EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: Inside the life of the gangster being immortalized by Johnny Depp and how the FBI's 'a** covering' left evil Whitey Bulger free to terrorize Boston for more than 20 YEARS

• A new book has revealed the extent of the FBI protection handed to Bulger
• Bulger began informing during the 1970s and used it to eliminate rivals
• At the same time, he was terrorizing Boston and carried out 19 murders
• Among them was the brutal killing of Debra Davis who was strangled
• Went on the run in 1995 after hearing he was to be indicted for racketeering
• Eventually captured in Santa Monica, California in 2011 and put on trial
• His story will now appear on the silver screen in Johnny Depp's Black Mass 

By Caroline Howe For Dailymail.com

Published: 09:21 EST, 18 September 2015 | Updated: 23:04 EST, 18 September 2015

Until he was handed a life sentence after being convicted of 19 counts of murder, gangster Whitey Bulger topped the FBI's Most Wanted list - and was considered the most dangerous man in America.

Now a new book has revealed the full extent of the horrors he meted out to hapless victims - and how he was protected for years by 'petty bureaucrats' more interested in 'protecting their own a**es'.

Written by T.J English, Where The Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and The World That Made Him reveals how Bulger escaped justice for so long - and how he was protected by the FBI.

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Dangerous: Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger was once one of America's most wanted men.He was godfather to the newborn child of one of his associates

Hollywood: His story is now to be brought to the big screen in Black Mass with Bulger played by Johnny Depp

Bulger, a Boston-based mobster whose reign of terror that lasted from the 1970s until his disappearance in 1995, has now been immortalized in new Johnny Depp film Black Mass.

But for all that has been written and scripted about the criminal, the details of his sickening crimes and 16 years on the run have never been fully revealed.

The prominent gangster had long functioned as the de facto mob boss of New England – as well as a top informant for the FBI, who fed information on other mob figures to eliminate them as rivals while protecting himself from prosecution.

He was often romanticized as a Robin Hood-type character for keeping drugs out South Boston but in truth, he had taken over the drug trade and became the largest peddler of illegal narcotics in the area’s history.

But according to English, the story of Bulger and his work as an FBI informant suggests the entire criminal justice system ‘was a shell game presided over by petty bureaucrats more concerned with promoting their careers and protecting their own a**es'.

Portrait of a killer: Bulger relaxes at home with his two poodles during his time on the run

First time: Bulger's first stint in jail came in 1956. Part of his sentence was served in the notorious Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary - this booking shot was taken in 1959 when he arrived at the San Francisco jail

Back behind bars: This mug shot was taken when he was captured in 2011. He has now been handed two life sentences plus five years after being convicted of 19 murders and 32 counts of racketeering

Indeed, when Bulger, now 86, finally did go to trial in late July 2013, his rap sheet included 32 counts of racketeering and 19 murders – brutal killings that included the savage strangulation of Debra Davis who disappeared in the early 1980s.

Her body had been tightly tied up in the fetal position, encased in a plastic body bag and buried in a lumpy marshland area covered with water at high tide.

Bulger grew up one step removed from poverty in government subsidized housing in South Boston in the late 1920s. 

His life of crime began with ‘tailgating’ - pilfering small goods off the back of delivery trucks - but soon advanced to bank robbery.

Later, he would boast that he had robbed no fewer than 17 banks in his early twenties - all carried out with a weapon in hand.

After a robbery in 1955, he fled Boston after his partner told police of his involvement but returned in early 1956 - despite the arrest warrant on his head.

He was caught and began a prison term in Atlanta, Georgia before being shipped off to Alcatraz on the big rock in the San Francisco Bay and then to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

In Atlanta, he learned of a program being offered to inmates as a way to reduce their sentence. The program was MK-ULTRA and was being administered by the CIA.

The experimental project entailed daily LSD injections for eighteen months and submitting to observation by psychiatric doctors working for the CIA.

Years later, Bulger claimed he subsequently suffered headaches and persistent insomnia and told his associates he would use this LSD experiment as a defense in court if he were ever arrested.

After nine years in prison, he came out a changed man aged 34 in 1965. Hardened by his incarceration, he now knew how to manipulate enemies and friends - and planned on never returning to jail.

