One of the inmates charged in the fatal prison cell beating of James (Whitey) Bulger, the shrewd and savage organized crime boss who lorded over Boston’s underworld for decades, received an additional sentence of more than four years on Thursday for his role in the attack.
Paul J. DeCologero, a Massachusetts gangster who is serving 25 years behind bars for his activities in the violent DeCologero Crew crime gang, pleaded guilty to an assault charge after prosecutors dropped the more serious counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder — which would have carried a potential sentence of life in prison.
Before the new conviction, Mr. DeCologero, 50, had been eligible for release in December of 2026. Now, that release date has been pushed back to 2031.
Prosecutors initially said that Mr. DeCologero and another inmate, Fotios Geas, killed Mr. Bulger by flogging him in the head with a lock attached to a belt just hours after he was transferred in October 2018 to a correction facility in Bruceton Mills, W.Va., that was known for housing a large number of organized crime convicts.
But at the hearing in West Virginia on Thursday, prosecutors said that Mr. DeCologero had acted only as a lookout and had not struck Mr. Bulger. They said Mr. Geas carried out the beating, and that Mr. DeCologero had helped him put Mr. Bulger back in his bunk and covered him with bedding.
A third inmate, Sean McKinnon, 38, had also been charged with serving as a lookout. In June, he became the first of the group to be sentenced after pleading guilty to lying to federal agents. Mr. McKinnon dodged additional prison time after prosecutors dropped a murder conspiracy charge, and he was credited with the almost two years he spent behind bars after he and the two other men were indicted in the case in 2022.
In May, court records revealed that the three inmates had reached plea deals with the government and had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in preparing a report detailing the circumstances of the attack.
But according to Mr. DeCologero’s plea agreement, he was not debriefed as part of the deal. “Further, he did not provide any information or any substantial assistance to the government in this case or any other case,” the agreement says.
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