Whitey Bulger, a savvy, feared fugitive, is found frail and paranoid

James “Whitey” Bulger’s image seemed set in stone. He was a Boston “Southie,” a street punk who climbed out of the projects on a ladder of crime — petty larceny, then burglary, then bank robbery, then at least 21 murders, according to authorities, one in which a man standing in a phone booth was shot so many times his torso was nearly severed from his legs.

Savvy and feared, Bulger seized control of a mob empire, running rackets, shakedowns and drug deals over 40 years, officials say, before fleeing Boston in December 1994 on the eve of a federal indictment.

While the feds chased leads for 16 years in 19 countries, Bulger supposedly stashed fake passports and bank accounts across the Western world. Even as he rose to No. 2 on the most-wanted list, right behind Osama bin Laden, he appeared to be living as an untouchable bon vivant. He was reportedly seen at a banquet in Washington wearing a smart white suit with a red pocket square, and sighted strolling through a $500-a-night hotel in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Photos: The hunt for James “Whitey” Bulger

But soon after Bulger was lured out of a Santa Monica apartment on Wednesday and arrested at long last, it became clear that the reputed mobster was an old and ailing man living a quiet life. The end did not come in a hail of gunfire, as he’d once predicted, but in a cloud of frail confusion.

Bulger quickly conceded to authorities that he was Whitey Bulger — not Charles Gasko, as everyone knew him — but he seemed addled, befuddled by all the commotion. Informed that he was under arrest, he managed to muster a final act of defiance, refusing an order to lie on the ground so that he could be handcuffed.

His apartment was a half a mile from the ocean at 1012 3rd St. But it was rent-controlled, perhaps 800 square feet, and faced the other direction, toward a truck rental shop and a nursing home. An exit sign cast a green hue over his door, and the dim overhead lights in the hall emitted a constant hum.

Most days, other residents said, he was cloistered inside apartment 303 — where he hoarded 30 guns and about $800,000 in cash, sources said. When he ventured out, he still put on an elegant jacket. But he’d turned 81 in September, and his mind appeared to be descending into dementia and paranoid rage, residents said. When his younger, gregarious girlfriend smiled and greeted neighbors, he’d begun barking at her: “Shut up! Don’t talk!”

“She was living with hell,” neighbor Barbara Gluck, who lived across the hall, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. “She was caretaking a crazy man.”

On Thursday, Bulger and his longtime companion, Catherine Elizabeth Greig, made brief appearances in federal court in Los Angeles.

Bulger was wearing glasses and was dressed in a white, loose-fitting shirt; the remnants of his white hair formed a fringe around his balding head, and he had a white mustache and beard. He clutched a thick stack of documents. Asked by U.S. Magistrate Judge John E. McDermott if he had been advised of the charges filed against him, Bulger replied: “I got ‘em all here. It’ll take me quite a while to finish these.”

Then he added: “I know them all anyways.”

Bulger faces federal racketeering charges in connection with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, drug-dealing, extortion and money laundering, officials said. He will also face state murder charges in Florida and in Oklahoma, where he has long been wanted in connection with the slayings of two businessmen. Both states have indicated that they are exploring the possibility of seeking the death penalty; the federal charges would not carry the possibility of a death sentence.

“Bulger’s criminal activities have been marked by the corpses his killers and associates have left behind in car trunks and alleyways,” said Katherine Fernandez Rundle, state attorney for Miami-Dade County in Florida.

Bulger and Grieg did not contest the federal government’s decision to hold them without bail. They are expected to be flown to Boston soon, where their arrest has captivated the city and brought a sense of satisfaction to many of those victimized.

“I never thought they’d capture him alive or in the country,” said Michael Donahue, 42, who was 13 in 1982, when his father was gunned down, allegedly by Bulger.

The elder Michael Donahue had agreed to give a man a ride home from a bar. The man turned out to be an FBI informant; Bulger and an accomplice were waiting outside, and Donahue was killed along with the informant, authorities said.

Greig, 60, has not been connected directly to Bulger’s alleged crimes; she will face a federal charge of harboring a fugitive. That charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, but federal officials suggested Thursday that they will review her case to determine whether they can bring any additional charges against her.

