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Convicted Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was beaten early Tuesday morning when cell doors were unlocked so inmates could leave to eat breakfast, according to a law-enforcement official familiar with the investigation into Bulger’s death at a West Virginia prison.
The onetime kingpin of a ruthless gang was pronounced dead soon after, and federal authorities are investigating his death at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton as a homicide. One of the suspects is a mafia hitman from Massachusetts serving a life sentence at the same prison, the law enforcement official said.
The attack took place sometime after 6 a.m, when at least two fellow inmates were able to brutally beat Bulger, who was 89 years old and in ailing health, the official said.
Bulger had only been at the prison for a day after being transferred from a facility in Florida, where he had lived for years following his 2013 conviction on a sprawling racketeering indictment that included involvement in 11 murders, as well as running a criminal enterprise of drug-dealing, extortion, money-laundering and gun running from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Investigators are trying to determine why the high-profile octogenarian was placed in the general population, but the law-enforcement official said Bulger had apparently requested that. The former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who oversaw the prosecution of Bulger at his trial said Thursday that there should be a full investigation into his death.
“Incidents like this should not be happening at a federal prison,” said Carmen Ortiz, who served in that role from 2009 to 2017 and is now a lawyer with Anderson & Kreiger LLP in Boston. “I knew he would die in jail…but I had not envisioned this kind of an end.”
The Bureau of Prisons said Thursday it has sent a team of experts to the Hazelton complex “to assess operational activities and correctional security practices and measures to determine any relevant facts that may have contributed to the incident.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local U.S. Attorney’s office have declined comment, beyond confirming that they are investigating Bulger’s death as a homicide.
Bulger’s violent demise adds a new layer of intrigue to his long-running life of crime and complicated relationship with the federal government. Prosecutors said Bulger acted as a secret FBI informant and fled Boston in late 1994 after being tipped off about the pending indictment against him by his former FBI handler.
James “Whitey” Bulger evaded authorities for nearly 20 years and was arguably one of the most famous outlaws in modern history. His case was revisited in a 2014 documentary titled “Whitey: United States v. James Bulger”. The film’s director, Joe Berlinger, and Mr. Bulger’s co-counsel, Hank Brennan to discuss. Photo: Magnolia Pictures (Originally published June 18, 2014)
Ms. Ortiz said it isn’t surprising other inmates with ties to organized crime might want Bulger dead, given his alleged role as an informant. At the trial, Bulger denied helping the FBI.
“They view them as rats and snitches,” Ms. Ortiz said, adding that “Bulger was guilty of that himself. Quite frankly, a number of the individuals that he targeted for murder…were because he believed that they were cooperating with the government.”
Bulger was on the lam for 16 years before his 2011 arrest, when he and his girlfriend were found living under fake names in a rent-controlled Santa Monica, Calif., apartment with $822,000 hidden in the walls.
One of the suspects in his death is Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 51, a Mafia hit man from West Springfield, Mass., who is serving a life sentence for the 2003 killing of the leader of the Genovese crime family, the official said. Geas has a known disdain for FBI informants, and was sent to solitary confinement after the killing, the official said. A lawyer who represented Geas in the past didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The official didn’t know the name of a second suspect but said he is from the same part of Massachusetts. Another person familiar with the investigation said prison officials may have at least some surveillance footage of the attack.
Brian Kelly, a longtime former prosecutor in Massachusetts, called Geas “not somebody you want to mess with in any situation.”
“He was certainly known to the authorities and to his fellow criminals as a very dangerous person,” said Mr. Kelly, who helped prosecute Mr. Bulger and is now a partner with Boston law firm Nixon Peabody LLP.
He said it was too soon to tell whether authorities had mishandled Bulger. “His problem was he had a lot of enemies,” Mr. Kelly said. “This was no cartoon, this was a real killer who destroyed a lot of lives and families.”
Write to Sadie Gurman at [email protected], Jennifer Levitz at [email protected] and Jon Kamp at [email protected]
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