Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

Post a reply

Confirmation code
Enter the code exactly as it appears. All letters are case insensitive.

BBCode is OFF
Smilies are OFF

Topic review
   

Expand view Topic review: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by JoeCamel » Fri May 27, 2022 10:52 am

Honestly Connolly didn’t deserve what he got nor did Steve Flemmi in the sense that they were acting under the parlance and assumption that everything they did was under the government umbrella. They probably let Connolly out because he agreed no books no media no nothing. Bigger secrets the just the Boston underworld. Hate to say it but it’s a conspiracy.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Tonyd621 » Fri May 20, 2022 11:36 pm

newera_212 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:47 am I agree. Fuck this guy
Yeah well they should charge him with the murder or put him back in gen pop. But he's in solitary bc the officers of the prison and court look bad. If they spent 5 minutes doing some due diligence they would know not to put them together. If Geas didn't do it somebody else would. One of the most high profile rats to walk in prison and what nobody is going to assault the guy. They stuck him in gen pop bc they messed up. They already knew what he was capable of but they don't care about people or their jobs (correction officers) so what do you expect

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by mike68 » Fri May 20, 2022 6:01 pm

Hired_Goonz wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 5:10 pm
mike68 wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 12:51 pm
Hired_Goonz wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:07 am Why hasn't he been charged with the murder? I don't even see how this is legal.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/19/ ... uthorQuery

This Globe article published yesterday seems to answer the question. Once again the Feds are covering up to protect themselves. If they charge Geas with the murder, then they will uncover why he was transferred to that prison to begin with. They are hoping it all goes away by ignoring it.
More than three years later, as my colleague Shelley Murphy reported, Geas has not been charged with Bulger’s murder and remains in the hole.

A bigger conflict of interest you cannot find. The federal government doesn’t want to charge Geas because a prosecution risks exposing the culpability the feds own for putting Bulger in a position to be murdered
.
Yep, typical shit from the US government isn't it? Oswald had to be killed to prevent a trial, but with a guy who's already in prison they can just effectively bury him. It brings to mind the treatment of the victims at Guantanamo Bay: kept in solitary for years with no charges ever brought forward. I have no love for guys like Bulger or Geas but the US is supposed to be a civilized country based on laws. These men were convicted of their crimes and have to serve their sentence but what has happened to them has undisputedly met the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Speaking of Bulger, who knows if he would have even been such a ruthless murderer if he wasn't mind-raped by MK-ULTRA experiments back in the day.
You nailed it. Ironically, the only FBI agent who got close to what he deserved, John Connolly, is home now living out his days. What do you want to bet that he's going to live longer than his attorney's told the judge that he would.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Hired_Goonz » Fri May 20, 2022 5:10 pm

mike68 wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 12:51 pm
Hired_Goonz wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:07 am Why hasn't he been charged with the murder? I don't even see how this is legal.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/19/ ... uthorQuery

This Globe article published yesterday seems to answer the question. Once again the Feds are covering up to protect themselves. If they charge Geas with the murder, then they will uncover why he was transferred to that prison to begin with. They are hoping it all goes away by ignoring it.
More than three years later, as my colleague Shelley Murphy reported, Geas has not been charged with Bulger’s murder and remains in the hole.

A bigger conflict of interest you cannot find. The federal government doesn’t want to charge Geas because a prosecution risks exposing the culpability the feds own for putting Bulger in a position to be murdered
.
Yep, typical shit from the US government isn't it? Oswald had to be killed to prevent a trial, but with a guy who's already in prison they can just effectively bury him. It brings to mind the treatment of the victims at Guantanamo Bay: kept in solitary for years with no charges ever brought forward. I have no love for guys like Bulger or Geas but the US is supposed to be a civilized country based on laws. These men were convicted of their crimes and have to serve their sentence but what has happened to them has undisputedly met the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Speaking of Bulger, who knows if he would have even been such a ruthless murderer if he wasn't mind-raped by MK-ULTRA experiments back in the day.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by mike68 » Fri May 20, 2022 12:55 pm

Pete wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 7:18 pm
mike68 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 5:33 am https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/19/ ... ntentQuery

Seems ridiculously punitive at this point. They should put the person who made the decision to transfer Bulger to that prison in solitary. That was signing his death sentence.
Can you post the article? I can’t access it. Thanks
More than 3½ years after notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was beaten to death by inmates within hours of his arrival at a federal prison in West Virginia, no one has been charged with his murder and federal authorities have not released any information about the investigation.

