Deserved end for Bulger

He died the way he lived. That’s the epitaph of former Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, who was murdered Tuesday while doing time in a West Virginia prison. Appropriately, the deed was allegedly done by fellow inmate Fotios “Freddy” Geas, a convicted underworld killer from West Springfield. A second inmate, Paul J. DeCologero, formerly of Lowell, has also emerged as a suspect in Bulger’s beating death. Bulger died after having served only five years of the two life sentences he received for the murders of 11 men and women. Authorities say those responsible beat a frail Bulger, 89, to death with a lock concealed in a sock on his first day at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton, affectionately known by the residents as “Misery Mountain”; it was a real inside job, since inmates can purchase padlocks for $6.50 at the prison commissary. Geas, associated with the Springfield arm of La Cosa Nostra’s Genovese family, was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for helping arrange the Nov. 23, 2003, assassination of his boss, Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno. Geas’ indictment charged he took part in Bruno’s paid hit “to prevent his communicating to a law enforcement officer and judge of the United States information relating to the commission and possible commission of federal offenses, including crimes committed by members and associates of the Genovese Organized Crime Family.” So you can see why Geas reportedly had a reputation in gangster circles as a stand-up guy who hated rats. And we all know that’s how the ruthless boss of the Winter Hill Gang operated. Bulger managed to elude apprehension and prosecution — even when he was the FBI’s most wanted fugitive — by simultaneously being one of the bureau’s top informants. As a topflight snitch, Bulger helped the FBI take down his rivals in the New England Mafia before going on the lam for 16 years after being tipped off by John Connolly, his Boston FBI handler, that his days on the outside were numbered. Connolly was convicted of assisting Bulger’s associates with the killing of a gambling executive in Miami. He’s currently serving time in a Florida prison, where he’ll remain until at least 2039. Allowed to operate with impunity, Bulger and his fellow mobsters left a trail of brutal murders, including that of Deborah Hussey, 26, the sexually abused stepdaughter of his partner in crime, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi. When he was finally brought to justice, Bulger was convicted by a federal court jury in 2013 of being complicit in 11 of the 19 murder charges he faced. For decades, the families of Bulger’s victims waited for the justice that had long eluded them. That pain and suffering for some were assuaged by the sending away of their tormentor for life. But if indeed Bulger met his end at the hand of a member of his own loathsome, despicable fraternity, then justice more poetic than a Shakespearean sonnet was finally served.