James Whitey Bulger is seen in undated photos released by the FBI in August 1995.
It was just before Christmas, 1994, and James J. (Whitey) Bulger - notorious head of the Boston Mafia - was finishing his last-minute shopping at Nieman Marcus.
A trusted informant approached him with grim Yuletide news: the U.S. Justice Department was about to issue racketeering indictments. Mr. Bulger would be arrested.
Within hours, he had fled, checking into a Long Island hotel under an alias.
Mr. Bulger, now 81, had been on the global lam ever since, wanted in connection with no less than 19 murders, as well as for extortion, drug dealing, money laundering, and the biggest art robbery in history (13 masterpieces, by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, stolen from a Boston museum in 1990).
All or most of these crimes were committed by members of his infamous Winter Hill Gang, which he ran with ruthless efficiency and a volcanic temper.
In Boston, Whitey Bulger is the stuff of legend, right up there with Bobby Orr and Ted Williams.
The mobster's epic, 16-1/2-year flight from justice took him to four continents and a dozen cities, briefly including, it is believed, Victoria, B.C.
Occasional sightings occurred but, for pursuing police forces and private investigators, the trail always went cold - perhaps, some observers suggested, because Mr. Bulger was able to buy inside help. The FBI recently doubled the reward for information leading to his arrest, to $2-million.
"Although there were those who doubted our resolve over the years," said Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, "it has never wavered."
The marathon manhunt finally ended Wednesday night.
Three blocks from the Pacific Ocean, federal agents arrested Mr. Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Grieg, 60, at the Princess Eugenie, a modest, 28-unit apartment building in Santa Monica, Calif.
More often than not, it now seems, the most wanted man in America (he claimed the title after the capture of Osama bin Laden earlier this year), has been hiding in plain sight.
"I hope the capture of Whitey Bulger brings some measure of relief to the families of his numerous victims," said former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. "It brings to a close a sad and sordid chapter in recent Massachusetts history."
In 2003, as governor, Mr. Romney pressured Mr. Bulger's younger brother, William Bulger, to resign as head of the University of Massachusetts, after he admitted - under a grant of immunity - to being in contact with his fugitive sibling.
Inside the couple's 1,110 square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, police found hundreds of thousands of dollars and more than 20 firearms - both handguns and rifles. News of their capture was released by the FBI via Twitter, shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday.
Using the aliases Charles and Carol Gasko, the couple strolled the nearby Third Street retail promenade like ordinary seniors. Neighbours said they were private, but innocuous, given to long early-morning walks. Mr. Bulger, who often wore sunglasses and a peaked cap, fed peanuts to the squirrels.
One tenant of the same building described him as a rage-a-holic, who may have been suffering from dementia. Ms. Grieg was said to have been friendlier. They appear to have rented the apartment more than a decade ago.
The FBI said they had been led to the location by a tip resulting from an unprecedented marketing campaign - 350 30-second TV spots (and billboards across America) that ran photographs of Mr. Bulger and Ms. Grieg.
In fact, the FBI seems to have heeded the oldest piece of advice in the detective game - Cherchez la femme. The TV ads, run on afternoon soaps drawing large female audiences in 14 major American markets, focused on Ms. Grieg, a former dental hygienist, in the hope that someone might remember having seen her in a beauty salon, veterinarian's office or plastic surgery centre.
"There is someone in the United States or elsewhere in the world who knows Catherine Grieg as a neighbour, friend or co-worker," the ad began.
Mr. Bulger has been a source of chronic embarrassment to law enforcement officials, both because of his continued elusiveness and because, for years in Boston, he had operated as an FBI informant. His complicated relationship with the law allowed him to avoid prosecution and to consolidate gangland power, decimating his rival - the Italian Patriarca crime family.
It was Mr. Bulger's FBI contact, then agent John Connolly, who sent him word in 1994 that his arrest was pending, allowing him to escape. Mr. Connolly is still serving time for the obstruction of justice offence.
The grandson of Newfoundlanders, Mr. Bulger was raised in south Boston's rough and tumble Irish neighbourhood, and committed his first crime, larceny, at age 14. After serving five years in a juvenile reformatory, he joined the U.S. air force, and received an honourable discharge, despite a series of arrests and detentions. He spent most of the period between 1956-65 in prison for various crimes, and, after his release, became an enforcer for the Irish gangs in south Boston. By the late 1970s, he had seized de facto control of extortion, loansharking and bookmaking, later diversifying into arms trafficking and cocaine and marijuana distribution.
Director Martin Scorcese is said to have used Mr. Bulger as the model for the character Costello, played by Jack Nicholson, in his 2006 film, The Departed.
With Mr. Bulger's capture, America has a new most wanted fugitive - Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevitch, wanted, according to the FBI, for "his alleged participation in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud thousands of investors in the stock of a public company incorporated in Canada," YBM Magnex International Inc.