JAMES 'WHITEY' BULGER GETS PUBLIC DEFENDER

TOO POOR?

FORMER mob king pin James 'Whitey' Bulger is to get a public defender for his multiple murder trial, because he can't afford to pay for his own lawyer, a court ruled yesterday.
Despite being caught with more than $800,000 in cash, when his Santa Monica apartment was busted last week, the taxpayer will fund his defense.
His provisional attorney Peter Krupp, said authorities have seized all of Bulger's assets as the proceeds of illegal activity, leaving him with no way to pay for his defense.
And although prosecutors argued that his family including his brother and former Massachusetts Senate president, William Bulger could pay, he said no relatives had come forward and offered to help him financially.
A former member of the Boston underworld said: "Whitey's bound to have cash stashed away somewhere, but he's not going to make it easy for them. If they want to try him, he's going to make them pay through the nose for it."
Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler however agreed that the one time leader of Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang couldn't afford a defense lawyer.
She said: "I find at this time that the defendant is unable to retain counsel privately."
So she appointed J.W. Carney Jr., a prominent Boston defense attorney, to represent him.
Carney has represented a long list of high-profile defendants, including John Salvi III, who was convicted of killing two people and wounding five others in a shooting rampage at two Planned Parenthood clinics in Brookline, Mass., in 1994.
He also represents Tarek Mehanna, a Sudbury man now awaiting trial in an alleged terror plot to shoot shoppers at U.S. malls, assassinate two politicians and kill American troops in Iraq.
Bulger, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, is accused of participating in 19 murders during his decades as one of Boston's most notorious gangsters.
Carney said it is too early to say whether he will ask for the trial to be moved out of Boston.

HEARTLESS KILLER WHITEY BULGER'S CHILLING SMILE

BIG COVERAGE on notorious Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. CNN offers the above backgrounder on the man who who Beantown with an iron fist leaving corpses in his wake. Bulger was finally captured last week. ALSO, a terrific column by Peter Gelzinis in the Boston Herald. We've always thought Gelzinis was one of the best city columnists in the country. Check out the prose:

It was an ice-cold grin, tinged with defiance and a kind of sinister glee. It was the last glimpse Billy (Bulger) had of the brother whose appearance yesterday — just down the street from where he stands accused of slaughtering Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue 30 years ago — unleashed a media firestorm.
It was chilling to think that same bloodless smile may have been the last thing Brian Halloran, Michael Donahue, Louis Litif, Debbie Davis, Debra Hussey, Arthur “Bucky” Barrett and John McIntyre to name just a few, saw before their lives were extinguished with sadistic delight.

MOB BOSS WHITEY BULGER CAUGHT IN CALIFORNIA

DAPPER DON

THE DEPARTED

NOTORIOUS mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger has been sensationally captured after nearly 16-years on the run. 

The FBI caught up with  onetime pooh-bah of the notorious Winter Hill Gang - and inspiration for Jack Nicholson's whacked out gang chief in The Departed - living happily with his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, 60, in Santa Monica, CA. 

He was arrested without incident and it's thought he will now be returned to Boston where he is wanted for the murders of 19 men and women along with a litany of other charges. 

Bulger has been on the run for 16-years after fleeing in January 1995 when he was tipped by a former Boston FBI agent that he was about to be indicted.
Nicknamed ‘Whitey’ because of his shock of bright platinum hair, grew up in a gritty South Boston housing project and spent time in the notorious Alcatraz prison when he a youngster.  

On his release he rose to the top of the city's violent Winter Hill Gang, a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets in the city.

But what was unknown for many years, was at the same time as his reign of terror on the streets, Bulger was a top echelon FBI informant who provided information on his gang's main rival, the New England Mob. 

Using his unique position he tightened his vice like grip on the city's underworld, until the extent of his crimes and his close relationship with the G-men became clear. 

Just as the were about to swoop he was warned by John Connolly Jr, an FBI agent who had made Bulger an FBI informant 20 years earlier.

Connolly was convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for protecting Bulger and his cohort, Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, also an FBI informant.

He became a huge source of embarrassment for the agency as they battled a public perception that it had not tried very hard to find him.

Now it looks like he will finally face justice after a tip from the public finally revealed his whereabouts.  

It appears a high profile campaign, including a TV ad been launched during programs popular with women roughly Greig's age - pointing out that she had several plastic surgeries and regularly went to beauty salons, worked. 

Lets just hope they don't lose him again.
* CAPTURE BRINGS A SMILE TO BOSTON HERALD MAN
*WHITEY'S REIGN OF TERROR

HEAT'S ON WHITEY BULGER'S MOLL, CATHERINE GREIG

FBI investigators are going to refocus their energies in bringing Boston mob kingpin Whitey Bulger to justice by turning up the heat on his longtime moll: Catherine Greig. G-Men believe that Greig is the key to finding Bulger, who has been on the lam since 1995. The onetime pooh-bah of the notorious Winter Hill Gang--and inspiration for Jack Nicholson's whacked out gang chief in The Departed--is wanted for the murders of 19 men and women along with a litany of other charges. The FBI is offering a $2 million reward for the capture of the 81-year-old killer. The Boston Herald has also suggested that Bulger could be dead and that the Feds may just want to know where, ahem,
the body is buried.

Greig, 59, is a one-time dental hygienist, who has an outstanding warrant for her arrest for harboring a federal fugitive. Bulger has loads of cash and keeps in good shape, loves books and is an animal lover. He was last spotted in London in 2002.