IMAGE GALLERY: Why Did FBI Tie Bulger to Hopkinton?

For 16 years federal agents searched for the whereabouts of James "Whitey" Bulger.

During that time, FBI agents searched in Hopkinton for the remains of one or more of his victims.

In 2001, the FBI investigated information it had that the Hopkinton Sportsmen's Club was considered a possible dumping spot for one or both of the Bennett brothers, whom Bulger is suspected of killing.

The information may have come from Bulger himself.

FBI agents scoured the grounds at the Sportsmen's Association, says Erica Hendry, who lived in Hopkinton at the time.

Hendry, now a Patch editor in Virginia, lived less than a mile from the site.

"I remember them digging up the area. They were everywhere," she said.

Hendry said she was in middle school at the time.

The Sportsmen's Association, at 95 Lumber St., is just off Rte. 495. 

Bill Morgan, who now owns the Golden Spoon restaurant, remembers working at the restaurant in the years before Bulger disappeared.

The mobster, accompanied by a contingent of Mass. State Police, was in the restaurant's parking lot several years before the FBi descended on the Sportsmen's Club, he said.

Morgan said he has no firsthand knowledge, but suspects from newspaper accounts at the time that Bulger may have told police that he had used the area as a burial ground, years earlier in the 1960s, when Rte. 495 was being built.

Last night, at an apartment complex in , Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig were apprehended after a nationwide campaign launched earlier in the week asking the public's help to find Greig in the hopes Bulger would be nearby.

The notorious crime boss left his mark on Boston history and the Bay State, even in Hopkinton.

Patch takes a pictorial look at locations around the state which may have played a part in Bulger’s crime spree.