Ex-Hit Hitman Gets 25 Years in US Prison for Murder of ‘Whitey’ Bulger

(Reuters) – A former Mafia hitman already serving a life sentence was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday for the 2018 murder of notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger in his cell.

Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh in Clarksburg, West Virginia, after he reached a deal to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for dropping more serious murder charges that would have carried a sentence of life in prison.

Geas was the last of three inmates to plead guilty and was sentenced after reaching a plea deal in May to resolve charges filed in 2022 in Bulger’s death. Geas was serving a life sentence for the 2003 murders of Springfield, Massachusetts, mob boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno and an accomplice.

Geas’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Bulger lived a double life as one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters, while also acting as a secret FBI informant. He went on the run in 1994 after being tipped off by his FBI handler about a racketeering indictment, and remained a fugitive until his capture in California in 2011.

Two years later, Bulger was convicted of 11 murders and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

The 89-year-old’s murder occurred shortly after he was transferred from a Florida prison to a West Virginia prison.

Prosecutors say Geas, an associate of the Genovese crime family, and another inmate, Massachusetts mobster Paul DeCologero, went to Bulger’s cell on the morning of Oct. 30, 2018.

Geas and Bulger got into a verbal altercation, and Geas punched him in the head and attacked him, prosecutors said. He and DeCologero then placed Bulger’s body in his bunk bed and covered him with bedding, prosecutors said.

Prison officials did not discover Bulger until nearly two hours later. Other inmates later reported that some of the men involved in the killing had called Bulger a “snitch,” prosecutors said.

DeCologero was sentenced last month to 51 months in prison. A third inmate, Geas’ cellmate Sean McKinnon, was sentenced to time served in June after he admitted lying to an FBI agent when he claimed he didn’t know what happened to Bulger.