Newly released FBI documents show that murdered Boston mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger was being investigated for loan sharking, and had on at least one occasion beat an informant over late payments in the months before he struck a deal with the agency in 1975.
The dealings were revealed in a 300-page trove of heavily redacted FBI documents on the notorious mobster recently released on the agency's website through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Bulger, who in 2013 was found guilty of 11 murders and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, was found brutally murdered in his cell with his eyes gouged out in October 2018 at age 89, a day after he was transferred to a federal penitentiary in West Virginia.
His family is suing the Federal Bureau of Prison for $200million in his death.
The documents revealed the FBI's early investigations into Bulger through wire taps, body recording devices and reports on his dealings as a Boston-area loan shark.
The bureau reported that on November, 1974 its mole was 'in fear for his life' after having received threats from various sharks, including Bulger, demanding he make so-called, 'juice payments,' or otherwise suffer consequences.
Details of the investigation are outlined in roughly 300 pages of newly declassified, albeit heavily redacted FBI documents
The agency had instructed that he withhold the back payments from five separate 'hoodlum groups' to further draw out the criminals.
Despite feeling threatened, the agency instructed its mole to continue withholding the loan payments, and to start wearing a recording device, saying, 'The Boston office feels that this matter should be continued in order to obtain additional incriminating evidence on major organized crime figures.'
Another report states that on December 10, 1974, Bulger and another shark being investigated were secretly taped having 'highly incriminating' telephone conversations with the mole.
Bulger was the notorious leader of the Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s. He is pictured in 1953 after one of his arrests
He was eventually arrested in 2011 and convicted in the murder of 11 people
Then, in a reported dated Dec. 19, 1974, the agency says Bulger and other suspects had threatened the mole with 'bodily harm,' and that he 'was on one occasion "slapped around" and told to pay his debts.'
The Boston Herald originally filed the FOIA request for the documents in August, 2019.
Months later in 1975 Bulger, who at the time and for decades after was in control of South Boston's Winter Hill Gang, was recruited by FBI agent John 'Zip' Connolly.
Connolly would later tip Bulger off in 1994 that the FBI was close to indicting him, allowing him to flee.
He would remain on the run for 16 years until he was arrested in Santa Monica, California in 2011 along with his girlfriend Catherine Grieg.
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