Inmates seemed to know more about the incoming mob rat than the guards did. The whole prison yard was in on the betting pool as to how long Whitey Bulger would survive. The guards pretended not to notice. It’s not clear who exactly won the pool but he was dead inside of 24 hours.
Mob rat with a death wish
Whitey Bulger was no innocent victim and seasoned enough as a mob boss to know what happens to any rat in prison. He also had “lost the will to live” in recent weeks before his final transfer to West Virginia.
He got his death wish in less than a day. Every inmate in Hazelton prison knew he was coming. Back in 2018, they all had money on how long he’d make it. The investigation report just came out.
At the end of the long awaited report only six people are in trouble, because everyone was to blame. The rat was murdered “at the hands of fellow inmates” due to “multiple layers of management failures, widespread incompetence and flawed policies at the Bureau of Prisons.”
A Department of Justice probe into notorious mobster James “Whitey” Bulger’s 2018 jailhouse slaying identified “serious deficiencies” in the prison-transfer processhttps://t.co/nuatEI5S9Y
— Boston Herald (@bostonherald) December 8, 2022
On Wednesday, December 7, the Inspector General watching over the Just Us department made his results public.
According to the report, “more than 100 Bureau of Prisons officials found out in advance that Bulger would be moving to Hazelton.” Everyone knew who he was and that he had been a big rat.
Prison staff “openly talked about the transfer in front of inmates.” News like that travels faster than light. So many “prison employees knew it was impossible for the inspector general to determine who disclosed the information to the inmates.” That makes it alright then.
What do you think would happen?
Inmates gave the IG investigators an earful. They told local prison officials to their faces before Bulger arrived “that everyone knew Bulger would be killed and even took bets on just how long he would last.” One inmate was quoted in the report observing, “he was a rat. What would you think would happen to him?”
Another quipped, “I heard he was a well-known government informant. Seems he shouldn’t have walked the yard. He wouldn’t have been okay anywhere.” The important part is the guards were cleared of any “malicious intent” to help the inmates “whack” him, literally. Three inmates cornered him in his cell with a padlock attached to a belt.
“The report did not find evidence of federal criminal violations, focusing instead on prison policies and workings.” Bulger “led a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets.”
He was also world famous as a rat. “He served as an FBI informant who provided information on the New England mob in an era when bringing down organized crime was a top national priority for the FBI.”
Bulger met his fateful end at the hands of “Fotios ‘Freddy’ Geas, a former Mafia hitman, and Paul J. DeCologero, a Massachusetts gangster,” The pair “are accused of striking Bulger in the head multiple times while a third man, Sean McKinnon, acted as a lookout.”
He lied on transfer paperwork, claiming he wasn’t a rat and “wanted to be housed with the rest of the inmates in West Virginia rather than in a more protected unit.” Bulger also “told prison staff ‘he had lost the will to live,‘ and that may have been a factor,” the report concludes.
