Whitey Bulger’s killing was ‘planned’ attack that lasted just seven minutes, new details show
Inmates knew notorious mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was being transferred to their violence-plagued prison in West Virginia where he was killed in a “planned” attack lasting just seven minutes, according to new details revealed in court.
Sean McKinnon told his mother in a phone call from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton that inmates were preparing for the arrival of a “higher profile person” the night prior to the 89-year-old gangster’s arrival. He went on to name Bulger as the facility’s newest prisoner, prompting his mother to tell McKinnon to stay away, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hannah Nowalk told a federal magistrate judge in Florida Monday.
“I can’t,” McKinnon replied during the call, placed on Oct. 29, 2018.
FILE - This file June 23, 2011, booking photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows James "Whitey" Bulger.
A recording of the conversation was played on Monday during a hearing for McKinnon, who is charged with conspiring along with two other men — Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, and Paul J. DeCologero, 48 — to kill Bulger following his transfer from Florida to USP Hazelton, often called “Misery Mountain.”
Nowalk told the court that “as soon as they saw Bulger come into the unit, they planned to kill him.”
Surveillance video from inside the prison shows Geas, who was McKinnon’s cellmate, and DeCologero entering Bulger’s cell around 6 a.m., while McKinnon can also be seen sitting at a table facing the cell. Bulger had only just arrived 12 hours earlier, Nowalk said, according to the transcript of the hearing.
In this April 14, 2009 photo, Fotios "Freddy" Geas appears for a court proceeding in his defense in the Al Bruno murder case, in Springfield, Mass. (Don Treeger / AP/)
Just seven minutes later, Geas and DeCologero exited the cell. Bulger was found dead in his bed about two hours later.
Prosecutors have yet to reveal a motive behind the slaying, though Bulger, the leader of Boston’s Winter Hill gang, was a well-known “snitch.” Further questions also swirled around why Bulger was sent to the troubled prison in the first place and why he was placed in the general population instead of more protective housing.
McKinnon’s attorney, Christine Bird, argued that at no point in the phone call does her client mention that he was planning an attack. She added it wasn’t just that McKinnon knew, but “the entire unit was alerted that Whitey Bulger was coming to the unit.”
“The fact that his roommate was a henchman has nothing to do with him,” she said. “He didn’t select his roommate. The fact that he knew that doesn’t really tell the Court that he was involved in the conspiracy,”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Philip Lammens on Monday sided with prosecutors and ruled McKinnon should remain behind bars until trial.
With News Wire Services
