Federal authorities charge three inmates with beating Boston mob boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger to death in a West Virginia prison in 2018

A mob hitman from Springfield and two other inmates have been indicted for the brutal beating death of Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger in a West Virginia prison in 2018, federal authorities said Thursday.

Springfield mobster Fotios “Freddy“ Geas, 55, Paul J. DeCologero, 55, another gangster from Lowell, Massachusetts, and Sean McKinnon, 36, originally from Montpeiler, Vermont, were all charged Wednesday with conspiracy to commit first degree murder, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in West Virginia said in a statement issued shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday.

All three were imprisoned with Bulger at the Hazleton federal prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, the spokeswoman said. The 89-year-old Bulger, who became one of the nation’s most powerful gangsters in part by being a secret FBI informer, was so badly beaten that he was left for dead and was almost unrecognizable when found on the floor of a prison corridor. Geas and DeCologero had reputations for hating informers.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in West Virginia said Geas and DeCologero are accused of beating Bulger and causing his death in October 2018, hours after he had been transferred to the high security federal prison and released into general population. In addition to conspiracy, the two are charged with aiding and abetting first-degree murder and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.

Geas faces a separate charge of murder by a federal inmate serving a life sentence.

McKinnon is charged separately with making false statements to a federal agent.

Geas remains incarcerated at the federal prison at Hazelton. DeCologero is being held at an undisclosed location elsewhere in the federal prison system. McKinnon had been released and was arrested Thursday in Florida, the spokeswoman for the West Virginia U.S. Attorney said in the statement.

There was nothing in the statement about why Bulger’s death went uncharged for almost four years, or why he was released into general population. At the time of his death, law enforcement sources said Bulger, whose health was deteriorating and who was confined to a wheelchair, chose to be confined in general population rather than requesting protected status, which would have limited his freedom of movement and contact with other inmates.

Federal law enforcement officials in West Virginia could not be reached on Thursday night.

Bulger, who was serving a life sentence for 11 murders and a variety of other crimes, had survived at least one prison murder attempt before his transfer to the West Virginia penitentiary. He was convicted after a sensational, months-long trial in Boston that laid out, in detail, how the Irish mob boss from South Boston arranged a deal with corrupt FBI agents that guaranteed his rise to top of the New England underworld.

In return to giving federal agents the evidence they needed to arrest his underworld rivals, Bulger was tipped in return to who was informing on him — and many of them became his victims.

Geas has been the top suspect in Bulger’s murder since discovery of the aging gangster’s battered body. He was — and still is — serving multiple life sentences for, among other crimes, two murders, a murder conspiracy and an attempted murder, after once-trusted mob partners informed on him. Offered the chance to reduce his sentence by becoming an informer himself, Geas told federal prosecutors he’d rather spend the rest of his life in prison.

“He is vicious, absolutely vicious,” retired Massachusetts State Police Det. Lt. Steve Johnson, an organized crime expert who worked on the cases that sent both Geas and Bulger away for life, once said. “There really is no way to describe him other than an absolute animal.”

Organized crime investigators describe Geas as a ruthless killer affiliated with the New York-based Genovese crime family, which dominates the rackets in upstate New York and western Massachusetts. The Genovese Springfield operation has been involved in gambling and loansharking in Hartford for decades and in recent years. its interests in Hartford have expanded.

On the other hand, Springfield defense lawyer Daniel D. Kelly, who has represented Geas for years, has called Geas one of the “most personable” people he knows.

“If I introduced him to you as an insurance broker, you wouldn’t doubt me,” Kelly said during an interview at the time of Bulger’s death. But he said Geas’ hatred of informers was well known

When Geas was looking at multiple life sentences for multiple murders, Kelly said one of Geas’ mob partners and co-defendants sent a back-channel message informing him that the partner was negotiating a cooperation deal and that Geas shouldn’t worry because it would be a package deal that included him.

“He turned it down in like two seconds flat,” Kelly said. “The idea that he would cooperate with the government and become a rat for some kind of consideration? He wouldn’t even consider it.”

The government made a similar offer and Geas dismissed it, too, Kelly said.

Geas, 51, grew up in West Springfield. He was sent to prison for life in 2011 following a sensational federal trial in New York that also convicted, among others, the acting Genovese Boss Arthur Nigro and Geas’ younger brother Ty, 46.

The highlight of the trial was the 2003 murder of the cigar-chomping, Springfield Genovese capo Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, who was riddled with bullets as he left his weekly card game at his Springfield social club, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society.

The Bruno hit was sanctioned by Nigro, who complained Bruno wasn’t sending New York enough of what he raked off Springfield rackets. As a Greek, Geas could not become a sworn member of the Italian mafia. But he did the next best thing, which was become partners with Anthony Arillotta, the gangster the family had decided would replace Bruno.

When the case went to trial, Arillotta and Frankie Roche, another killer recruited by Geas, rolled over, testifying in exchange for leniency that Geas set up and took part in the hit. It was Arillotta who offered to include Geas in a leniency deal.

Geas also was found guilty of killing Springfield area drug dealer Gary Westerman, who was beaten with bats, shot and buried in a makeshift grave. He was convicted of the attempted murder of a New York union officer, who survived nine gunshots, and of conspiring to murder Springfield drug dealer Guiseppe Manzi, who somehow emerged unscathed from a burst of machine gun fire at a Springfield intersection.

Bulger had survived at least one other murder attempt. At the Arizona prison where he was first sent after his conviction in 2013 for 11 murders and dozens of other crimes, another inmate stabbed him in the neck with a pen.

After the attack, Bulger was transferred to the high-security prison at the Coleman penitentiary complex in central Florida. But Bulger was transferred again when prison officials considered assigning former Patriarca crime family boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme to Coleman.

Prison officials feared violence because Salemme knew that Bulger and his former partner, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, had been informing to the FBI about him and his mafia associates for decades.

Authorities with knowledge of the events said a decision was made to move Bulger because he was suffering from deteriorating health. His heart was said to be failing and he was using a wheelchair to get around.