Posted Thursday --- October 25, 2007 --- 1:10pm
You may remember a local man arrested with his wife in Italy ... after police confused him with one of the FBI's most wanted.
Now London police are helping the FBI in their search for that fugitive.
James J. Bulger is on the agency's 10 "most wanted" list.
His face appears just below Osama bin Laden on the FBI's web site.
Bulger is wanted in connection with 18 counts of murder and other counts of racketeering and drug offenses.
He's been on the run since 1994.
At 78-years-old, he's the oldest criminal on the "most wanted" list.
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Posted October 15, 2007 --- 1:12pm
On September 15, George and Iris Weiland left for a two and a half week vacation in Europe.
They had their entire trip planned out, except for one stop at an Italian jail.
Said George, "I said to Iris look at these guys, they got their pistols out of their holsters and something big is going on here whatever it is."
Last month, while on vacation in Europe, Iris and George Weiland sat down on a tram hoping for a relaxing trip through northern Italy. They got anything but.
"The tram driver said there is some problem going on here and we can't proceed because the police don't want us to leave yet," remembered George.
Minutes later police approached the couple and confiscated their IDs, thinking they might be fugitives James "Whitey" Bulger, and his girlfriend Catherine Greig.
"They came back to the tram and said we would like you to come to the police station with us and they didn't bring my drivers license," George stated. "So, how could I refuse that?"
The couple was rushed to the police station where they were give a complete ID examination.
"They took side view, front view pictures and complete description of eye, ears, nose," described George. "And three sets of prints for finger tips, fingers, full hand prints that I never saw before."
For the next five hours the Weiland's sat in the jail waiting for the F.B.I. back in America to clear them.
"We sat there until 5:30 doing nothing," recalled Iris. "I think we were the entertainment for the police station that day."
Whitey Bulger, who had been recently spotted in Italy, is a fugitive wanted on charges of racketeering, extortion and 21 counts of murder.
With a one million dollar reward available for his capture, would you have called police?
"That is probably what triggered everything," said George.
The couple says that even after all this, they would still go back to Italy.
They called what happened a one in a million chance. And even if it does happen again the authorities already have all of their information.