On his first morning in the notoriously vicious Hazelton Prison in West Virginia, Boston mobster Whitey Bulger was killed by other prisoners barely six minutes after the doors to his cell were opened.
The startling sequence was made public when US prosecutors requested a Florida court to remand in custody Sean McKinnon, a former prisoner of Hazelton, one of the suspected killers of Bulger. McKinnon, 36, served out his previous term and was freed from jail earlier this year.
One of three men accused last week of participating in the murder of Bulger, 89, in October of last year is McKinnon, who is charged with acting as a lookout as Bulger was being killed with a belt.
On the morning of October 30, 2018, Paul J. “Pauly” DeCologero, 48, and Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, were accused of fatally beating and stabbing wheelchair-Bulger in his cell.
Less than 12 hours had passed since Bulger’s transfer to Hazelton Prison when he was killed, and it is believed that his assailants were aware of his approaching arrival.
In a conversation that was captured on tape, McKinnon, who served as the lookout, was overheard discussing Bulger’s arrival with his mother, who urged him not to become involved.
Prior to being transported to Hazelton, Bulger was serving a life sentence for 11 murders in a section designed for high-risk convicts like informants or paedophiles; nonetheless, this placement eventually proved catastrophic.
According to the timetable, Bulger arrived in Hazelton Prison on October 29 around 8:30 p.m. When convicts were incarcerated for the night is unknown.
However, around 5 a.m. the next morning, Geas, McKinnon, and DeCologero were seen meeting in their cell together by a security camera.
All of the prison unit’s cell doors were opened at six in the morning so that convicts could depart for breakfast. Geas and DeCologero then entered Bulger’s cell at 6:06am and stayed there for seven minutes before departing at 6:13am.
McKinnon chose not to participate but instead sat at a table where he could view both Bulger’s cell and the cops’ stations for the unit.
Last week, the three men were all accused of plotting to assassinate Bulger. Charges of first-degree murder complicity were brought against DeCologero and Geas. McKinnon was accused of misleading the FBI.
Geas, a reputed Mafia enforcer from Massachusetts, is now incarcerated for life for two gang-related killings.
DeCologero, a member of a Massachusetts gang that killed a young girl they believed knew too much after robbing rivals, has four years remaining on a 25-year sentence for his part in the crime.
According to the prosecution, all three men confessed to killing Bulger to his other prisoners, and McKinnon told his mother he would be engaged in the crime the night before it happened.
Hannah Nowalk, an assistant US attorney, described McKinnon’s conversation to his mother during the hearing on Monday, in which he said the prisoners were “getting ready to bring another higher-profile person here tonight.”
McKinnon’s mother advised him to avoid the infamous Boston gangster, but he replied, “Ah, I can’t,” mentioning that his cellmate, Geas, was “a henchman for a criminal family out of New York and Boston,” and repeating that the whole unit was aware of Bolger’s coming.
This call, according to Nowalk, is proof that prisoners started arranging Bolger’s murder as soon as they learned of his upcoming visit.
Hank Brennan, Bulger’s attorney, referred to the accusations against the individuals as “inconsequential,” noting that the Bulger family blames the Bureau of Prisons for moving Bulger from a guarded unit and the killing.
In Somerville, Massachusetts, Bulger, whose actual name was James, was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang.
He was charged with 19 killings and fled the country in 1994 when an FBI agent he had previously spilled the beans to informed him of an anticipated sting operation.
Bulger, a wheelchair-bound criminal, received two life sentences in November 2013, although he remained at large until 2011.