FILE - This undated photo released by the FBI on Dec. 30, 1998 shows Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. The FBI says it posted hundreds of pages of records from the notorious mobster’s file earlier in July 2021. (FBI via AP, File)
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BOSTON — The FBI has released hundreds of pages of records from notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger’s file.
The Boston Herald reports the 300 pages of heavily redacted records show the agency was aware that Bulger was involved in loan-sharking, horse-fixing and other crimes before recruiting him as an informant.
The FBI says the records were posted on the agency’s Vault public records database earlier this month and will be the first in a series of records released on Bulger.
The newspaper says the records show the FBI was tracking Bulger and other “different hoodlum groups in the Boston area” that were involved in loan-sharking in the early 1970s.
The records also detail a horse racing scheme that involved bribing jockeys and drugging horses to fix races at tracks – including Pocono Downs in Plains Township. Other tracks were in Boston, New Jersey and Las Vegas to benefit mobsters operating in those areas.
According to the Boston Globe, the horses doped or “held” back by jockeys paid off went by the names of “No Hurry,” “Lyric Poet,” Rollingindough,” “Night Wind” and “Cactus Jack R.” Cactus Jack, the FBI files state, was a “live horse,” which was almost guaranteed to win, place or show.
Bulger fixing races at Pocono Downs is not necessarily new news. The book “Black Mass,” written by Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill and published in 2012, reported that Bulger had fixed races at the Plains Township harness racing track.
Bulger led a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets in the Boston area.
He was convicted in 2013 in connection with a series of gangland slayings and other crimes while also working as an FBI informant who ratted on the New England mob, his gang’s main rival.
Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 after his FBI handler warned him he was about to be indicted and was one of America’s most wanted men before being arrested in California in 2011.
Bulger was killed in federal prison in West Virginia in 2018. Authorities have not charged anyone with his killing, but law enforcement officials said at the time that two Massachusetts mobsters were suspects.