Whitey Bulger

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The then-warden of a prison where James “Whitey” Bulgar was confined said he believes the Boston gangster “wanted to die.”

“Quite frankly, I think he wanted to die,” Charles Lockett, the Florida penitentiary’s former warden, told NBC News in an exclusive interview.

“I think whatever issues he had, he had come to peace with them.”

Bulger, 89, was beat to death inside his cell on Oct. 30, 3018, just hours after he was transferred to a West Virginia prison. The transfer came after the wheelchair-bound ex-mob boss threatened a Florida prison nurse who suggested he see an outside heart doctor.

No one has been charged in his death.

Lockett, who retired in late December, spoke out for the first time, saying he doesn’t believe the death was the fault of prison officials.

It’s a tragedy, but I don’t think anyone was deficient in their duty,” Lockett said.

Lockett opened up about his personal feelings for Bulger.

“He killed a lot of people, but he wasn’t a bad old guy,” Lockett said. “Every Friday, I would walk that entire penitentiary and I would see him and he would speak to me. He was a nice, respectable guy, the murderer that he was.”

When a nurse told Bulgar he should be taken to a local hospital to see a heart specialist, the former mob boss lashed out, Lockett said.

“She pressed him to go see the doctor, and he got mad about it,” Lockett said. “He told her point blank, ‘I know people. I still have connections back home.’”

Anthony Comello

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Anthony Comello, 24, of Staten Island man, has been arrested in the execution-style killing of Gambino crime family boss Frank Cali last week outside of his Staten Island home, the New York Daily News reports.

Comello was arrested down the Jersey Shore.

One motive may have been that Comello was angry that Cali was preventing him from seeing his niece.

But NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said he hadn’t ruled out that Comello was working with others.

“Let me reiterate this (investigation) is far from over,” said Shea. “Was he acting alone? Was he acting for other people? Were others involved? What was the motive? I do not have all the answers for you.”

Police days earlier had said they were not ruling out the possibility that just-out-of-prison Gene Gotti, brother of the late John Gotti, was involved.

Michael Cohen

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The hearing had the feel of an underboss for the mob flipping on the boss, with some of the interrogators having little trust in what he said.

Nonetheless, freshly disbarred attorney Michael Cohen, a convicted liar and cheat,  took to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and did a major dump on his former boss, President Donald Trump,  calling him a con man and a racist, and suggesting he had broken the law.  He also indicated that he was assisting the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York in a criminal probe into the president.

The Republican members couldn’t find enough ways to call him a liar who is incapable of telling the truth. The Democrats insisted the Republicans were afraid of him telling the truth.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, President Trump attacked the testimony.

“It was pretty shameful, I think,” Trump said, according to USA Today. He went on to call it a fake hearing, but was pleased that Cohen did not suggest there was collusion with Russia.

He didn’t lie about one thing: He said no collusion with the Russian hoax,” Trump said.

“I was actually impressed he didn’t say I think there was collusion for this reason or that,” Trump said. “… I was a little impressed by that frankly.”

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Salvatore Zottola, the son of a Bonanno crime family associate, ain’t cooperating with the FBI after being shot three times.

Zottola was critically wounded in an attempted hit outside his sprawling Bronx home.

Law enforcement sources tell the New York Post has denied the FBI access to his houses’ cameras. He was shot while walking to his car Wednesday morning.

He is at the Jacobi Medical Center and has made it clear to investigators he’s not cooperating.