BOSTON – Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger was captured near Los Angeles after 16 years on the run that embarrassed the FBI and exposed the bureau's corrupt relationship with its underworld informants.
After an international manhunt, the FBI finally caught the 81-year-old Bulger on Wednesday at an apartment in Santa Monica along with longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, just days after the government began circulating pictures of her on daytime TV in a new campaign to find the fugitive crime boss.
The arrest was based on a tip from the campaign, the FBI said without giving details.
FBI agents put the apartment under surveillance on Wednesday afternoon and, employing a ruse officials would not explain, lured Bulger out and arrested him without incident, authorities said. The couple were using the aliases Charles and Carol Gasko.
Bulger had a $2 million reward on his head and rose to No. 1 on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list after Osama bin Laden was killed.
A variety of guns and a large amount of cash were found in the apartment, the FBI said. Federal investigators declined to say how Bulger got enough money to live on.
The model for the ruthless gangland boss played by Jack Nicholson in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie "The Departed," Bulger was wanted for 19 murders. One victim was shot between the eyes in a parking lot at his country club in Oklahoma. Another was gunned down in broad daylight on a South Boston street to prevent him from talking about the killing in Oklahoma. Others were taken out for running afoul of Bulger's gambling enterprises.
"He left a trail of bodies," said Tom Duffy, a retired state police major in Massachusetts. "You did not double-cross him. If you did, you were dead."
At the same time he was boss of South Boston's murderous Winter Hill Gang, a mostly Irish mob, Bulger was an FBI informant, supplying information about the rival New England Mafia. But he fled in January 1995 when a retired agent tipped him off that he was about to be indicted
After an international manhunt, the FBI finally caught the 81-year-old Bulger on Wednesday at an apartment in Santa Monica along with longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, just days after the government began circulating pictures of her on daytime TV in a new campaign to find the fugitive crime boss.
The arrest was based on a tip from the campaign, the FBI said without giving details.
FBI agents put the apartment under surveillance on Wednesday afternoon and, employing a ruse officials would not explain, lured Bulger out and arrested him without incident, authorities said. The couple were using the aliases Charles and Carol Gasko.
Bulger had a $2 million reward on his head and rose to No. 1 on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list after Osama bin Laden was killed.
A variety of guns and a large amount of cash were found in the apartment, the FBI said. Federal investigators declined to say how Bulger got enough money to live on.
The model for the ruthless gangland boss played by Jack Nicholson in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie "The Departed," Bulger was wanted for 19 murders. One victim was shot between the eyes in a parking lot at his country club in Oklahoma. Another was gunned down in broad daylight on a South Boston street to prevent him from talking about the killing in Oklahoma. Others were taken out for running afoul of Bulger's gambling enterprises.
"He left a trail of bodies," said Tom Duffy, a retired state police major in Massachusetts. "You did not double-cross him. If you did, you were dead."
At the same time he was boss of South Boston's murderous Winter Hill Gang, a mostly Irish mob, Bulger was an FBI informant, supplying information about the rival New England Mafia. But he fled in January 1995 when a retired agent tipped him off that he was about to be indicted
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