By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The then-warden of a prison where James “Whitey” Bulgar was confined said he believes the Boston gangster “wanted to die.”
“Quite frankly, I think he wanted to die,” Charles Lockett, the Florida penitentiary’s former warden, told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
“I think whatever issues he had, he had come to peace with them.”
Bulger, 89, was beat to death inside his cell on Oct. 30, 3018, just hours after he was transferred to a West Virginia prison. The transfer came after the wheelchair-bound ex-mob boss threatened a Florida prison nurse who suggested he see an outside heart doctor.
No one has been charged in his death.
Lockett, who retired in late December, spoke out for the first time, saying he doesn’t believe the death was the fault of prison officials.
It’s a tragedy, but I don’t think anyone was deficient in their duty,” Lockett said.
Lockett opened up about his personal feelings for Bulger.
“He killed a lot of people, but he wasn’t a bad old guy,” Lockett said. “Every Friday, I would walk that entire penitentiary and I would see him and he would speak to me. He was a nice, respectable guy, the murderer that he was.”
When a nurse told Bulgar he should be taken to a local hospital to see a heart specialist, the former mob boss lashed out, Lockett said.
“She pressed him to go see the doctor, and he got mad about it,” Lockett said. “He told her point blank, ‘I know people. I still have connections back home.’”
