Ex-FBI agent linked to Whitey Bulger to be freed from prison

FILE- In this Oct. 15, 2008 file photo, former FBI agent John Connolly listens to the testimony during his trial in Miami. The imprisoned former FBI agent serving a 40-year prison sentence for alerting former Boston mobster Whitey Bulger that he could implicated in a mob murder wants to be released from prison on medical grounds. Connolly will ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021 to release him. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)

BOSTON — A former FBI agent convicted of second-degree murder for leaking information to Boston gangster James Whitey Bulger that led to the 1982 shooting death of a gambling executive can be released from prison on medical grounds, officials ruled Wednesday.

The Florida Commission on Offender Review voted 2-1 in favor of releasing John Connolly, who has cancer and is believed to have less than a year to live.

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Connolly, who was Bulger’s FBI handler, was convicted in 2008 over the killing of World Jai Alai President John Callahan in Fort Lauderdale in 1982. Connolly tipped Bulger and another gangster, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, that Callahan was about to implicate the gang in another killing, authorities said.

Connolly is currently being held at the Reception and Medical Center in Lake Butler, Florida.

Connolly also served nearly 10 years in prison after being convicted in 2002 of racketeering and obstruction of justice for protecting members of Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang from prosecution and tipping them about informants in their ranks. Connolly and Bulger’s relationship helped inspire the 2006 Martin Scorsese film, “The Departed.”

Bulger, who spent 16 years as one of America’s most wanted men before being arrested in California in 2011, was killed in federal prison in West Virginia in 2018.