But ever since the Oct. 30, 2018, slaying at US Penitentiary Hazelton, one inmate eyed as a suspect has been held in solitary confinement, locked up for 23 hours a day in conditions that his son and lawyer contend are inhumane and punitive.

Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, a Mafia enforcer from West Springfield serving a life sentence for two gangland murders, has been held in the prison’s Special Housing Unit, commonly referred to as solitary confinement, where inmates are removed from the general population and placed in a cell alone or with another inmate, with most rights taken away. He is restricted to a cement cell except for one hour of recreation six days a week, and is limited to two 15-minute telephone calls a month, his son and lawyer said.

“We’re just asking for him to be treated like a human,” said Geas’s son, Alex, 27. “It’s like being held like a POW at Guantanamo.”

He said his father has repeatedly asked to be transferred, even if it means being sent to the nation’s highest security prison in Colorado, where Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and other convicted terrorists are held, because he believes anything would be less restrictive than his current situation. Geas’s son said his father wrote in a letter this month that he has been told that high-ranking prison officials don’t oppose his transfer, but that it has been blocked by the US attorney’s office in West Virginia.

“There’s no end in sight, no clear-cut explanation,” Alex Geas said. “It’s just like this purgatory.”

Stacy Bishop, a spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of West Virginia, said in an e-mail that the investigation into Bulger’s death is ongoing. She declined to comment on whether prosecutors are blocking Geas’s transfer or why he remains in solitary confinement.

The US Bureau of Prisons’ public affairs office did not respond to inquiries.

Daniel D. Kelly, a Springfield attorney who represents Geas, said it’s punitive to keep him in solitary for so long, saying he has been “warehoused” with no television, limited access to books, and a wind-up radio that frequently breaks.

“There’s no reason to keep him there,” said Kelly, questioning whether officials want his mental health to deteriorate or are trying to “get a contrived jailhouse confession.”

He questioned why the investigation has taken years when the witnesses must all be inmates or prison employees.

“The whole thing is shrouded in some whole new level of mystery,” Kelly said.

Bulger, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for killing 11 people while running a sprawling criminal enterprise from the 1970s to the 1990s, was publicly identified in the late 1990s as a longtime FBI informant who provided information against local Mafiosi.

Yet Bulger, 89, was transferred under questionable circumstances from a Florida prison to Hazelton, among the nation’s most violent prisons, and placed in general population alongside Massachusetts organized crime figures, including Geas and Paul J. DeCologero, 48, of Lowell. Less than 12 hours after arriving, Bulger was beaten to death in his cell with a padlock stuffed in a sock.

Advertisement


Geas and DeCologero were captured on video surveillance entering Bulger’s cell about two hours before he was found dead, according to several people briefed on the attack. They were immediately placed in solitary confinement, along with Geas’s cellmate, Sean McKinnon. Last summer, after media reports questioned why the three inmates remained in solitary confinement, DeCologero and McKinnon were transferred to other prisons and placed in general population. At the same time, Geas was told he was also being transferred and was placed on a bus, only to be rerouted back to Hazelton, according to his son.

During a brief telephone interview last week, McKinnon, 35, who was recently released to a federal halfway house to finish the last few months of an eight-year sentence for stealing guns, described his nearly three years in solitary confinement as “a horrible thing.”

“You sit in a cell for 23 hours a day, with one wind-up radio,” McKinnon said. “It’s mentally and physically draining.”

There was a window in his cell, but it was frosted so he couldn’t see through it, he recalled. He said he would slip complaint forms through the food slot that were meant for the prison system’s central office, but never got a response.

McKinnon, who grew up in Vermont, said FBI agents tried to question him at the prison a few hours after Bulger was killed and again after he was transferred out of Hazelton last year. Both times he declined to talk and asked for a lawyer, he said.

Advertisement


“We were the only three Boston guys in that unit,” McKinnon said. “They singled us out.”

He declined to comment on Bulger’s slaying but described Geas and DeCologero as “good guys” who did not deserve to spend so long in solitary.

“That’s just the BOP being spiteful,” he said.

Opponents of solitary confinement say the practice is cruel. Under international human rights law, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days is prohibited.

“Incarcerated people will often tell you that one of the most painful things about solitary confinement is the uncertainty of when or if they’ll get out,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project.

