Bulger trial judge reminds jury to seek unanimity on all charges BOSTON (Reuters) - The judge in the trial of former Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger, faced with a series of questions from jurors deliberating his fate, on Thursday told them they had a duty to try to reach a unanimous verdict on each of the dozens of murder and racketeering charges. The jury in Boston federal court is weighing charges that could send the 83-year-old gangster to prison for the rest of his life. Bulger, nicknamed "Whitey" because of the shock of blonde hair he once had, pleaded not guilty to all charges, although his lawyers acknowledged he was a drug dealer, extortionist, loan shark and "organized criminal." Bulger was charged with 32 criminal counts, with one of those counts - racketeering offense - containing 38 individual criminal acts including 19 murders he is said to have carried out or ordered as head of the "Winter Hill" gang in 1970s and 80s. Jurors began deliberations on Tuesday after eight weeks of testimony. On Wednesday, after a series of questions about whether the 12 jurors must reach agreement on all the racketeering acts to find Bulger guilty, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper said that they need only find that he committed two of the 38 acts over a decade to be guilty of the racketeering count. She amended that guidance on Thursday after prosecution lawyers suggested that the families of Bulger's victims were worried the jury would fail to reach a decision on some of the murders. "I remind you that ... you have a duty to attempt to reach agreement on each of the counts and on each of the racketeering acts, if you can do so conscientiously," Casper told the jurors before releasing them into their third day of deliberations. The survivors of several of the people Bulger is accused of killing have been a regular presence in the courtroom through the trial. Bulger's lawyers had argued that he was not responsible for the deaths of two women among his alleged victims, saying that his partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and not Bulger killed Flemmi's girlfriend and stepdaughter. The trial included testimony from former hit men, FBI agents, drug dealers and other witnesses who described brazen killings, massive drug and weapons heists and harrowing extortion encounters. The case was decades in the making. During the years that Bulger ruled Boston's underworld, corrupt FBI agents who shared his Irish ethnicity turned a blind eye to his crimes in exchange for information they could use against the Italian Mafia, then a top target of the bureau nationwide, according to prosecutors. Bulger's attorneys deny their client was ever an informant, or "rat" in gangster lingo, contending that he paid agents for tips but never offer any of his own. The gang boss fled Boston after a 1994 tip that arrest was imminent and spent 16 years on the lam -- many of them listed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. Agents caught up with him in June 2011, living in a seaside Santa Monica, California, apartment with a stash of guns, more than $800,000 in cash and his girlfriend Catherine Greig -- a former dental technician who in the gang's heyday had supplied pliers they used to pull victims' teeth from their mouths. Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool