BOSTON (CAP) - Feared legendary mobster James "Whitey" Bulger seemed to have lost none of his swagger or arrogance in his first court appearance after 16 years in hiding, brazenly asking the judge to "return my Depends and my Metamucil, gosh darn-nabbit!"
"Do you want me to wet myself right here on the bench, for cryin' out loud?" he added, then coughing up and apparently swallowing a large wad of phlegm. "And you better darn well get me my Metamucil. You don't wanna see me when I'm not regular."
He then glared icily at the prosecutor in what could have been a soulless look of pure evil, or gas.
FBI agents captured the 81-year-old Bulger in Santa Monica, Calif., after following him home from the Bay Cities Deli, where the mobster had allegedly eaten a corned beef sandwich, lean, on marble rye with a pickle spear and a club soda, followed by some lime jello.
"He was driving very suspiciously," said FBI Special Agent Josh Harwood, who noted that he was going about 10 miles per hour below the speed limit, cut off two other drivers and then shook his fist at them like it was their fault, and took an extremely roundabout way to get to his home, apparently trying to avoid having to make left turns.
"And his blinker was on the entire time," noted Harwood.
FBI lured Bulger out of his apartment by sending two young boys onto the front lawn of his apartment complex, ostensibly to retrieve a baseball that had rolled there.
"Get offa my lawn, you darn kids!" witnesses quoted Bulger as yelling at the boys. "Or I'll give ya something to complain about, gosh-a darn it!"
"That's when we slapped the cuffs on him," explained Harwood.
Bulger did not resist, according to authorities, although he did convince agents "make a pit stop" at a Wilshire Boulevard 7-Eleven on the way to FBI headquarters, where he spent approximately 45 minutes in the rest room generating various bodily noises as agents stood awkwardly outside the door, checking their watches.
"And we couldn't go in there for about two hours afterwards," said store owner Praveen Nawwaf, waving his hand in front of his nose as if to indicate a strong odor. "It was very unpleasant," he noted, adding however that it's something he's gotten used to with the up-tick in senior citizens coming in to buy cat food since
social security ran out.
FBI agents, who reportedly consider the capture their biggest coup since the dozens of arrests they made on last year's
Cyberstalking Saturday, are said to have been questioning Bulger for hours on end, attempting to garner information about possible collusion between mobsters and law enforcement agents in the 1970s and '80s.
"But he basically just tells the same old war stories over and over again - he keeps saying,
I think I mighta told you this one, and when we say that yes, he did, he keeps telling it anyway," explained Harwood.
"Frankly, If I have to hear one more time about the time he and Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi pantsed Eddie Connors in that bar in Revere in 1973, I think I might shoot myself," Harwood added.
