WHITEY'S DOUBLE AGENT GUILTY OF MURDER

    A former FBI agent who prompted infamous Irish gangster James 'Whitey' Bugler to flee has been convicted of murder.
     John Connolly has been found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in Miami, Florida, even though he was hundreds of miles away when the killing took place.
     During his sensational trial the jurors heard that it was Connolly who tipped off Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang when law enforcement was closing in on Bulger and his thugs.
     They were his prized underworld informants. The men who made him an FBI star by secretly supplying information about rival Mafia chieftains.
     Mob leaders Bulger and Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi had paid Connolly handsomely over the years. Up to the time he retired in 1990, they had given him in excess of US$235,000 and they even took holidays together.
     If a turncoat or "rat" surfaced in Bulger's gang and Connolly found out, that person might not live much longer, prosecutors told the jury.
     One such murder victim was 45-year-old gambling executive John Callahan, who was shot dead by a hit man in 1982 and his body stuffed into the boot of his Cadillac car, which was discovered at Miami International Airport.
     More than two decades later, the jury decided Connolly was responsible for Callahan's death despite being in Boston at the time of the murder.
     Prosecutors said jurors clearly understood that Connolly's tips to the mobsters often led to a violent death.
     "He knew what he was doing each and every time he gave out information," said prosecutor Michael Von Zamft.
     Jurors deliberated about 13 hours over three days before delivering the verdict on Thursday following a two-month trial.
     The jury acquitted Connolly of first-degree murder conspiracy but he still faces a maximum of life in prison when he is sentenced on December 4.
     Connolly, who showed no emotion when the verdict was read, has long denied involvement in Callahan's killing.
     The disgraced FBI agent was convicted in 2002 of racketeering because of his corrupt relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, including a 1995 tip that enabled Bulger to escape arrest and begin a life on the run that continues to this day.
     Bulger is one of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives, with a US$2 million bounty for his capture.
     "Unless we catch Whitey Bulger, this marks the end of what is really a sad chapter for federal law enforcement," said Fred Wyshak, an assistant U.S. attorney from Boston who helped prosecute the Florida case. "It's been a long haul."
     The story that unfolded in the Miami courtroom during the lengthy trial spanned more than two decades of Boston's underworld, a tale that has already spawned several books and was the basis for the director Martin Scorsese 2006 hit film The Departed, which won four Oscars including best picture and best directing.
     Matt Damon played a crooked Connolly-like law enforcement officer with Hollywood icon Jack Nicholson as the Bulger-inspired Irish-American mobster.
     Connolly's lawyer Manuel Casabielle said there will be an appeal based in part on Judge Stanford Blake's decision to allow jurors to hear evidence of corruption not directly related to the Miami slaying.
     He said: "What happened here is that we tried a federal racketeering case in a state court. What they tried to do is dirty him up, to bring in as much bad stuff as possible."
     Jurors had been instructed by the judge that Connolly, who was hundreds of miles away in Boston at the time of the murder, did not have to pull the trigger himself or even be present at the crime scene to be convicted in Callahan's killing.
     Connolly is already serving a 10-year federal prison sentence in the corruption case.
     He was indicted in 2005 in Miami for the killing of Callahan, the former president of World Jai-Alai.
     Confessed mob hit man John Martorano testified that he shot Callahan, who at one time had been his good friend, based on Connolly's warning that the gangsters would probably all go to prison if Callahan talked to the FBI about an Oklahoma businessman's killing a year earlier.
     A cornerstone of Connolly's defence was that his job as a top FBI organised crime-buster meant dealing with unsavoury characters - "top-echelon informants" in FBI parlance - who possessed sensitive information leading to the takedown of top Mafia kingpins in Boston.
     But Flemmi, Martorano and other mob figures testified that Connolly made sure the gang was shielded from prosecution for numerous crimes, even multiple murders, and supplied information about possible turncoats or "rats" in their own ranks that needed elimination.
     Prosecutors said at least two other men who were FBI informants died violently because of Connolly's leaks.
     "John Connolly swore an oath to the FBI and the United States of America," Von Zamft said. "He gave up that public trust because he decided he would rather be a gangster than an FBI agent."
     Callahan was killed, according to testimony, because Connolly told them the FBI was about to apply pressure on him to give up information about the 1981 killing of World Jai-Alai owner Roger Wheeler in the car park of a country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
     Callahan had wanted Wheeler dead so he could retake control of World Jai-Alai for the gang.
     Flemmi is serving a life prison sentence and admitted to 10 murders.
     Martorano cut a deal with prosecutors by agreeing to testify against Connolly and spent 12 years in prison after admitting to 20 murders, including the killings of Wheeler and Callahan. He is now a free man.
     Bulger remains on the run.