The manhunt for Bulger resulted in scores of tips over the years, none of which bore fruit. Then on Monday, the FBI launched an unusual media blitz to find the couple — this time, aimed not at him, but at his companion.

At the Princess Eugenia apartment building in Santa Monica, Catherine Greig — known by the alias Carol Gasko — was thought to be far friendlier than Bulger.

She often picked up magazines and small packages that had been left below the apartment building’s mailboxes because they didn’t fit through the slots, and she hand-delivered them to neighbors. When she learned that her neighbor Gluck went to a weekly organic produce sale, Greig started tagging along.

When Bulger would snap at her for talking to neighbors, Greig would subtly roll her eyes. “I worried about her,” Gluck said. “It was very mysterious to me what she was doing with him.” Greig confided quietly to Gluck that her partner had dementia.

Greig also had an extensive beauty regimen, which authorities suggest may have been the couple’s undoing. A former dental hygienist, she reportedly underwent monthly teeth-whitening sessions and regularly got her hair done, sometimes bringing in her own dye if she found a particular shade she fancied. Authorities also speculated that she had undergone a number of plastic surgery procedures.

The FBI began airing 350 public service announcements on daytime television shows, such as “Dr. Oz” — shows that appeal to women who might have come across Greig during her beauty appointments. The ploy appears to have worked; a day after the ads began, a tip came in.

“We were trying to reach a different audience to produce new leads,” said Richard Teahan, a special agent in the FBI’s Boston office who led a task force that searched for Bulger around the world. “We believed that locating Greig would lead us to Bulger. And that’s exactly what happened.”

A surveillance team moved in Wednesday afternoon and spotted the couple a short time later.

Soon, a neighbor said, the authorities swarmed the building. “They were everywhere,” she said.

Inside apartment 303, authorities discovered the cash, a pair of shotguns and a slew of handguns, some reportedly inside hollowed-out books, sources said.

While Bulger cursed the law enforcement agents out front, FBI agents led a visibly upset Greig out through the back — gingerly, and without handcuffs, neighbors said.

James Joseph Bulger, nicknamed for his mane of blond hair, was raised in poverty, the oldest son of a one-armed longshoreman and laborer. His first arrest came at 14, around the time he hooked up with a juvenile street gang. As an adult, he made periodic nods at going straight, briefly joining the military, where he landed in the brig, and working for a spell as a janitor. But it never took.

“He wasn’t a real good kid,” saidJohn Baker, 84, who grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood, a block away from the house where the Bulgers lived before moving to nearby South Boston.

Bulger reportedly started hijacking delivery trucks in the 1950s and then did a nine-year prison term for a bank robbery, a portion of which he served at Alcatraz after allegedly plotting an escape from custody. After his release, he joined the Winter Hill Gang, the most powerful gang in South Boston. In the 1970s, an arrest at the top of the gang provided an opening. Bulger seized control and became the most notorious gangster in Boston, according to authorities.

Adding to the Bulger mythology was the stark contrast between him and one of his younger brothers, William Bulger, who had become one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts. William Bulger served a record 18 years as the president of the state Senate and served for seven years as the president of the University of Massachusetts. He was later forced out, largely because of his brother.

William Bulger testified that he had been “naive” about the activities of the mob in Boston.

About the same time Bulger allegedly reached the top of the Winter Hill Gang, he and one of his chief allies, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, were recruited to become FBI informants against other mobsters.

That secretive relationship would become alarmingly cozy over the years — and would become a headache and embarrassment for the government.

Indeed, Bulger’s life on the run began after he was tipped off to his pending indictment by FBI Agent John J. “Zip” Connolly Jr., who was later imprisoned himself.

Over the years, government agencies had looked for the couple in Iowa, in Uruguay and even at a ceremony marking an anniversary of the Battle of Normandy — Bulger is a military history buff. It turned out they’d been living in apartment 303 for virtually the entire time, paying $1,145 in rent each month, always on time and always in cash.

Photos: The hunt for James “Whitey” Bulger

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Los Angeles Times staff writers Victoria Kim, Richard A. Serrano, Corina Knoll, Kate Mather and Maloy Moore contributed to this report.