James Whitey Bulger was killed by three men, one of whom was Paul J. Decologero, a member of the Massachusetts North Shore gang. The person was already 89 years old when they were killed in a prison.
After 16 years of looking for him, Whitey was caught in 2011. He was charged with 11 murders and given life sentences for each of them. He was also called a “snitch” because he helped the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Prisons was sued by his family over his death, but the judge threw out the case in January of this year.
Who is Paul J. Decologero, the man who was arrested for the murder of James “Whitey” Bulger?
James “Whitey” Bulger was a well-known crime boss in Boston. On October 30, 2018, he was killed by three other prisoners in West Virginia Prison. Paul J. Decologero, 48, Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, and Sean McKinnon, 36, were all charged.
They hit the 89-year-old gangster in the head over and over until he died in his cell. They were all in Bruceton Mills at the United States Penitentiary Hazleton.
It was known that Bulger worked with the FBI as a Top Echelon Informant to help them. But this was kept secret until a report from The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team 13 years later, as reported by Yahoo News.
Also, Whitey was on the run from 1994 until 2011, when police in Santa Monica finally caught him after 16 years. Then, he was found guilty of many crimes and given several life sentences. The gangster in a wheelchair was moved from one federal prison to another until he got to USP Hazelton.
But he was found guilty just a few hours after he got to the prison. When the guard found his body in the cell, he was bleeding. A top law enforcement official said he couldn’t be found. The New York Times also said that the eyes were either beaten out of the head or gouged out.
Where is Paul J. Decologero now? Is he still in jail?
The Justice Department says that Paul J. Decologero is being held in a federal prison. But after the murder, he was moved from the Hazelton Penitentiary. So, only Geas is there now. Two of the three suspects were the main ones who were found guilty.
Most of the time, Whitey was hit by Decologero and Fotios right after he was brought into prison and put in his cell. Also, the two of them are the main suspects for hitting Bulger in the head multiple times. They are charged with helping to kill Bulger in the first degree and assault that caused serious bodily harm.
Sean McKinnon was charged separately for telling a federal agent lies. Paul didn’t get a second conviction, but Freddy did. Instead, a federal prisoner with a life sentence found him guilty of murder.
Why was Paul J. Decologero in jail before the murder of Whitey? His Statements
Decologero was about to get out of prison after serving 25 years for racketeering. Also, he was involved in the plot in 1996 that led to the death of a 19-year-old girl. Paul J. also worked for the “DeCologero Crew,” a criminal gang on Massachusetts’ North Shore that was led by his uncle.
He was also found guilty of buying the heroin that the same teenager used to kill himself. But the drug didn’t kill her, so another member of the gang broke her neck and buried her body parts in the woods.
Paul’s uncle told her to kill because he was afraid she would tell on them and work with the police. But after being found guilty of killing Whitey, he will serve time in prison for other charges.
Whitey Bulger Bio
Enoch Lewis “Nucky” Johnson was the leader of the Atlantic City political machine during the Prohibition era. He benefited both personally and professionally from Prohibition, which was almost a letter of the law in Atlantic City. Johnson was a big man who stood more than six feet tall. He was known for putting a red carnation in the button hole of each of his perfect suits.
Johnson was the model for the character Nucky Thompson in the HBO show Boardwalk Empire. His father was the sheriff of Atlantic County, who was a powerful politician in the area on his own. Johnson was elected sheriff of Atlantic County in 1908, just like his father had been. After a year, Johnson was named executive secretary of the Republican Party in the county.
In 1911, Woodrow Wilson, who later became president and was a reformer, was the governor of New Jersey. He led an effort to clean up corruption and rackets in Atlantic City, which led to the arrest of more than 100 people, including Johnson and the boss at the time, Louis “The Commodore” Kuehnle. Johnson was not found guilty of election fraud, but Kuehnle was. Even though he had to quit as county sheriff, he took almost complete control of the Republican Party in Atlantic City and Atlantic County. Johnson is said to have gotten a cut of all the money made from gambling and prostitution in Atlantic City. He soon spread his political power to the state level and helped get a friendly New Jersey governor elected in 1916.
Whitey Bulger Murder
When Prohibition was made law in 1920, Johnson’s profits and political power kept growing. Most people in the coastal vacation community didn’t care about Prohibition. In 1929, Johnson held a meeting with Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Al Capone and Bugs Moran, who had been involved in the Chicago beer wars.
By the 1930s, newspapers and people who wanted to change the way law enforcement worked started to pay close attention to Atlantic City and Johnson. Johnson was known for not saying sorry when he sold illegal goods to paying customers. He said, “We have whiskey, wine, women, music, and slot machines.” “I won’t say it isn’t true, and I won’t say I’m sorry for it. If most people didn’t want them, they wouldn’t make money, and they wouldn’t be around.
Johnson’s public image got the wrong kind of attention from the government. He was charged with tax evasion and went to court. In one investigation mentioned by Thomas Reppetto in his 2004 book American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power, Treasury agents counted the number of towels in local brothels to figure out how many customers went there and how much money went to Johnson as a result.
After three trials, federal prosecutors finally got Johnson convicted, and he started his 10-year sentence in 1941. He got out of prison in 1945 and worked as a salesman for an oil company in Atlantic City, where he lived more simply and quietly. But he still had a lot of power in both local and state politics.
In the TV show Boardwalk Empire, his character was shot and killed, but Johnson lived to be an old man. He died in a rest home in New Jersey when he was 85 years old. That wasn’t the only difference between him and Nucky Thompson, the character he played in his stories. Johnson was never said to have killed anyone himself or to have told someone else to kill someone. He ruled with money and power instead of violence: “Johnson ruled with a velvet hammer.” In 2014, the New York Times said, “He was so powerful that he never had to use violence to get what he wanted.”
Whitey Bulger personal details
Born: December 24, 1899, Boston
Died: August 31, 1989, Las Vegas
Nicknames: Moe, Mr. Las Vegas
Associations: Meyer Lansky, Purple Gang, Mayfield Road Mob, the Outfit, Stardust Hotel, Desert Inn Hotel, Las Vegas Country Club, Sunrise Hospital, Teamsters Union