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Three men, including a mafia hitman, have been charged in the killing of notorious Boston crime boss James “White” Bulger at a West Virginia prison, the Justice Department said.
The charges against Fotios “Freddy” Geas, Paul J DeCologero and Sean McKinnon come nearly four years after Bulger’s killing, raising questions about why known ‘whistleblowers’ were placed in the general population and not more Problems in Protected Housing.
The men were charged with first-degree murder.
Bulger was transferred from a Florida prison in October 2018 to be beaten to death at USP Hazelton, where he was serving a life sentence for 11 murders and other crimes.
Prosecutors accused Geas and DeCologero of repeatedly hitting Bulger in the head and causing his death.
The Justice Department also charged Geas, 55, and DeCologero, 48, with aiding and abetting first-degree murder and assault causing grievous bodily harm.
Geas faces another charge of murder by a federal prisoner sentenced to life, and McKinnon, 36, is separately charged with making false statements to federal agents.
Geas and DeCologero were identified as suspects shortly after Bulger’s death, but they remain uncharged as the investigation dragged on for years, according to law enforcement officials at the time.
They were held in solitary confinement throughout the investigation, the family told the Boston Globe.
McKinnon’s mother told the paper that her son, who was Geas’ roommate at the time of Bulger’s killing, told her he knew nothing about the killing.
An email seeking comment was sent to lawyers for Geas and Bulger’s family. It was not immediately clear whether McKinnon and De Cologro had lawyers to comment on their behalf.
Geas is still being held at the Hazelton jail, while DeCologero is being held at another federal prison facility. At the time of the indictment, McKinnon was being released under federal supervision and was arrested in Florida on Thursday, prosecutors said.
Bulger’s family has sued 30 unnamed employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the prison system over his death, claiming that the murderous gangster appeared to have been “intentionally sent to death” at the prison nicknamed “Misery Mountain.”
Bulger is the third inmate to be killed in six months at USP Hazelton, where workers and advocates have long warned of dangerous conditions. A federal judge dismissed the family’s lawsuit in January.
Bulger, who ran a predominantly Irish mob in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s, served as an FBI informant, exposing his gang’s chief rivals at a time when overthrowing the Mafia was the FBI’s national priority.
He later became one of the most wanted men in the country.
Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 after his FBI agent John Connolly Jr warned him of impending prosecution. With a $2 million reward, Bulger is one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” men.
After more than 16 years on the run, he was arrested in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 81, where he lived with his longtime girlfriend, Katherine Gregg, in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach.
A prison workers union official told The Associated Press in 2018 that sending Bulger to the troubled federal prison holding other New England gangsters was like giving him a “death penalty.”
A federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press in 2018 that he was moved to Hazelton for disciplinary reasons. The official maintained anonymity because he was not authorized to release details. In February 2018, Bulger threatened an assistant superintendent of a Florida prison, telling her “your reckoning is coming.”
DeCologero was part of an organized crime gang on Massachusetts’ North Shore called the “DeCologero Crew” led by his uncle.
He was convicted of buying heroin used to try to kill a teenage girl his uncle wanted to kill because he feared she “would betray the crew to the police”.
The heroin didn’t kill her, so another man broke her neck, dismembered her and buried her body in the woods, court records show.
Geas was a close associate of the Mafia and acted as an enforcer, but was not an official “made” member because he was Greek, not Italian.
Geas and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for their roles in several violent crimes, including the 2003 killing of Genovese crime family boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Another thug ordered the killing of Bruno because he was disturbed by his conversation with the FBI, prosecutors said.
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