Three men accused of beating to death Boston crime boss and longtime FBI informant James “Whitey” Bulger were indicted Wednesday in Clarksburg, West Virginia, authorities said.
Fotios Geas, also known as “Freddy,” 55, Paul J. DeCologero, also known as “Pauly,” 48, and Sean McKinnon, 36, were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Authorities accused Geas and DeCologero of allegedly striking Bulger in the head multiple times, which led to his death at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazleton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, in October of 2018.
Geas and DeCologero received charges of allegedly aiding and abetting first-degree murder and assault, resulting in serious bodily injury.
Authorities filed a separate charge against Geas for an alleged murder by a federal inmate serving a life sentence.
Geas, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, was already locked away for life after killing the leader of the Genovese crime family in 2003.
The Associated Press reports that Ted McDonough, a private investigator who knew Geas and called him by his nickname, said “Freddy hated rats.”
“Freddy hated guys who abused women,” McDonough said. “Whitey was a rat who killed women — it’s probably that simple.”
The New York Times reported in 2018 that Geas’ representative, Daniel D. Kelly, said in an interview he was not aware of his client killing Bulger.
However, his client had a “particular distaste for cooperators,” referring to Bulger’s long history of leaking information to federal agents leading to the betrayal and murder of rival gang members.
Geas’ “distaste” for informants was so strong that it barred him from accepting a shorter sentence if federal authorities offered for him to become one himself.
Geas remains incarcerated at the Hazleton penitentiary, while authorities have housed DeCologero within the federal prison system.
McKinnon was on federal supervised release at the time of the indictment, but was arrested Thursday in Florida and received a separate charge for allegedly making false statements to a federal agent.
Bulger, who had already been serving two life terms in person for his role in 11 murders spanning several decades, died at 89.
Officials reported his death within 12 hours after transferring him from another facility.
At the time of his death, at least two men allegedly moved the notorious crime boss out of the view of surveillance cameras before brutally pounding his head with a padlock stuffed inside a sock, law enforcement said at the time of his death, according to The New York Times.
A senior law enforcement official said Bulger’s eyes appeared to have been removed from his head when correctional officers discovered his body.
“They apparently tuned him up to the point where he was unrecognizable,” the anonymous source said, according to The New York Times.
Former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis told The New York Times that Bulger’s murder did not surprise him.
“I’m surprised that they let him get hit,” Davis said, adding that it baffled him that the prison had not kept Bulger “away from a convicted organized crime hit man from Massachusetts.”