James “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous Boston mobster, was found dead in a West Virginia prison Tuesday morning, according to federal officials. The 89-year-old…
James “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous Boston mobster, was found dead in a West Virginia prison Tuesday morning, according to federal officials.
The 89-year-old former “Winter Hill Gang” leader, who was serving two life sentences for his involvement in 11 murders and other crimes, had recently been transferred to the prison and was reportedly in ailing health. However, reports Tuesday afternoon suggest that his death came at the hands of at least one other inmate.
Bulger had only just arrived at the prison Monday.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed the increasing reports of Bulger’s death. Officials said he was found around 8:20 a.m. at USP Hazleton, a high-security prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
“Life-saving measures were initiated immediately by responding staff,” the statement said. “Mr. Bulger was subsequently pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner.”
Officials did not disclose the cause of Bulger’s death, which will be investigated by the FBI. However, three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Boston Globe that a fellow inmate at the West Virginia prison “with Mafia ties” is a subject of the investigation.
The New York Times reports that Bulger was beaten to death by at least two inmates shortly after his arrival, according to two FBP employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. One of the employees said the inmates were thought to be “affiliated with the mob,” but did not know the specifics of their ties. Another law enforcement official told the Times that he was informed by a federal official that “an organized crime figure” was believed to be responsible for Bulger’s killing.
Richard Heldreth, the president of Local 420 of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing prison staff, told the Globe that Bulger was found in the general population housing unit of the prison, but did not know the exact location of his injuries.
Officials said Tuesday that no other inmates or staff had been injured.
After living in exile for 16 years, the former gangster and FBI informant was captured by law enforcement in Santa Monia in 2011 and convicted in federal court in Boston in 2013. Bulger had been serving out his life sentences at a federal prison in central Florida, to which he had been transferred in 2014.
But more recently, he was on the move.
Last week, the Globe reported that Bulger had been moved to an inmate transfer facility in Oklahoma City. The Bureau of Prisons said they could “not disclose specifics regarding inmate movement or transfers.” However, “a person familiar with the situation” told the paper that Bulger’s health had deteriorated and that he was expected to be moved to a federal prison medical facility. Even before his conviction, Bulger had suffered from heart issues and high blood pressure.
Officials said Bulger had arrived Monday at Hazelton, which is not a medical facility. In a statement Tuesday to the Globe, prison officials again declined to provide information about the reasons for the transfer or about Bulger’s health. The Times reported later Tuesday afternoon that he was being transferred after threatening an employee at the Florida prison.
Located in the rural, northeastern corner of the Mountain State, Hazelton is described as a “high security U. S. penitentiary with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.” It houses a total of 1,385 male inmates, 1,277 of which are in the main facility.
Coincidentally, Bulger wasn’t the only one with ties to organized crime in Boston. One of those 1,277 Hazelton inmates is former Boston gangster Paul Weadick, according to the Bureau of Prisons website.
The 63-year-old Burlington native and former New England Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme were convicted this past June of murdering South Boston club owner Steven DiSarro in 1993. And as the Globe noted earlier Tuesday, Bulger’s former sidekick and fellow FBI informant, Stephen Flemmi, testified against Weadick and Salemme during the trial. Flemmi, who is currently serving a life sentence on 10 counts of murder at an undisclosed federal prison, told jurors that he walked in on the murder of DiSarro, but quickly left the scene.
Bulger’s killing would be the third time in the past seven months that an inmate had been slain at the prison. WV News — which first reported the news of an inmate death Tuesday, though they did not initially name Bulger — reported both in April and in September that Hazelton inmates had been killed by fellow prisoners. Heldreth, the prison workers’ union president, told the Globe that the prison is “severely understaffed.”
Elected officials have also voiced concerns about the conditions at the prison. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, told The Dominion Post in April following the first inmate death this year that the “tragedy would not have happened if staffing levels were kept at adequate levels to keep prisons and correctional officers safe.” Sen. Shelley Moore Caputo, the state’s Republican senator, also expressed concerns about staffing levels at the time.
And just earlier this month, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate for Washington, D. C., in the House of Representatives, wrote to the federal government demanding an investigation into “alleged appalling conditions” at the Bruceton Mills prison. Both of the inmates previously killed this year were from D. C.
“Based on the evidence presented to my office, I believe that the federal employees serving in this facility have likely received inadequate training, are under-supported, and are being compelled to perform duties outside the scope of their positions and their training, which is leading to these horrific and entirely unacceptable outcomes,” Holmes wrote.