Surveillance: This surveillance photo taken by the FBI shows gangster Bulger talking to a criminal associate

Killers: Bulger with Kevin Weeks, his right-hand man who was also involved in numerous murders

Headquarters: Bulger ran his criminal empire from Triple O's Lounge in South Boston

During his reign as crime boss in Boston, Bulger and his longtime sidekick, Stephen Flemmi, carried out a series of murders that included the strangulation of Flemmi's own stepdaughter, Deborah Hussey.

Her body was buried in a dirt grave in the basement of a house at 799 Third Street in South Boston used by Whitey’s gang, the Winter Hill Mob, for interrogations and murder and owned by the brother of mob member, Pat Nee.

Flemmi had been molesting Miss Hussey throughout her teens but when she plucked up the courage to stand up to him, he brutally murdered her instead.

Another killing, in the summer of 1983, saw restaurant owner Arthur 'Bucky' Barrett meet his demise at the hands of Whitey’s gang. 

Barrett, a likeable guy according to sources, was doing well from his legitimate business but his greed for stolen jewelry that he could resell for a profit proved his undoing.

He was lured to the same Third Street house on the premise that there was stolen jewelry to be assessed but when he got there, all he saw was Bulger pointing a gun at him and telling him to freeze.

Victim: Businessman John Callahan was one of the many victims gunned down by Bulger's crew

Shocking: Victim William 'Billy' O'Brien is seen slumped over his steering wheel after being shot by Bulger

Horror: This photo, used during his 2013 trial, shows one of Bulger's victims lying dead in a phone booth

Brutal: Eddie Connors was shot dead by Bulger on June 12 1975 during the mobster's reign of terror

Destroyed: This photo shows the damage done to Mr Connor's car during the brutal attack

Handcuffed and chained to a chair, Bulger and Flemmi grilled him about criminal competitors in the area. 

The conversation switched to how much cash Barrett kept in his house which prompted Bulger and Flemmi to immediately pay a visit and help themselves to over $40,000.

Returning to Third Street, Whitey told Barrett he wanted more money. Bucky confessed he had another $10,000 at a bar in Faneuil Hall - Boston’s famous historic site and tourist mall.

Kevin Weeks, a member of Whitey’s Winter Hill Mob, went over and picked up the money.

Beginning of the end: Bulger photographed in Boston in 1994 - less than a year before going on the run

But a haul of $57,000 wasn’t enough money to satisfy Whitey. They tried to squeeze more cash out of Bucky’s partner in the cocaine and marijuana business who told Bucky to ‘F*** off!’

With no more money, Barrett was led to the top of the cellar stairs, and on his way down the stairs, shot in the back of the head by Bulger.

Bulger rested on the couch upstairs while other gang members buried Bucky in the same dirt basement where Hussey’s body would be buried later that same year.

‘Bucky tumbled down to the bottom of the stairs, where Stevie grabbed his body and dragged him over to the side,' Weeks later revealed at Bulger's trial.

'Stevie had me go get a plastic container with water. He wanted cold water. He explained to me that the cold water helps congeal the blood; it’s easier for the cleanup. 

'He was talking to me, kind of teaching as he went. We cleaned up all the blood and everything and then [Steve] went over and proceeded to take out Bucky’s teeth.'

Flemmi was fixated on removing the teeth of his victims one by one in the mistaken belief that they couldn’t be identified without them. DNA changed all that.

The third victim buried in the dirt basement was John McIntyre who had played a role in shipping weapons to the IRA. 

Irish authorities learned about the shipment, intercepted it and seized the weapons. There had been an informant. 

When Whitey’s follow-up shipment of marijuana was busted, he learned from his man in the FBI, John Connolly, that John McIntyre was suspected and he was soon brought to Third Street. 

He met his demise at the hands of Bulger who first strangled him and then shot him in the head. Even after that, Flemmi thought he was still breathing.

Quickly, Bulger fired another five or six bullets into his face and said, ‘He’s dead now’.

On Halloween in 1985, they decided the bodies had to be moved when Pat Nee’s brother decided he was going to sell the house.

Instead of buying the house Bulger decided it was cheaper to move the bodies.

With body bags procured from a funeral home, picks and shovels, trowels, gloves, surgical masks, and cleaning fluids, Flemmi, Weeks and Nee arrived in the early hours of the morning to do the deed.

Mobster: This photo, taken in the early 90s, was released by the FBI in 1998 as they hunted Bulger 

On the run: This surreptitious photo shows Bulger with girlfriend Catherine Greig in Santa Monica in 1998

But there was a problem: the wrong kind of lime had been used when the victims were initially buried and instead of one that accelerates decomposition, a lime that mummified the bodies had been used.

