Inmate gets 51 months in prison for gangster 'Whitey' Bulger's killing

[August 02, 2024]  By Nate Raymond and Andrew Goudsward

(Reuters) - A Massachusetts gangster was sentenced on Thursday to more than four years in prison for taking part in the killing of notorious Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in his prison cell in 2018.

Paul DeCologero, 50, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh in Clarksburg, West Virginia, after he and two other inmates in May reached plea deals to resolve charges filed against them in 2022 over Bulger's death.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in Clarksburg, which prosecuted the case, confirmed the 51-month prison sentence.

DeCologero pleaded guilty to assault resulting in serious bodily injury in a deal that called for an additional 51 months in prison to his existing term, according to court documents.

A lawyer for DeCologero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DeCologero is already in prison with two-plus years left to serve on a 25-year racketeering sentence stemming from his membership in a Boston-based organized crime gang his uncle led.

The 51-month term will be served in addition to the original sentence.

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.

Former mob boss and fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger, after his arrest in Santa Monica, California in 2011. via U.S. Marshals Service

Prosecutors said that on the morning of Oct. 30, 2018, DeCologero and another inmate, Fotios "Freddy" Geas, a former mafia hitman from Massachusetts, went to Bulger's cell, where Geas beat Bulger to death.

DeCologero served as a lookout and then helped place Bulger’s body in his bunk bed and cover 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.

Geas, an associate of the Genovese crime family, is scheduled to plead guilty and be sentenced on Sept. 6. He is already serving a life sentence after being convicted of participating in two mob-related murders.

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)

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