FILE PHOTO: Former mob boss and fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger is seen in a booking mug photo released to Reuters on August 1, 2011. REUTERS/U.S. Marshals Service/U.S. Department of Justice/Handout/File Photo
(Reuters) - A former mafia hitman who was already serving life in prison was sentenced to 25 years in custody on Friday for the killing of notorious Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in his prison cell in 2018.
Fotios "Freddy" Geas, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh in Clarksburg, West Virginia, after striking a deal to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for having more serious murder charges that carried life in prison dropped.
Geas was the last of three inmates to plead guilty and be sentenced after reaching deals in May to resolve charges filed in 2022 over Bulger's death. Geas has been serving a life term for the 2003 murders of a mob boss in Springfield, Massachusetts, Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno, and an associate.
Geas' lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Bulger lived a double life as one of Boston's most notorious mobsters while also acting as a secret FBI informant. He went on the run in 1994 after he was tipped off by his FBI handler about a pending racketeering indictment against him and remained a fugitive until he was captured in California in 2011.
Two years later, Bulger was convicted for 11 murders and other offenses and sentenced to life in prison.
The 89-year-old's murder came shortly after he was transferred from a prison in Florida to one in West Virginia.
Prosecutors said that on the morning of Oct. 30, 2018, Geas, an associate of the Genovese crime family, and another inmate, Massachusetts gangster Paul DeCologero, went to Bulger's cell.
Geas and Bulger got involved in a verbal altercation, and Geas struck him in the head and assaulted him, prosecutors said. He and DeCologero then placed Bulger’s body in his bunk bed and covered him with bedding, prosecutors said.
Prison staff did not discover Bulger for nearly two hours. Other inmates later reported that some men tied to the killing had referred to Bulger as a "snitch," prosecutors said.
DeCologero last month was sentenced to 51 months in prison. A third inmate, Geas' cell mate Sean McKinnon, was sentenced to time served in June after pleading guilty to lying to an FBI agent when he claimed he did not know what happened to Bulger.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler)
