He wasn't a gangster anymore

When Whitey Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica late on the afternoon of June 22, 2011, it brought to an end one of the longest, and strangest, manhunts in U.S. history. Nearly 82, Bulger had spent 15 years hiding in plain sight in an apartment complex near the Pacific with longtime girlfriend Cathy Greig. In that time, he had literally reinvented himself: from a ruthless murderer and extortionist, who for more than a quarter century ruled South Boston, or Southie, to a grandfatherly figure, white-haired, bearded and nondescript. "We were looking for a gangster, and that was part of the problem," explains former Boston police detective Charles Fleming in Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy's "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice," a definitive account of Bulger's life and the city that helped create him. "He wasn't a gangster anymore."

more from David L. Ulin at the LA Times here.