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Family of gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger plans wrongful death suit

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The family of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger is planning a wrongful death suit against the government to learn why the 89-year old, wheelchair-bound gangster was transferred to a violent prison where he was beaten to death within hours of his arrival.

“There is going to be a lawsuit in the near future,” longtime Bulger lawyer Hank Brenan said Monday. “The family wants to know what happened.”

A possible suit, widely anticipated since the U.S. Bureau of Prisons disclosed that one of the country’s most notorious gangsters had been killed the Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia on October 30, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“The tragedy of this is that the government is going to end up writing a big check and this guy (Bulger), or at least his family, is going to get the last laugh,” said Mike Huff, a retired Tulsa police sergeant who worked for years with the investigation that resulted in Bulger’s 2013 conviction. “Whitey’s going to have a whole bunch of zeros after his name.”

Bulger, a life-long physical fitness buff, had become frail and his heath had been precarious after convictions in 2013 for 11 murders and dozens of other crimes. Brennan said Bulger had suffered multiple heart attacks, tired easily and needed a wheelchair to maneuver around prison.

For years, the FBI carried Bulger on its secret records as a Top Echelon informant. Bulger denied being an informant, but it was clear from disclosures in court that he turned over underworld rivals to at least two corrupt FBI agents who protected him from arrest. Regardless of the nuance of Bulger’s work as an informant, the label – widely publicized at his sensational trial – made him vulnerable to a prison attack.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons refuses to disclose anything about Bulger’s imprisonment or transfer. The FBI is investigating the death. In the absence of an official account, Brennan said he acquired some information in conversations with Bulger and law enforcement officials, some of whom have had official briefings, claim to have other details.

In the weeks leading to his death, Bulger had been confined at U.S. Penitentiary Coleman complex in central Florida. He was ordered transferred from Coleman because, among other reasons, that is where prison officials were considering assigning another recently convicted, New England gangster, Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme. Bulger and his partner Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, had provided the FBI with information about Salemme, who at one point was boss of the Patriarca crime family.

Because of his declining health, prison administrators considered moving Bulger to a prison medical complex in Missouri, going so far as to ship him to a prison system transportation hub in Oklahoma City.

While Bulger waited in Oklahoma, the Bureau of Prisons inexplicably ungraded his health classification. The upgrade made him too healthy for the medical complex and a decision was made to ship him to the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, W.V., an institution with a reputation for inmate-on-inmate violence.

Among the Hazelton inmate population were three Massachusetts organized crime figures with possible grudges against Bulger. One of the three, Fotios “Freddy” Geas, is the leading suspect in the beating that left Bulger unrecognizable.

Geas, of Springfield, is a mafia hitman said by those who know him to hate informers. He is serving multiple life sentences for, among other crimes, two murders, a murder conspiracy and an attempted murder after once-trusted mob partners informed on him. Offered the chance to reduce his sentence by becoming an informer himself, Geas told federal prosecutors he’d rather spend the rest of his life in prison.

Brennan said he speaking with other attorneys about joining him about pressing a suit. He would not say where the suit will be filed, or disclose other details. Such decisions should be made within weeks, he said.