The feds botched Whitey Bulger's prison transfer so badly that the infamous Boston gangster had 'lost the will to live,' a watchdog found

• Whitey Bulger's prison transfer from Florida to West Virginia dragged on for months, a new report found.
• Bulger had numerous medical complications and "lost the will to live," a scathing DOJ report said.

James "Whitey" Bulger's prison transfer in 2018 was botched so badly that the notorious Boston gang boss had "lost the will to live," a new watchdog report found.

A new report made public on Wednesday by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General revealed incompetence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons surrounding Bulger's 2018 transfer from Coleman prison in Florida to Hazelton prison in West Virginia.

Within hours of finally being transferred, Bulger would be beaten to death by inmates at the prison. The report found no evidence that prison staff intentionally caused Bulger's death.

For years, Bulger was a violent organized crime leader in New England and ended up on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list while he was on the run before his arrest in 2011. Two years later, he was convicted of multiple crimes.

According to the report, Bulger was placed in a special housing unit (SHU) in the Florida prison in February 2018.

That was the start of an arduous eight-month-long process to transfer him to West Virginia. As he waited, the aging gangster had numerous health complications — including multiple heart attacks — and requested to be transferred to a medical center.

In a September 2018 Psychology Services Suicide Risk Assessment, Bulger said he had "no quality of life," his chest hurts when he eats and tries to lay down, he has memory issues, he constantly feels lethargic, his health is "gone," and he's "deteriorating," the report said.

"We found it deeply troubling that [prison] personnel placed an 89-year-old inmate with serious heart conditions for which medical doctors frequently recommended hospitalization and surgery, and who used a wheelchair, in a single cell in the SHU for 8 months while it was bureaucratically struggling with deciding how to transfer him to a new facility," the watchdog report found.

The report continued: "This lengthy SHU placement of Bulger in a single cell before his transfer from Coleman caused him to state that he had lost the will to live, and may have affected his persistence upon arriving at Hazelton that he wanted to be assigned to general population."

Bulger eventually arrived at Hazelton — where inmates knew that he was coming prior to his arrival and even placed bets on how long he would survive — at 6 p.m. on October 29.

Shortly after 9 a.m. the next morning, Bulger was found dead "with visible injuries to his head and face, consistent with having been involved in a physical altercation," the report said.