FBI doubles reward for 'most wanted' fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger
The FBI has doubled to £1 million the reward for information leading to the capture of a notorious Mob fugitive last seen in Britain. James "Whitey" Bulger, a Boston Irish mobster, has been on the run for 13 years and has been charged with 19 murders.
After Osama bin Laden, Bulger - head of Boston's feared Winter Hill Gang - is regarded as America's most wanted fugitive and was an inspiration for the Oscar-winning thriller The Departed.Now 78, the convicted bank robber and government informant was last seen in Piccadilly Circus in September 2002.The FBI went to Italy last year after a man and woman resembling Bulger and his girlfriend were captured on video footage but they turned out to be Germans.The pair have avoided the authorities since 1995 when they vanished after Bulger was tipped off by a former FBI agent that he was about to be charged with racketeering.
The FBI believed he fled America before 2001 and has been living under a false passport and alias, surviving off millions of dollars secreted in bank safety deposit boxes.Unconfirmed sightings were subsequently reported as far apart as Canada, South America, Europe and Thailand.Bulger, who is balding, had links with corrupt federal agents while his brother led the Massachusetts Senate for nearly 20 years.He was the inspiration for Frank Costello, the Boston crime lord played by Jack Nicholson in The Departed."I am confident that he will be captured," Warren Bamford, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, said on Thursday.
Mr Bamford said the FBI would issue a new "Top Ten" wanted poster with new Bulger head shots to its 56 field offices in the United States and 60 offices around the world.
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