James Joseph Bulger Jr. was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts on September 3, 1929 - a month before the stock market crash. The second …show more content…
Early in his career, the police gave Bulger the nickname "Whitey" because of his whitish blond hair. Whitey hated his nickname; he preferred "Jim" or "Jimmy." However, the nickname stayed with him ("Whitey Bulger Biography"). Whitey was destined to be Boston’s foremost gangster. The family moved to Revere before …show more content…
He came home to South Boston working as a laborer and bounced between construction jobs. A federal probation officer wrote in a 1956 report, “Since his release from the service he has made very little attempt toward obtaining legitimate employment. He spent most of his time in the local taverns where he associated with known criminals,” (Whitey 67). He began teaming up with a small-time criminal well known to Boston - Richard E. Kelley. The two began committing the crime Kelley specialized in - robbing trucks. The two would ride around truck-delivery routes stalking targets. They would hustle up on foot to the back of trucks and run off with armfuls of cigars, cigarettes, liquor, or whatever else they could grab. The FBI started to take notice. They arrested the two men and charged them as “suspicious persons, to wit: larceny of merchandise valued at over $100 from delivery trucks,” (Whitey 69). Over the next two years, Whitey would be arrested more than half-dozen times, some of which involved serious charges. In 1956 he was convicted for a series of bank robberies stringing from Indiana to Rhode Island. Whitey was sentenced to a twenty-year term in federal prison. For the first time in his life, Whitey was finally going to prison. He arrived at the Atlanta Penitentiary on Thursday, July 19, 1956 to begin his first long stretch of hard time. While in Atlanta Whitey got involved with