JAMES “WHITEY” BULGER, AKA THE GUY WHO SCARED DANA WHITE OUT OF SOUTH BOSTON, CAPTURED IN CALIFORNIA

Posted on | June 22, 2011 | No Comments

By: Rich Bergeron

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JAMES “Whitey” BULGER, at left, saw his 16-year-stint on the run from the law end Wednesday in Santa Monica California. The nickname “Whitey” was one that Bulger was said to detest, but it stuck to the Irish Mobster-turned-FBI-Informant and was just one aspect that helped make the career criminal into a mythical figure.

Zuffa President Dana White was so scared of Bulger he skipped town when one of the mobster’s thugs approached White to demand tribute when White ran a boxing gym in South Boston. Instead of giving up $2,500 to Whitey, the UFC President went back to Las Vegas where he’d spent his high school years. He would later ironically get together with the offspring of another connected guy (Frank Fertitta, Jr.) to buy out the UFC for a cool $2 million. The experience with Bulger obviously didn’t deter White from glorifying Boston’s Mob scene years later when he helped bankroll a pilot using some of Whitey’s old thugs as consultants.

On the other side of the coin, my own father investigated Bulger when he was a detective with the Quincy, Massachusetts Police. The first newscast I saw on the California bust actually featured one of Dad’s surveillance photos of Bulger. My father actually has nearly an entire chapter in the book Black Mass devoted to his work to bust Bulger in the midst of his crime spree back in the 1980s.

Bulger’s capture is long past due, and it will hopefully give some solace to the families of the 19 people he is suspected of murdering over his years reigning over rackets in South Boston. Though his character received star treatment with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of a Bulger-esque figure in “The Departed,” the real Whitey was truly the scum of the Earth. There have been dozens of books describing his double-agent lifestyle and larger than life persona, but none of them became a Hollywood blockbuster that did justice to his true criminal nature.

The FBI Top-Echelon Informant Program dreamed up by Agent John Connolly that turned Whitey into a turncoat created a true monster and defied the traditional approach to investigation of using the little fish to get the big fish. Bulger spent more time turning Connolly and his fellow agents into willing co-conspirators by bribing them and giving them Christmas bonuses than he did bringing down other major criminals in his circle. Bulger used the informant program to take out his competition and get carte blanche on his own crimes up to and including murder. The length of time he spent on the lam also led many to believe the FBI didn’t really want to find him, as if their indifference in capturing him let him make his own rules for his own unofficial witness protection program.

It was Bulger’s flamboyant gal pal who did him in, though. The FBI’s knowledge of previous sightings of Catherine Greig, the woman Whitey took with him on his cross-country run from the law, led the bureau to post a new video of Greig during daytime TV timeslots:

Soon after the FBI announced the plan to publish the above video, the national news media embraced he story. The true crime saga was always given much more coverage in the Boston area over the years. It was a surprise to me when I saw Howie Carr on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show Tuesday night. Carr, a Boston Herald reporter notorious for his decades-long reporting on Bulger, has written some books of his own on the former boss of the Winter Hill Gang. Previously to his appearance on “The Factor,” Carr’s biggest moment in the spotlight was probably his cameo as a radio talk show host in the John Travolta film “A Civil Action.” Though Carr speculated that Bulger was stuck overseas, the media buzz and the circulation of the Greig video ultimately led to the most recent actionable tip that gave the FBI an opportunity to capture the pair in Santa Monica, California.

The Golden State was an area where the two had actually been seen before, more than a decade ago in 2000. Back in January of 2000 Greig was identified in Fountain View, California after her hairdresser reported seeing her in a salon where Bulger was waiting for her outside in his car. The trail went cold after that, and years later Bulger evaded capture across the pond in London even though investigators would uncover a bank account held in his real name. Bulger used multiple aliases during his time as a fugitive, usually adopting the first name Tom.

Bulger’s capture was also bolstered by the Seal Team 6 killing of Osama Bin Laden, which bumped Bulger up to the country’s most wanted fugitive. Now that he’s been captured so close to Hollywood and will be indicted in an LA courthouse Thursday, perhaps the script writers will start furiously writing the happy ending to a true fact-is-stranger-than-fiction tale that’s been a tragedy for far too long.

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