IRISH-AMERICAN MOBSTER JAMES ‘Whitey’ Bulger has been found guilty of 11 murders, as well as a number of charges of racketeering and conspiracy.
The 83-year-old who was the leader of a notorious crime gang in Boston refused to take the stand in his own defence in what was one of the most dramatic criminal underworld trials in the US in recent years. He now faces life in prison.
The verdicts were read out in court this evening after the jury spent five days deliberating. Bulger showed no reaction upon hearing the verdict.
In a statement, Massachusetts State police said that “justice had been served” after an investigation spanning years.
“Across several decades, through multiple generations of investigators, the Massachusetts State police have been determined to help bring abut this day,” the police force said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Today — after dozens of years of work by many dedicated state troopers and our partners, after their unyielding efforts to shine a light on one man’s heinous crimes and then to track him down — justice has been served upon James Bulger.
Whitey was accused of 19 murders which took place in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as other charges relating to extortion, money-laundering and arms trafficking. During the trial, witnesses described seeing Bulger carry out murders and said that he “did all the dirty work” himself.
At the start of the trial, prosecutor Brian Kelly described Bulger as being the leader of “a group of criminals who ran amok in the city of Boston for 30 years” and were responsible for “murder and mayhem”.
In an unexpected development last week, Bulger said he would not testify in his own trial because he believed that the trial was unfair and “a sham”.
Bulger was arrested in June 2011 after spending 16 years on the run from authorities, during which time there had been persistent rumours that he was hiding out in Ireland.
The case is notable because Bulger has been suspected of being an informant for the FBI – a claim he continues to deny. Bulger became the inspiration for the character played by Jack Nicholson in the 2006 Martin Scorcese film The Departed, which portrayed the informants and undercover roles of police and mobsters in south Boston.
- Additional reporting: Associated Press
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