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James (Whitey) Bulger
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Whitey Bulger was for many years lionized by the fiction writers of the Boston Globe as a Cagney-esque, throwback Irish gangster who “kept the drugs out of Southie”. That fantasy has long since been exposed as the monstrous lie that it was, its corrupt purveyors cashiered for plagiarism and fabrication. But somehow a different legend of Whitey has sprung up, that of the Serial Killer Who Got Away With It. With each day that the millionaire drug-dealing pedophile remains on the lam, he cements his place in the pantheon of other vanished American celebrities (for lack of a better term): Judge Crater, D.B. Cooper, Amelia Earhardt, Ambrose Bierce, Jimmy Hoffa. And now Whitey Bulger…. |
| DOB 9-23-29, $1 million reward offered for his capture. FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive. On the lam since 1994, currently charged with, among other crimes, 20 murders. Onetime male prostitute, cocaine dealer, bank robber, extortionist, pedophile, horse race fixer and paymaster of at least a few Boston FBI agents. Took part in federally-sanctioned LSD experiments at Atlanta penitentiary in late 1950’s, later spent several years on “the Rock” at Alcatraz, where he was the “wife” of fellow convict Clarence Carnes, “the Choctaw Kid,” who later died of AIDS. (Whitey paid for his lover’s funeral.) After his release from prison in 1965, worked briefly as a courthouse janitor, then took over the Boston underworld by ratting out first the members of his own Winter Hill Gang, and then the rival LCN crews in boston. |
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Whitey in the early 90’s, approximate age 63, taking the air on Castle Island in South Boston. |
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Although it was seldom mentioned until he was no longer around, Whitey was a notorious sodomite, even though he traveled with women. Always butch, he vacationed in Provincetown and when in Boston liked to sit for hours at the bar at Jacques, the city’s oldest transvestite bar, checking out the local talent. |
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As early as 1977, Whitey began developing an identity he could use when the law inevitably closed in. His first alias: “Thomas Baxter,” taken from the name of a Woburn man who had been born the same year he had. He also somehow obtained an Irish passport, from which this photo is taken. |
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One of his younger female beards, a dental hygienist named Catherine Greig, had two black French poodles, Nikki and Gigi. When Greig joined Whitey on the lam in early 1995, she left the hounds with her twin sister. After the sister was herself convicted on federal charged relating to phone calls from her twin,she had the two poodles put down. Whitey was devastated. |
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| Whitey was always a fastidious dresser. His kind usually are. |
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Whitey holding court outside his liquor store in South Boston, late 80’s. The packy was located on a rotary, and when Whitey stood outside, the din from the traffic was so loud that even the most sensitive federal bug would have been completely useless, not that Whitey had anything to fear from the feds, some of whom had long been on his payroll. |
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1991: Whitey claims part of a $14.3 million prize in the Mass Millions lottery. In an uncharacteristic act of hubris, he appears at Lottery headquarters in Braintree and his image is recorded on a surveillance camera. Soon everyone in America knows what the shadowy mass murderer looks like. The mystery is gone. |
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As one Uruguayan newspaper noted last year, Whitey “looks like everyone’s grandfather.” |
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