Whitey Bulger is moved to federal prison in Tucson

Convicted gangster and killer James J. “Whitey” Bulger was moved this week to a high-security federal prison in Tucson, where he will serve his two life prison terms.

Bulger, 84, is at the US Penitentiary Tucson, where 1,552 inmates live in a high-security facility and 148 inmates are in an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp, the Bureau of Prison website says.

Bulger is in the high-security facility, prison spokesman John Stahley said in a telephone interview.

He declined to comment on whether Bulger, listed by the FBI as a longtime informant, is isolated from other inmates. The prison has a special housing unit for inmates who are not part of the general population.

While he awaited trial, Bulger was held in Plymouth County House of Correction after his capture in 2011. In August, after his conviction, he was moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The Globe reported in mid-
December that he had then been moved to a prison in
Oklahoma.

Bulger was captured in June 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., after more than 16 years on the run. The former South Boston crime boss was convicted after an eight-week trial of racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and weapons charges.

A jury in federal court in Boston found he participated in drug dealing and 11 of 19 murders he was accused of while running a sprawling criminal organization from the 1970s through the 1990s. In November, he was sentenced to two life prison terms.

The gangster, who spent much of the trial trying to refute evidence that he was an informant, is appealing his conviction.

The Globe reported Friday that Bulger and Catherine Greig, who is serving an eight-year sentence for helping him evade capture, penned jailhouse love letters to each other on a legal pad carried between prisons by a defense attorney.