This is probably only a curiousity item for most of you, but here in Boston this is probably the biggest local news story in very long time. James “Whitey” Bulger has been CAPTURED after 17 years on the run.

Bulger was South Boston’s very own master-mobster in the 70s and 80s, leader of the feared “Winter Hill Gang” that more-or-less OWNED organized crime in the city for decades. He’d been a career criminal for almost his entire adult life – while interred at Alcatraz in the late-50s, he was one of the human test-subjects in the CIA’s infamous MKULTRA Project. And in case he didn’t already sound like something out of a bad movie, he had a “good guy” brother who was a State Senate President and President of the University of Massachusetts during the same period he running his syndicate.

At the height of his power, he was essentially untouchable; operating practically right out in the open yet invincible to police and making short work of rival gangs – he’s even reputed to have double-crossed the IRA without incurring direct retribution. As it turned out *gasp!* his power had a less-than-mythic source: He was protected by his status as a high-level FBI informant. (Yes, this is where Frank Costello in “The Departed” mostly came from.) In 1994, his FBI handler allegedly tipped him off that arrest was imminent – driving a bitter wedge between Boston cops and the FBI that lingers to this day – and he’d been on the run ever since.

I’ll promise you this: There are A LOT of aging gangsters in Boston being woken up to some bad news by their underlings and/or shady live-in grandkids right now – this is a guy who knows where ALL the bodies are buried, and probably won’t be hesitant to resume his guts-spilling now. He was at one point, for example, believed to have had a hand in (or at least knowledge of) the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist – the largest single property theft (by value) in recorded history.