Brother William "Billy" Bulger, the formerly well-respected President of both the Massachusetts State Senate and the University of Massachusetts, became collateral damage to Whitey's career in Boston's underworld when he was compelled by then-Gov. Mitt Romney to resign from UMass in 2003, after he publicly admitted that he had maintained contact with his fugitive brother via pay phones, without ever once notifying the authorities of their conversations.

That same year, Brother John Bulger, a Massachusetts state magistrate, was convicted of two counts of perjury for having misled the authorities regarding his own personal contacts with Whitey.

(Although to be fair, had Whitey been my brother, it's an open question whether I'd have done any different were I in William's or John's shoes. After all, family is family, and absent either very compelling evidence of serious crimes or an immediate or imminent threat of harm to someone, there are probably very few people who would willingly turn his or her blood relative over to the police or FBI.)

I suspect that the Bulger trial will provide a rare and fascinating glimpse into the darker netherworlds of organized racketeering and public corruption in urban New England. You know, I think I'll watch Martin Scorsese's The Departed again, just to get further in the mood.

In an interesting aside, from deep within the dark recesses of my treasure trove of otherwise useless trivia, Whitey Bulger is also one of the last federal prisoners to have ever resided at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay (Inmate No. AZ1428). He was transferred there from the Atlanta Penitentiary in November 1959, and then again to Fort Leavenworth in November 1962, when Alcatraz was shut down.