James "Whitey" Bulger, the infamous Boston mobster, was found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy on Monday after five days of deliberations by the jury.
Bulger, 83, had been charged with 32-counts in his racketeering indictment. He was accused of being involved in 19 murders, extortion, money laundering and a number of weapons violations. In order to have found him guilty of racketeering, the jury had to find that Bulger committed at least two of the alleged crimes within ten years of each other, reported Fox News.
Proscutors claimed that Bulger had been a longtime informant for the FBI and had worked out deals with corrupt FBI agents while acting as a mob boss during the 70s and 80s. Bulger and his attorneys flatly denied that Bulger was a rat, insisting that he’d only paid agents off to procure information about ongoing investigations and wiretaps to keep him and his men ahead of the Bureau.
Throughout the trial, 72 witnesses took the stand to testify for the jury, including former Bulger protégé Kevin Weeks. Steven Rakes, an alleged victim of one of Bulger's extortion schemes, was found dead outside of Boston before he could testify. Over 800 exhibits were presented during to provide visuals of Bulger’s criminal activity. The trial began on June 12.
When Bulger was found and captured at his Santa Monica, Calif., residence in 2011, he’d been on the run since 1994 when he’d skipped town prior to an indictment. The legends of his mafia career inspired 2006 crime drama The Departed, starring Jack Nicholson as the Boston mob boss, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon as rats for the FBI and the mob respectively.
– Chelsea Regan
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