The Tale Of The Two Freddys: Springfield (MA) Was Watching South Boston’s Back In Whitey Bulger Prison Murder

September 1, 2022 — The frame-up of Freddy Weichel for a 1980 murder was the reason Springfield (MA) gangster Freddy Geas killed disgraced Boston Irish mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger behind bars four years ago, according to sources close to the Geas family.

Geas, 56, was indicted last month for beating Bulger to death with a padlock attached to a belt in the hours after he arrived at a West Virginia federal penitentiary on October 30, 2018. The 89-year old Bulger notoriously ruled the South Boston rackets from the 1970s well into the 1990s while also being a top-echelon confidential informant for the FBIs Boston office and killing dozens of enemies and potential witnesses on the FBI’s watch.

Per sources, a member if Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang killed Bobby LaMonica to death in the spring of 1980, not Weichel, who existed on the outer fringes of the Irish mob organization. Weichel and Geas became close friends in state prison. Before being sent to prison for a street murder of his own, Geas worked for the Western Massachusetts wing of New York’s Genovese crime family.

Weichel’s homicide conviction in the LaMonica case was eventually tossed by the courts and he was finally released in 2017. Once imprisoned himself — he spent 16 years on the run as a fugitive –, Bulger wrote correspondence to Weichel’s attorney telling him Weichel wasn’t guilty of his crime. Despite the admission, Bulger refused to testify or sign a sworn affidavit to that fact.

A Winter Hill Gang lieutenant Tommy Barrett wrote a letter to Weichel’s mother confessing to murdering LaMonica and informing her that her son was innocent. Weichel testified that Bulger approached him following LaMonica’s May 1980 slaying outside his Braintree apartment and threatened to hurt him and his family if he ever implicated Barrett to authorities. Barrett and LaMonica had gotten into a bar fight weeks earlier. Bulger instructed his moles in law enforcement to steer clear of LaMonica’s murder investigation even though he admitted to them he knew Weichel wasn’t involved in the crime.

Weichel was found guilty of killing LaMonica at a 1981 trial based mainly on shaky eyewitness testimony placing Weichel at the scene. In reality, Weichel was drinking at Bulger’s Triple O Lounge headquarters in “Southie” at the time LaMonica was murdered.

This article was originally posted here