BOSTON - The dozens of racketeering and extortion charges that led to James "Whitey" Bulger's 16-year flight from justice were dismissed in federal court last week at the request of prosecutors who will now be able to focus on some of the 19 murders allegedly committed by the notorious Irish-American gangster.
Bulger, along with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, was captured on June 22 in Santa Monica, California at an apartment where authorities discovered more than $800,000 in cash and an assortment of weapons. He is being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, south of Boston, while Greig is detained at a Rhode Island facility.
Bulger had fled Boston early in 1995 after being tipped off about the imminent racketeering indictment by his FBI handler, John Connolly.
In the motion to dismiss the racketeering indictment and instead prosecute the murder charges contained in a later, 2000 indictment, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said that the government wanted to move as expeditiously as possible toward justice for the families of Bulger's murder victims.
"The 19 families of murder victims have been denied justice for many years....The United States Attorney is committed to seeing that this defendant, who is now 81-years-old, is called to account as soon as possible for the crimes affecting those families," Ortiz wrote.
Prominent Boston lawyer J.W. Carney, who was appointed last week to serve as Bulger's public defender, told reporters outside federal court that the case will be a challenging one.
"It's a daunting task, but we''ll be up to it," Carney said.
