The man is suspected of having been a lookout during the action murder in prison of infamous Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was sentenced to prison on Monday after pleading guilty to charges of lying to federal agents.
Sean McKinnon was charged with two other inmates in the 2018 murder at a troubled West Virginia prison.
The other two prisonersFotios “Freddy” Geas and Paul J. DeCologero are accused of repeatedly punching Bulger in the head within hours of Bulger being taken to jail.
Bulger, who led Boston’s largely Irish mafia in the 1970s and 1980s, became one of the country’s most wanted fugitives after fleeing Boston in 1994. captured at the age of 81 after more than 16 years on the run and convicted in 2013 in a series of eleven murders and dozens of other gangland crimes.
US Marshals Service via AP
DeCologero, who was part of an organized crime gang led by his uncle in Massachusetts, was convicted of buying heroin that was used to kill a teenage girl who his uncle wanted dead because he feared she would give the crew to the police would betray. The heroin didn’t kill her, so another man broke her neck, dismembered her and buried her remains in the woods, court records show.
Geas, a Mafia hitman, and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for their roles in several violent crimes, including the 2003 murder of Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, the boss of a Genovese crime family in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Author Casey Sherman interviewed Gaes for his book ‘Hunting Whitey’.
“Freddy Geas was an old-fashioned gangster, and he lived by the code that you don’t – quote, don’t betray your friends,” Sherman told CBS Boston.
He said Bulger should never have been transferred to the prison where he died because he was a known FBI informant.
“It is the most violent prison in the federal prison system,” Sherman said.
