Crime never pays, but working as an informant for the FBI sure seemed to for Mobster “Whitey” Bulger. That’s why he started snitching early… as early as the 1950s reports the Boston Globe.
Arrested with his girlfriend Catherine Greig last June after 16 years on the lamb, 82-year-old Bulger may not have changed much over the years. The Boston Globe recounts that “Whitey” was first motivated to collaborate with authorities to protect his girlfriend at the time, Jacqui McAuliffe, one of a string of loyal thrill-seekers endowed with movie-star good looks but short on morals.
The story begins after McAuliffe had traveled to Indiana with Bulger to rob a bank. Accomplice Carl Smith turned them in, meaning McAuliffe would also face charges as an accomplice. That’s when the cornered Bulger chose to squeal on fellow bank robber Richard Barchard in exchange for his girlfriend’s immunity. That first deal worked, and in 1956 McAuliffe got to go back to cutting hair in Boston while the chivalrous Bulger served a 20-year sentence for the Indiana heist.
Barchard, now 81, told the Globe he had no hard feelings about being turned in by his partner in crime. “All I know is that Whitey and I were friends. We committed a crime. We paid for doing the crime. He went his way and I went mine.”
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