INSIDE EDITION gets an exclusive look inside the hideout where Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend were hiding before they were captured by the FBI.
With a white beard and bald head, he looks like a typical senior citizen in his just-released mugshot. But it is Public Enemy #1, 81-year-old Whitey Bulger.
A Boston newspaper columnist says: "They looked like father and mother Christmas ... From hell."
[Source: Boston Herald]
We're learning more about the life Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig led at an apartment building in Santa Monica, California.
Neighbors say he never left the house without a hat and sunglasses. When he did venture out, he liked to feed the squirrels and go for long walks on the beach. He did that twice a day—first at sunrise and then at sunset.
The couple lived in a rent-controlled apartment, and paid $1,100 a month, in cash.
The layout of their two-bedroom apartment has a large living room with a fireplace, a spacious dining area and kitchen, and a small wet-bar.
The view from the balcony has palm trees at the world-famous Santa Monica Promenade, which is just blocks away.
Seth Rosenzwieg showed INSIDE EDITION his apartment which is a mirror-image of Bulger's. He's shocked that his next-door neighbor was America's most wanted gangster.
"To find Whitey Bulger was living 20 feet away is a very big surprise. There were guns in that apartment. It seems totally out of place with an elderly couple," said Rosenzwieg.
The FBI removed boxes and bags from Bulger's apartment and storage locker that contained over 30 guns and knives he'd hidden in hollowed-out books and $800,000 in cash was stuffed in the walls.
Hitman author Howie Carr told INSIDE EDITION, "He had millions and millions of dollars in drug money as the years went by and he put into safe deposit boxes around the world."
Bulger's girlfriend, Catherine, was a regular customer at a beauty salon around the corner from Bulger's apartment. It was a TV commercial about her, targeted at women, that the FBI says led to the tip that brought Bulger down.
Bulger's arrest after 16 years on the lam is making headlines around the world.
In Bulger's hometown the Boston, The Boston Herald headline says, "Rat's Back," and devotes more than 20 pages of coverage to him. The paper has photos of the 19 people Bulger is accused of murdering, including one beautiful woman, the girlfriend of a gangster buddy who Bulger allegedly strangled to death because she knew too much.
Jay Giannone grew up in Bulger's old neigbhorhood of south Boston and now lives in Los Angeles. He served as a consultant on The Departed, the movie based on the gangster's reign of terror.
"This story's huge. It's bigger than Osama bin Laden, this is Whitey Bulger, Boston's own, the biggest organized crime figure ever in the history of America," said Giannone.
"Him being near a beach and being able to walk a beach like he so enjoys and has been doing all his life, it kind doesn't surprise me. The only thing that does surprise me is that they caught him," said Giannone.
Now Bulger's politcally-connected brother, William, former President of the state Senate in Massachuseets, is breaking his silence about the arrest.
"I wish to express my sympathy to all the families hurt by the calamitous circumstances of this case," he said in a statment.
