulger called him over to a car and said, "It's over. You're out of business. No more warnings." Kenny would later testify that Winter Hill enforcers Stephen Flemmi and John Martorano were in the car with Bulger.
In 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) approached Bulger and attempted to recruit him as an informant in an ongoing effort to gain information on the Patriarca crime family. FBI Special Agent John "Zip" Connolly, who had grown up in Bulger's neighborhood, was assigned to make the pitch. However, Connolly failed to win Bulger's trust. Three years later, Bulger partnered with Flemmi, unaware that he had been an informant for the FBI since the beginning of his career in 1965.
According to Weeks: "...Connolly kept telling me that 90 percent of the information in the files came from Stevie. ... But, Connolly told me, he had to put Jimmy's name on the files to keep his file active. As long as Jimmy was an active informant, Connolly said, he could justify meeting with Jimmy and giving him valuable information. Even after he retired, Connolly still had friends in the FBI, and he and Jimmy kept meeting to let each other know what was going on. ...I could see that a lot of the reports were not just against the Italians. There were more and more names of Polish and Irish guys, of people we had done business with, of friends of mine. ... I would see, over and over again, that some of these people had been arrested for crimes that were mentioned in these reports. ...it had been bullshit when Connolly told me that the files hadn't been disseminated, that they had been for his own personal use. ... If there was some investigation going on and his supervisor said, 'Let me take a look at that,' what was Connolly going to do? He had to give it up. And he obviously had."
In the summer of 1983, tensions between the Winter Hill Gang and the Patriarca family escalated to an all-time high. Notably, an employee for Coin-O-Matic, a cash laundering vending machine company owned by the Patriarca family, was kidnapped on the job. The Boston Police Department, operating on a tip, raided a butcher shop in South Boston co-owned by Bulger and two other Winter Hill members. Police officers found the victim hanging from a beef rack, having been severely tortured and held for more than six days. The victim never testified, and all law enforcement documents were redacted of his full name; law enforcement had hoped he would cooperate fully and then go into witness protection. People familiar with Coin-O-Matic knew exactly who the employee was, but the code of silence was still very strong in South Boston. Over the next few months, three low-level Winter Hill Gang soldiers were executed; this was believed to be primarily in retribution for the kidnapping. The conflict shined a large spotlight on Morris's incompetent management and triggered an internal investigation within the FBI.
Social Network
Whitey Bulger was not known for having an active social network in the traditional sense. However, he maintained relationships with other criminals and used these connections to further his criminal activities.
Education
Bulger's educational background is not well-documented. He grew up in a working-class family and became involved in crime at a young age.
In summary, Whitey Bulger's life was marked by his involvement in organized crime, culminating in a notorious career as the leader of the Winter Hill Gang. His financial dealings were significant, with estimates suggesting he earned millions from extortion and drug trafficking. Despite his passing, his legacy remains a topic of interest in the realm of crime history.
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 beaten to death by inmates on October 30, 2018, within hours of his arrival at Hazelton. In 2022, Fotios Geas, Paul DeCologero and Sean McKinnon were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Bulger's death.
Shortly after his release in April 1948, Bulger joined the United States Air Force where he earned his high school diploma and trained as a mechanic. Despite the regimented military life, he had not reformed. He spent time in the military prison for several assaults and was later arrested by Air Force police in 1950 for going absent without leave. Nevertheless, he received an honorable discharge in 1952 and returned to Massachusetts.
In late August or early September 1974, Bulger and an accomplice reportedly set fire to an elementary school in Wellesley to intimidate U.S. District Court Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. over his mandated plan to desegregate schools in the city of Boston by means of busing. One year later, on September 8, 1975, Bulger and an unidentified person tossed a Molotov cocktail into the John F. Kennedy birthplace in Brookline in retaliation for Senator Ted Kennedy's vocal support for Boston school desegregation. Bulger then used black spray paint to scrawl "Bus Teddy" on the sidewalk outside of the national historic site.