During the removal, Barrett’s head snapped off while the the other two were almost entirely liquefied but for the bones. 

Horrifyingly, Miss Hussey’s insides were spilled out as she was moved. Yet despite the stench, Steve Flemmi wasn’t revolted.

He was fascinated with body parts and decomposition and referred to as ‘Dr. Mengele’ - a reference the Nazi officer who oversaw brutal human experimentation on prisoners at Auschwitz death camp.

Once in the body bags, the bodies were moved to a dense gully in Dorchester, Massachusetts, near Florian Hall where civil servants often met for social functions. Weeks and Flemmi dug new graves while Bulger stood guard with a machine gun.

Ironically, Bulger's brother happened to be the influential Massachusetts Senator Billy Bulger - the most powerful politician in the state of Massachusetts who also served as president of the state senate for 16 years.

‘With his powerful political brother, and his secret relationship with the FBI, Whitey believed he was untouchable,' writes English. 

Normal couple: Bulger and Greig lived a normal life together in Santa Monica but were eventually caught

Charged: Greig joined her lover on the FBI's Most Wanted List and was arrested along with him in 2011

Punishment: Greig is currently serving eight years in jail for her role in hiding Bulger for 16 years

Bulger and Flemmi worked as informants for the FBI since the mid-1970s and helped the police to build files on other criminals.

Whitey, a predator in the underworld, expanded his activity to feeding off of other local criminals and luring them into extortion and scams. They couldn’t go to the police and report him.

While the public believed Whitey to be a Robin Hood type character who was keeping drugs out of the neighborhood, in truth he had taken over the neighborhood drug trade and became ‘the largest peddler of illegal narcotics in the history of Southie’ [South Boston].

His organization took over cocaine trafficking bringing in the finest cocaine along with Colombian gold marijuana in fifty-pound bales. But heroin and prostitution were forbidden under Bulger’s regime. 

Flemmi ‘was a crucial link between Bulger’s South Boston organization and the Italian Mafia based in Boston’s North End.

English writes: ‘Flemmi, an Italian-American, had connections among nearly every criminal faction in the city, including, as it turn out, the FBI’.

It was Flemmi’s attorneys who dropped the bombshell in 1997 that Flemmi and Whitey had been covert informants for the Feds dating back to the mid-70s.

As informants, both men were convinced they were protected by the FBI as well as by others in the Justice department. 

Flemmi didn’t think he could be prosecuted for his crimes because of the immunity given both men as informants in the Justice Department’s war against the Mafia. 

Dark: Black Mass, which is released today,  tells the story of Bulger's reign of terror in 1970s Boston

Gruesome: The film, which stars Johnny Depp, is a gritty - and violent -  portrayal of evil mobster Bulger

But Flemmi’s claim was dismissed by the presiding judges in a Boston federal courtroom in late 1997 and ’98 in what became known as the Wolf Hearings, where he pleaded guilty to committing 11 murders.

Bulger associate, John Martorano admitted to 20 murders. Bulger was charged with 19 killings – but he was on the run.

Realizing he was about to be indicted for racketeering, he disappeared in 1995 and managed to evade law enforcement for 16 years.

Eventually, in 2011, he was found living in a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, California - a comfortable property that he shared with his platinum blonde girlfriend Catherine Greig.  

But by then, the game was up. The Wolf hearings had revealed 'that Bulger and Flemmi had been protected by the FBI and others in the criminal justice systems’ - and Bulger's days of freedom were numbered. 

What's more, writes English, ‘the Wolf hearings [had] opened up a Pandora’s box of horrific crimes and law enforcement malfeasance going back nearly half a century’.

‘There was speculation that Whitey could bring the FBI and the Justice Department to its knees as a Top Echelon informant for the FBI, who covertly fed local prosecutors information about other mob figures — while using their cover to cleverly eliminate his rivals, reinforce his own power, and protect himself from prosecution’.

Bulger’s relationship with the criminal justice system—an arrangement he inherited from a previous generation of gangsters and corrupt lawmen—represents the hidden horror of the Bulger story – and was the battleground on which prosecutors and defense lawyers clashed at his trial.

Despite his best efforts and the expensive defense lawyers contracted to fight his corner, Bulger was finally convicted and sentenced to two life sentences in prison plus five years.

Now serving out his sentence in a federal prison in Sumterville, Florida, Bulger might be the toast of Hollywood but for the families of his victims, the pain goes on. 

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