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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Boston Gangster ID’d as 2nd Suspect in Whitey Bulger Slaying

The Greek hit man who doesn’t like rats may have gotten help killing Whitey Bulger in prison from a Massachusetts mobster who killed and dismembered a teen, an anonymous official told reporters Friday.

(CN) — The Greek hit man who doesn’t like rats may have gotten help killing Whitey Bulger in prison from a Massachusetts mobster who killed and dismembered a teen, an anonymous official told reporters Friday.

Paul J. DeCologero, who is serving 25 years at USP Hazelton for a 1996 murder, is the second suspect to be identified in the probe after 89-year-old Bulger was beaten to death with in 11 hours of his transfer Tuesday to the federal prison in West Virginia. The murder weapon is said to have been a padlock stuffed in a sock.

On Wednesday an investigator who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity said that Mafia hitman Fotios “Freddy” Geas was believed to have killed Bulger with one other inmate.

Geas, 51, and his brother are already serving life sentences, having been convicted in 2011 of gunning down Genovese crime boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, among other crimes.

“Freddy hated rats,” private investigator Ted McDonough, who knew Geas, told The Boston Globe. “Freddy hated guys who abused women. Whitey was a rat who killed women. It’s probably that simple.”

DeCologero, who was a member of a North Shore mob in Massachusetts, has a gruesome record as well. A First Circuit ruling identifies the mobster as the nephew of Paul A. DeCologero who ran criminal enterprise out of his gym in Woburn. In 1996 the DeCologero Crew grew concerned that 19-year-old Aislin Silva would turn snitch, so  DeCologero was supposed to make the woman overdose with a supply of high-grade heroin that they would tell her was cocaine.

When the drugs did not have the desired effect, however, another mobster broke Silva’s neck and buried her in the woods after dismembering her body in a bathtub.

Bulger led South Boston’s Irish mob for decades and became an FBI informant who supplied information on the New England Mafia, his gang’s main rival, in an era when bringing down the Italian mob was a top national priority for the bureau.

Tipped off that he was about to be indicted, Bulger became a fugitive and eluded authorities for 16 years before being captured in 2011. He was convicted in 2013 in 11 underworld slayings and a long list of other crimes and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

It is still unclear why Federal Bureau of Prisons officials opted to move Bulger from a prison in Florida to USP Hazelton on Monday.

Jeanne Kempthorne, an attorney who previously represented DeCologero, said she has a "hard time seeing a motive" for him to kill Bulger.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Categories / Criminal

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