Notorious gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger killed after being transferred to West Virginia prison: reports
10/30/2018 10:15 am PDT
via KTLA:
WEST VIRGINIA -- (KTLA/AP) -- James "Whitey" Bulger, the notorious and much-feared former Boston mob boss, was killed Tuesday morning at the US Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, officials told CNN.
His life apparently ended the way he lived it. The FBI is investigating the death, which the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed.
Bulger was found unresponsive at 8:20 a.m., according to a statement from the prisons bureau. He was pronounced dead by the Preston County medical examiner after life-saving measures failed.
Bulger, 89, who eluded federal authorities for more than 16 years before his arrest in June 2011, was serving the rest of his life in prison for a litany of crimes, including his role in 11 murders.
He was sentenced in November 2013 to two life terms plus five years for his role as architect of a criminal enterprise that, in the words of a federal judge, committed "unfathomable" acts that terrorized a city.
A federal jury convicted Bulger that year of 31 counts, including racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug dealing and weapons possession. The jury found him culpable in 11 killings from 1973 through 1985.
His death marks a final chapter in the life of one of the country's most infamous criminals and fugitives.
In 2016, auctioned items seized from Bulger's Santa Monica, California, apartment raised almost $110,000 to compensate victims' families.
The US Penitentiary Hazelton is a high-security facility housing 1,270 male offenders at Federal Correctional Complex Hazelton.
