Whitey Bulger – September 3, 1929

“He died the way I hoped he always was going to die.” – Steven Davis, whose sister Debra was reportedly killed by Bulger in 1981

James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger Jr was born in Everett, Massachusetts, to Jane Veronica “Jean” (McCarthy) and James Joseph Bulger Sr. The police nicknamed him “Whitey” because of his blond hair. He hated the name and preferred Jim, Jimmy, or Boots (for the cowboy boots in which he hid his switchblade).

In 1930, the Bulgers lived at 92 Woodlawn Street in Everett. His brothers William (b. 1934) and John (b.1938) were obviously not on this census. While Whitey went on to become a career criminal and FBI most wanted, William became President of the Massachusetts State Senate and President of the University of Massachusetts. John became a court clerk Magistrate. William was given immunity by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to testify about Whitey’s whereabouts but gave no information. John was convicted of perjury concerning statements he made about Whitey to a grand jury.

The census shows that Whitey’s father James was a clerk at a sand and gravel site. Neighbors worked in jobs such as laborer, chauffeur, fireman, and pressman. Five European immigrants are listed on the census page along with 45 Massachusetts natives.

Later life

Young Whitey was a thief and streetfighter and ran with a gang called the Shamrocks. He was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault, forgery, and armed robbery. After his release, he joined the Air Force where he finished high school, trained as a mechanic, and received an honorable discharge despite spending time in military prison and going AWOL.

While serving federal time in the Atlanta Penitentiary he was, according to his claim, “recruited by deception”  into a program to help cure schizophrenia. CIA documentation shows the program was a research project into “mind control.” Inmates in the program were given LSD and other drugs over an 18-month period. Bulger said it was “nightmarish” and took him “to the depths of insanity.”

Bulger’s criminal activities included:

• taking part in a mob war
• Running the Winter Hill Gang
• Firebombing the birthplace of John F. Kennedy in response to Edward Kennedy’s support of busing
• Murders
• Loansharking
• Bookmaking
• Somehow coming into possession of a $14 million dollar winning lottery ticket sold in a store he owned
• Truck hijacking 
• Arms trafficking
• Extortion

All of this while serving as an FBI informant. Bulger always denied he was an informant. In 1994 he went into hiding after his ex-FBI handler warned him about a RICO indictment against him. He was on the run for 16 years. After being arrested in 2011 (at age 81) in Santa Monica, California, he was tried on charges of racketeering and firearms possession. He was found guilty and sentenced to two life terms.

Bulger was moved from prison to prison, exhibiting poor behavior along the way. He finally was sent to the United States Penitentiary, Hazelton, West Virginia, on October 29, 2018. The next day, he was found dead in his wheelchair beaten to death by multiple inmates, his eyes nearly gouged out and his tongue nearly cut out.

For all the gory details of Whitey’s life see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger#

The character of Frank Costello in the film “The Departed” was loosely based on Bulger and the Showtime series Brotherhood was inspired by the relationship between Whitey and his brother William.

Other happenings on September 3, 1929

• Britain appointed a four-person committee to investigate the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
• A typhoon struck the Philippines, causing between 50 and 100 deaths and doing about 20 million pesos worth of damage over the next several days.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its peak for the decade of the 1920s at 386 points.
• The westbound Transcontinental Air Transport passenger plane City of San Francisco crashed on Mount Taylor in New Mexico, killing all 8 aboard. The plane had diverted its course to avoid a storm.
• British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald gave a speech to the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva outlining his government’s policies. MacDonald said that Britain would “do everything possible to hasten the preparations for a disarmament conference.” MacDonald suggested that if a twenty-point document on naval disarmament were to be outlined between Britain and the United States, “only about three of the twenty” points would be considered outstanding.
• The stage musical Sweet Adeline with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II opened at Hammerstein’s Theatre on Broadway.
• Rachele Mussolini gave birth to her fifth child with Benito Mussolini, a daughter named Anna Maria.
• Born:
• Armand Vaillancourt, a Canadian Quebecois artist, in Black Lake, Quebec, known for creating the Vaillancourt Fountain in San Francisco.
• Irene Papas, Greek actress, in Chiliomodi (d. 2022)
• Died:
• William Emmett Dever, 67, Mayor of Chicago from 1923 to 1927.
• Owen Thomas Edgar, 98, the last surviving U.S. veteran of the Mexican–American War, who served in the U.S. Navy as a 2nd-class apprentice.

Tomorrow – Almost a VP candidate

Sources

• Wikipedia.org
• Ancestry.com
• Onthisday.com
• Picryl.com
• Youtube.com