Ex-Mafia Hitman Sentenced to 25 Years for Whitey Bulger Murder

Fotios Geas, who was already serving a life sentence, bludgeoned the Boston gangster to death in his cell in 2018, prosecutors said.

Fotios Geas, a indicted Mafia hitman, was serving life in a government jail in West Virginia when, prosecutors say, he sprinkled deadly blows on the head of the Boston wrongdoing boss James (Whitey) Bulger whereas two other detainees acted as lookouts.

On Friday, Mr. Geas, 57, was the final of the three men — who had all concurred to supplication bargains a few months back — to be sentenced in the 2018 kill, accepting an extra 25 a long time. Mr. Bulger, a wiped out 89-year-old criminal broadly known to have been an F.B.I. witness, was beat to passing in his cell less than 12 hours after he was exchanged to the lockup in Bruceton Plants, W.Va.

At a hearing in U.S. Locale Court in Clarksburg, W.Va., Mr. Geas, a Unused Britain relate of the Genovese wrongdoing family as of now serving time for his part as an professional killer and master, argued blameworthy to intentional murder and attack coming about in genuine substantial injury.

U.S. Locale Judge Thomas S. Kleeh sentenced Mr. Geas to 15 a long time on the murder charge and 10 a long time on the ambush charge. But the extra time will have no viable impact on how long Mr. Geas spends behind bars since of his life sentence after his conviction in a racketeering and twofold kill trial in 2011.

In the Bulger case, some time recently his supplication, Mr. Geas had been charged with first-degree kill, scheme to commit first-degree kill and attack coming about in genuine real harm. He was moreover charged with first-degree kill by a government detainee serving a life sentence.

Mr. Geas was said to have utilized a bolt connected to a belt to pulverize Mr. Bulger fair hours after Mr. Bulger had been moved from a Florida lockup where he had been serving two successive life sentences for his part in 11 murders.

But amid Friday’s hearing, which kept going around two and a half hours, one of Mr. Geas’s attorneys, Nathan Chambers, debated the claim in the presentencing report that a bolt was utilized in the beating. Mr. Chambers said that Mr. Bulger was struck with a clench hand. The qualification, he said, is vital since it will have a bearing on how Mr. Geas is treated in jail by redress officials.

“There is no prove that a latch was utilized, either interior a sock or joined to a belt,” Mr. Chambers told the court, including that Mr. Bulger’s wounds appeared “nothing that compares to being clubbed with a lock.”

An post-mortem examination by West Virginia’s chief restorative analyst depicted in Mr. Geas’s supplication understanding found that Mr. Bulger had endured limit drive wounds to his cleared out ear and other parts of his head, as well as to his back and arms.

Mr. Chambers said that the reference to the bolt came from an detainee looking for decreased time in jail and was not valid. Eventually, Judge Kleeh concurred to note Mr. Geas’s protests in the presentencing report.

Mr. Geas, who goes by Freddy, detested sources, individuals who know him have said. His sentiments on the subject were so strongly that when he was given the opportunity to maintain a strategic distance from a life sentence by participating with law requirement, he declined to take it.

In a brief meet on Thursday, Mr. Chambers said that Mr. Geas has not made a difference prosecutors with their examination into Mr. Bulger’s kill in any way.

“He has given no data at all to the government,” Mr. Chambers said.

For their portion, the two other detainees indicted in the Bulger slaughtering — Paul J. DeCologero, 50, and Sean McKinnon, 38, too given examiners with no data, concurring to their supplication agreements.

Prison authorities had focused in on Mr. Geas as a suspect before long after the primitive assault. Taking after a long examination, prosecutors said that Mr. DeCologero, a Massachusetts criminal who had been serving 25 a long time for his exercises in the rough DeCologero Group wrongdoing pack, had an dynamic part with Mr. Geas in beating Mr. Bulger. Together, they said, the two men beat Mr. Bulger whereas Mr. McKinnon was a lookout.

But at his sentencing final month, prosecutors said that Mr. DeCologero had been as it were a post and had not struck Mr. Bulger. They said it was Mr. Geas who carried out the pummeling, and that Mr. DeCologero had made a difference him put Mr. Bulger back in his bunk and cover him with bedding.

Mr. DeCologero finished up arguing blameworthy to an attack charge. The government dropped the more genuine checks of first-degree kill and scheme to commit first-degree kill, charges that seem have kept him in jail for life. Mr. DeCologero had more than four a long time attached on to his sentence for his part in the Bulger slaying.

In June, Mr. McKinnon, who was at first charged as a post, argued blameworthy to a check of lying to government specialists and gotten away extra jail time after prosecutors dropped a charge of kill scheme. He was credited with the nearly two a long time he was imprisoned after he and the two other men were prosecuted in the case in 2022. When Mr. Bulger was slaughtered, Mr. McKinnon was serving an eight-year sentence for taking guns and exchanging them for heroin and cocaine.

Questions have long twirled almost why Mr. Bulger, a outlaw from equity for 16 a long time until he was secured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011, was permitted to be put in the common prisoner populace at the Bruceton Mills-based U.S. Prison Hazelton, which housed prisoners associated to organized crime.

Mr. Bulger, who endured from a life-threatening heart condition among other illnesses and was dependent on a wheelchair, had been at Coleman II, a government jail in Central Florida considered moderately secure for prisoners who require extra assurance, such as sources and previous group members.

In a 2022 report, the Equity Department’s examiner common said a chain of genuine authoritative botches, inadequacy and wellbeing framework disappointments driven to Mr. Bulger’s transfer.

Terrence McDonough, a Boston private examiner who got to know Mr. Geas a long time prior whereas working with a few of his defense attorneys, said that Mr. Geas had disdain not as it were for individuals who were sources, but men who harmed or murdered ladies — two things that Mr. Bulger had been blamed of, but denied.

“As a criminal, Freddy lived by certain rules, a code of conduct, and he was strict around it,” Mr. McDonough said, including that when he to begin with listened that Mr. Geas had been embroiled in Mr. Bulger’s kill, “I was astounded that they had exchanged 89-year-old Bulger there, but I wasn’t shocked around Freddy.”

Mr. Bulger had told at slightest one associate that he realized that if he were slaughtered, it would be a identification of honor for whoever seem do it.

“Freddy’s choice to slaughter Whitey Bulger was reliable with what Freddy unequivocally believed,” Mr. McDonough added.

The Equity Division said final year that it would not look for the passing punishment against Mr. Geas or Mr. DeCologero in the occasion that they were indicted.