The Boston Globe on Sunday said a former Miss Iceland, Anna Bjornsdottir, bonded with Bulger’s girlfriend in California over a stray cat and alerted the FBI after seeing a news report about the couple. Bulger had been wanted for nearly two decades in connection with 19 murders.

The 57-year-old Bjornsdottir is a former actress who starred in shaving cream commercials in the 1970s and was crowned Miss Iceland in 1974. The Globe reported that she spent months at a time in California, where she befriended Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, over a stray cat.

The newspaper said she was home in Reykjavik when she saw a report on CNN in June about the FBI’s latest publicity campaign to catch Bulger and Greig.

A later story said the tipster’s name was already available to Bulger, who authorities say had a history of shooting anyone he knew or even suspected of double-crossing him.

Bjornsdottir’s current whereabouts are unclear. Bulger has been denied bail and is awaiting trial.

Former US Attorney Michael Sullivan said he does not believe Bjornsdottir will face retaliation, citing testimony from several former Bulger loyalists who have cooperated with prosecutors in the past decade and not been harmed.

But Sullivan said he worries the revelation could hurt the FBI’s ability to cultivate both criminal informants and tipsters who report sightings in high-profile fugitive cases.

“For some folks who are informants or tipsters, the idea of anonymity is critical,” Sullivan said. “Some people just wouldn’t cooperate at all if they thought for a moment their identity is going to be revealed.”

Some in Boston believed the FBI didn’t really want to catch Bulger because the agency was embarrassed by his corrupt relationship with former Boston FBI agent John Connolly Jr., who was convicted of racketeering for warning Bulger that he was about to be indicted, prompting him to flee in 1994.

The Boston Globe’s deputy managing editor for local news, Jennifer Peter, said the newspaper felt it was important to publish a complete story about how Bulger was captured because of the skepticism about the FBI’s desire to apprehend him.

US Representatives Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Dan Burton of Indiana have called on the FBI to find out why Bjornsdottir’s identity wasn’t better protected, citing concerns about her safety. Their comments were reported by the Boston Herald, the Globe’s main competition.

The FBI has not publicly commented on the Globe story. Since Bulger’s capture in June, the agency has repeatedly said that as a matter of policy it would not provide the identity of any tipsters.

“The FBI automatically is expected to protect confidentiality. It’s one of the reasons that they are able to get information,” said former FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick, who was second-in-command of the Boston office and headed organized crime investigations in the 1980s. “Now it becomes suspicious. A suspicion has been created that perhaps the information is not that confidential.”

He said the public outing of a tipster could damage the FBI’s reputation.

Peter said a reporter had told the FBI and the US attorney’s office that the newspaper was considering publishing Bjornsdottir’s name and that neither agency raised concerns about her safety.

The editor stressed that the Globe learned Bjornsdottir’s identity not from the FBI but from neighbors who saw her interact with Bulger and Greig.