"Whitey" Bulger's Personal Items Auctioned Off
BANFIELD: Without question, Whitey Bulger became one of America's most brutal and legendary crime bosses. With his Winter Hill Gang, Bulger terrorized south Boston in a reign that lasted almost three decades. He didn't even seem to fear law enforcement. In fact, he manipulated it instead. And for the longest time, it really just seemed like no one would ever catch him. But he was caught. Here's a clip from the CNN film "Whitey" airing tonight.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Prosecutors describe James "Whitey" Bulger as the center of mayhem and murder in Boston for 30 years as the boss of Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang. A man so dangerous that he joined Osama bin Laden at the top of the FBI's most wanted list.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the gang that ran amok. You have people who were being extorted, who talked about having shotgun barrels stuck in their mouths, machine guns pointed at their groin.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Body bags shown before Bulger shakes them down. It was absolute terror.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Back then, '70s, '80s, people were missing every day. Bang. Didn't come home. He's a dead man.</s>BANFIELD: So they finally got him. Three years ago. And just last year he was put away. And the whole time he'd been living in plain sight in California and accumulating a whole bunch of stuff. Stuff that the government is now putting up for sale. Stephanie Elam has more.</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A $48,000 ring, his personal library, and a manikin Whitey Bulger used to make it appear someone was always keeping watch. Seized from Bulger's Santa Monica apartment, those are just some of the items that will soon be auctioned by the government. Proceeds will go to the victims of Bulger and his gang.</s>CARMEN ORTIZ, U.S. ATTORNEY: I'm just hoping that the steps that we've taken has helped to bring them some degree of justice and some degree of comfort.</s>ELAM: But while many families support the auction, Steven Davis calls it an insult.</s>STEVEN DAVIS, SISTER KILLED IN 1981: I'd like to be there and, you know, to have vigil an destroy it. You know what I mean? You know the guy destroyed all our lives. Anything that he touched or involved with should be destroyed.</s>ORTIZ: I can understand that position. This was not an easy decision for us to make because in many ways we do not really want to take any kind of steps that would glamourize the conduct.</s>ELAM: That's why only big ticket items will be sold with smaller personal items of little value kept off the auction block.</s>ELAM (on camera): Also going to victim, $800,000 found in the walls of Bulger's former apartment here in Santa Monica. It's that stash of cash that also upped the intrigue in his former residents. What was the interest like in this apartment?</s>KEVIN MILLER, WESTSIDERENTALS.COM: Well, the first three or four days it was absolutely crazy. I'm talking 200, 300 calls a day. It was just madness. And then what happened, three or four days later, the reports came out that there was money hidden in the walls and that's when things just went to another level.</s>ELAM (voice-over): After a reported renovation, the unit went back on the market this summer. Asking price? Nearly $3,000 a month.</s>JACK NICHOLSON, ACTOR, "THE DEPARTED": I've got an informer in my outfit.</s>ELAM: Famously the inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character in "The Departed," Bulger has long fascinated Hollywood and that fascination will only grow with Johnny Depp set to play Bulger in the film "Black Mask" coming out in 2015.</s>MATTHEW BELLONI, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: It's a subject that fascinates people and then you add on top of that the fact that this guy lived under the noses of all the Hollywood studios in Santa Monica for years and nobody knew he was there.</s>ELAM: While the film will surely add to the Bulger intrigue, the victims' families say it's still about one thing, a brutal man, his victims, and a long wait for justice.</s>DAVIS: I cry inside that I can't get even.</s>ELAM: Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>BANFIELD: Thank you, Stephanie. And by the way, I can attest, I've seen this film, it's great. You can learn a whole lot more about Whitey Bulger. Our film's airing tonight at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN. Right now, voters in Scotland are deciding whether or not to split from the United Kingdom. What? What would it mean if they broke up? I mean what would it mean for the nukes (ph) and the pound and the future of the British flag and all those Scottish things. We're going to sort it all out coming up next.