FBI agents go on German TV to push hunt for Whitey
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
FBI agents from Boston are in Munich today, appealing to the public for help in capturing fugitive gangster James "Whitey'' Bulger.
The 78-year-old fugitive will be featured tonight on "Aktenzeichen XY...ungelost," which means "File XY Unsolved" and is German television's equivalent of Fox Television's America's Most Wanted.
There haven't been any reported sightings of Bulger in Germany, but FBI agents will appear on the show as part of an effort to boost Bulger's profile overseas, according to Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Boston office.
The multi-agency Bulger task force launched a media blitz throughout Europe after a couple resembling Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, 56, were videotaped by a vacationing federal agent as they strolled through the Sicilian resort of Taormina in April. The FBI posted a portion of the video on its website in September after efforts by American and Italian law enforcement officials to locate and identify the couple were unsuccessful.
"We're working with various media outlets around the world to help us identify that couple sighted in Taormina and to get the Whitey Bulger story out,'' Marcinkiewicz said. A video clip of the couple observed in Sicily will be featured on the German show, along with photos of Bulger and his girlfriend.
Bulger was featured on television broadcasts in Rome in September, in London in October, and in Madrid in November, according to Marcinkiewicz. He has also been featured many times on America's Most Wanted, most recently in November.
Bulger, one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted, fled just before his January 1995 federal racketeering indictment in Boston and was later exposed as a longtime FBI informant and charged with 19 murders. The last confirmed sighting of the gangster was in London's Piccadilly Circus in September 2002, according to the FBI.
