By Laurel J. Sweet and Dave Wedge
The Boston Herald
BOSTON — It wasn’t quite the Hollywood ending he’d hoped for, but one California cop with ties to the Hub knows in his heart he and James ‘Whitey’ Bulger will always have San Diego.
‘I’m from back there (in Boston). I knew it was him, and they all laughed at me,’ said the officer, who the Herald reported in 2006 claimed to have crossed paths with Bulger as the former fugitive left a screening of ‘The Departed’ - acclaimed director Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning ode to the mob monster.
The officer, who asked not to be identified by name but once worked at the former Charles Street jail, was off duty when the alleged brush occurred. Yesterday, the officer said San Diego is about an hour’s drive from Santa Monica, where Bulger, 81, and girlfriend Catherine Greig, 60, were arrested Wednesday night after eluding capture for 16 years.
‘I was two feet from him. I held the door for him. And then he ran,’ the cop recalled.
‘After that, he took off. But he didn’t go far, obviously.’
The man he believed to the FBI’s Most Wanted domestic fugitive hopped a trolley, he said.
‘We were actively looking for him for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘I knew the whole time it was him. I was always sure it was him.’
The officer told authorities at the time he pegged Bulger for his ‘steely blue eyes’ and muscular physique, but the Bulger Task Force never declared the run-in credible.
‘I was pretty discouraged, that a cop from Massachusetts says he sees Whitey Bulger and no one takes it seriously,’ the cop said.
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