Some courts and several states have put limits on its use, Fathi said, and during his campaign, President Biden pledged to end the practice in federal prison with limited exceptions, such as protecting the life of a prisoner.

Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at three federal facilities, said brief stints in solitary can be useful for controlling a volatile situation among inmates, but it’s unusual to subject inmates to years of isolation. Keeping Geas in solitary appears to have a “punitive aspect,” he said, especially given the unanswered questions around the government’s decision to transfer Bulger to Hazelton, which Bulger’s family equated to a death sentence.

Bulger was in a wheelchair, had suffered numerous heart attacks, and had previously been held in units designated for inmates such as informants or pedophiles who were believed to need protection from other inmates.

Advertisement


“The transfer of Whitey Bulger to USP Hazelton and placing him in general population was one of the most shocking decisions I’ve seen in 32 years of working in corrections and as a consultant,” Lindsay said. “People have a right to know why this decision was made. Was it an error or was it more nefarious?”

Bulger spent his last months before the transfer at USP Coleman II in Florida in solitary confinement after a verbal confrontation with a nurse. Prison officials changed his medical classification, claiming his health had dramatically improved, paving the way for his transfer to Hazelton, which provided fewer medical services.

In January, a federal judge dismissed a wrongful death suit filed by Bulger’s family against the Bureau of Prisons and prison officials alleging Bulger “was subjected to a risk of certain death or serious bodily injury by the intentional or deliberately indifferent actions” of prison officials. The judge found that prison officials cannot be held liable for Bulger’s transfer because they are protected from suits involving decisions they make while exercising their discretion.

A federal appeals court is weighing an appeal by Bulger’s family. Hank Brennan, who represented Bulger and now represents his family in the civil suit, said the family filed the suit to force the government to reveal what happened.

“We were looking for the truth,” he said. But if the suit is not reinstated, “we know we are never going to find it.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by mike68 » Fri May 20, 2022 12:51 pm

Hired_Goonz wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:07 am Why hasn't he been charged with the murder? I don't even see how this is legal.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/19/ ... uthorQuery

This Globe article published yesterday seems to answer the question. Once again the Feds are covering up to protect themselves. If they charge Geas with the murder, then they will uncover why he was transferred to that prison to begin with. They are hoping it all goes away by ignoring it.
More than three years later, as my colleague Shelley Murphy reported, Geas has not been charged with Bulger’s murder and remains in the hole.

A bigger conflict of interest you cannot find. The federal government doesn’t want to charge Geas because a prosecution risks exposing the culpability the feds own for putting Bulger in a position to be murdered
.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Hired_Goonz » Fri May 20, 2022 7:07 am

Why hasn't he been charged with the murder? I don't even see how this is legal.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by dack2001 » Fri May 20, 2022 5:52 am

Cruel and unusual punishment. Regardless of anything else, the constitution forbids it. Either charge him or put him in the general pop.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Pete » Thu May 19, 2022 7:18 pm

mike68 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 5:33 am https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/19/ ... ntentQuery

Seems ridiculously punitive at this point. They should put the person who made the decision to transfer Bulger to that prison in solitary. That was signing his death sentence.
Can you post the article? I can’t access it. Thanks

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Little_Al1991 » Thu May 19, 2022 3:02 pm

PolackTony wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 1:29 pm
Little_Al1991 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 12:23 pm I’m surprised that they haven’t transferred him to ADX Florence
Apparently he's not a major threat to society or his fellow prisoners, unlike Jimmy Marcello.
Marcello has no reason to be in ADX, same for Joey the clown who passed away in ADX during 2019

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by PolackTony » Thu May 19, 2022 1:29 pm

Little_Al1991 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 12:23 pm I’m surprised that they haven’t transferred him to ADX Florence
Apparently he's not a major threat to society or his fellow prisoners, unlike Jimmy Marcello.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by richard_belding » Thu May 19, 2022 12:47 pm

Geas deserves nothing but more time, dont matter who he killed.

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Amershire_Ed » Thu May 19, 2022 12:43 pm

newera_212 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 6:42 am lol at Borrello's book mentioning these guys.. the "Geese Brothers"
Lolololol

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by Little_Al1991 » Thu May 19, 2022 12:23 pm

I’m surprised that they haven’t transferred him to ADX Florence

Re: Freddy Geas still in solitary after 3.5 years for Bulger murder

by newera_212 » Thu May 19, 2022 9:47 am

I agree. Fuck this guy

Top