Killer of ‘Whitey’ Bulger to plead guilty Friday

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. — A former mob boss from West Springfield, Mass., accused of beating notorious South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger to death in a West Virginia federal prison in 2018 is expected to appear in U.S. District Court Friday for a hearing on changing his plea and determining his sentence.

Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 57, who is charged with murder, conspiracy and assault, reached a plea deal with prosecutors that is still pending. He is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the 2003 killings of Springfield mob boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno and an accomplice.

The government has dropped murder charges against two other inmates who were charged with Geas two years ago and pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Bulger was 89 years old and in poor health when he was murdered in his cell at the Hazelton Penitentiary on the morning of October 30, 2018, less than 12 hours after he had been transferred to the prison under questionable circumstances and placed in general population.

Bulger, who was on the run for 16 years before being captured in 2011, was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for killing 11 people while running a sprawling criminal enterprise from the 1970s to the 1990s. He was publicly identified in the late 1990s as a longtime FBI informant who provided information against local mobsters, but was placed in the same unit as Geas and other Massachusetts organized crime figures.

In August 2022, Geas and two other inmates, Paul J. DeCologero, 50, of Lowell, and Sean McKinnon, 38, a Waltham native who grew up in Vermont, were indicted on charges they plotted Bulger’s murder. They were scheduled to go to trial in December, but all three reached plea deals with the government.

DeCologero admitted he acted as a “lookout” when Geas attacked Bulger and was sentenced in August to 51 months in prison after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. He was ordered to serve that sentence on top of a 25-year sentence he is serving for a racketeering conviction in Boston.

McKinnon pleaded guilty in June to lying to the FBI when he denied knowing Geas and DeCologero were involved in Bulger’s murder. He was sentenced to time served — the 22 months he has spent in prison since his 2022 indictment — and released.

Shelley Murphy can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @shelleymurph.