Prisoners In WV Were Informed Of Whitey Bulger’s Pending Arrival In Days Before Irish Mob Boss Was Killed In Padlock Attack, Per Prosecutors

August 25, 2022 — The general population unit in a West Virginia federal penitentiary knew in advance of famous Boston Irish mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger’s arrival at the facility in the fall of 2018 and three inmates were lying in wait to murder him, according to fresh court filings in the Bulger homicide case.

Last week, Freddy Geas, Paulie DeCalogero and Sean McKinnon were indicted for killing Bulger on the morning of October 30, 2018 in his cell at the USP Hazelton correctional facility. Bulger, who was an iconic crime lord and confidential informant for the FBI simultaneously, was beaten to death with medal padlocks attached to belts just hours after his arrival in West Virginia from a federal protection unit in Florida.

All participants in this saga hail from New England. USP Hazelton houses a large number of New Englanders doing federal prison bids, leading many to question the motives for Bulger’s transfer to that particular penitentiary and why he was put in a gen pop unit filled with rivals and hardened felons familiar with his reputation for ratting.

Prison phone recordings show McKinnon talking about Bulger’s upcoming transfer into his unit with his mother on the afternoon of October 29, 2018. McKinnon’s mother warned him to stay away from Bulger when he arrived and McKinnon told her, “I can’t” because of his cellmate. That cellmate was Geas, a Western Massachusetts mob enforcer with a grudge against Bulger due to Bulger’s past cooperation in a case tied to a one-time mentor and pal of his.

Bulger got to the prison five hours after the call between McKinnon and his mother was taped. He was bludgeoned by Geas and DeCalogero at around 6:00 a.m. the next morning, according to the government’s timeline provided in the indictment.

Surveillance video footage shows Geas and DeCalogero entering and exiting Bulger’s cell around the time of his killing and McKinnon sitting at a recreation table outside the cell in what prosecutors describe as pulling lookout duty. McKinnon is being charged with lying to investigators in recounting the events that transpired on the morning of Bulger’s murder.

The notoriously ruthless 89-year old Whitey Bulger ruled Boston’s Irish underworld from the early 1970s until his indictment in 1995 when he took off and lived as a fugitive of justice for 16 years. Bulger’s status as a rat was confirmed in court documents and indictments of federal agents while he was on the run. Finally detained living in Los Angeles in the spring of 2011, Bulger was found guilty of multiple gangland homicides at trial and sentenced to life behind bars two years later.

Geas and DeCalogero are both already serving prison time for homicides. Bulger’s eyes were gouged out after he was murdered. McKinnon, 36, was in prison on a stolen gun case from Vermont. He was released to a halfway house back in February and brought back into custody down in Ocala, Florida when the indictment landed last Thursday.

On the street in the 1990s and 2000s, Geas, 55, was the top muscle for the Springfield (MA) mafia, a satellite wing of New York’s Genovese crime family. Geas and his brother Ty were convicted in the 2003 slayings of Springfield mob skipper Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno and mob associate Gary Westerman. The Geas brothers helped their best friend Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta seize power but were never formally inducted into the Genovese family because of their Greek heritage.

Arillotta replaced Bruno as capo of the Springfield mob crew on behalf of the Genovese family. Westerman, a drug dealer and Arillotta’s brother-in-law, was suspected to be cooperating with police. Facing murder charges in the Bruno and Westerman hits, Arillotta became a witness for the government against the Geas brothers and his bosses in the Genovese clan.

DeCalogero, 48, was a member of his uncle, “Big Paulie” DeCaolgero’s mob crew on Boston’s North Shore. He was found guilty of murdering a teenage girl in 1996 that he and his crew felt was going to talk to the feds as well as heroin and steroid trafficking linked to activity out of his uncle’s gym in Woburn, Massachusetts.

This article was originally posted here