Ex-Con Claims Whitey Bulger Murder Was Set-Up
Jan. 4 2019, Updated 9:57 a.m. ET
Hated Mafia boss James "Whitey" Bulger was brutally tortured and murdered inside his West Virginia cell this Tuesday, seven years after he was sentenced to life in prison for his many horrific crimes. The Irish-American mobster was transferred to the maximum security prison early Tuesday morning, and just three hours later, he was dead.
When guards found him, wheelchair-bound Bulger, 89, had his eyes partly gouged out and his tongue mostly severed. Mafia hitman Fotios "Freddy" Geas, 51, and another inmate were blamed for the killing, but a former prisoner is now hoping to tell the real story.
Larry Lawton, an ex-inmate turned author of "Gangster Redemption," is speaking on Dylan Howard's "All Rise" podcast, to give listeners the dirty details behind Bulger's murder.
"This guy Whitey Bulger was a piece of garbage, I wanna get that straight. He wasn't respected on the criminal end or respected on obviously the free world, or the civilian end," says Lawton.
Despite that, Lawton says that if the American prison system weren't so broken, Bulger would not have been killed.
"There were a lot of mistakes here made," he explains. "They sentenced him to death. They put him out there knowing he wouldn't last. We are talking about a very violent prison: maximum security federal prison."
RadarOnline.com readers know Bulger lived a double life as a Mafia boss and as an FBI informant from 1975 until 2011, when he was arrested in connection to the murders of 11 people.
While Lawton tells Howard that he does not feel sorry for Bulger — and the horrific way in which he was killed — he does realize that the prison system is greatly at fault.
He explains that when an inmate is transferred to another prison — which was the case with Bulger — he/she is inspected and interviewed by the head of security. That person looks into the criminal's record and evaluates if there are any other inmates in the prison who could want to hurt him/her. When Bulger was transferred, then, security guards knew he had enemies inside the prison, and still, they put him in a cell that was easily accessible to the others.
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"In the feds you have the worst of the worst," explains Lawton. "That captain of that facility and the warden… should be held criminally liable. And my opinion is they should be sued, lose millions of dollars."
Immediately upon learning of Bulger's murder, Lawton says he knew "he was set up." He tells Howard that in prison, inmates pass along messages by hiding notes in their rectum and dropping them off, which is likely how Geas learned of Bulger's transfer. Plus, guards tend to talk too.
"They knew he was coming. They knew what unit he was gonna go to. So there was no question that this man was set up to be murdered, in my mind," adds Lawton.
Though Bulger and Geas were not active in the American crime circles at the same time, Lawton says the murder was all "about reputation."
"Freddy Geas had nothing to lose, he had a life sentence," he explains.
Anyway, Lawton adds, Bulger knew it was coming. "He knew he was a scumbag," the ex-con says. "He knew that he stepped on a lot of people. He knew the violence that was gonna confront him. He was a bad dude on the street. Don't get me wrong, he was a feared bad dude. He worked on both sides of the coin."
RadarOnline.com exclusively reported Bulger feared he would be killed in prison as soon as he found out he would be transferred. He even tried to pay off inmates to avoid trouble — but clearly, it was not enough.
"He had such a bad reputation," continues Lawton. "Even if it wasn't Freddy Geas, somebody would've killed him for the reputation."
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Also on "All Rise": Is it possible Megyn Kelly was set up after network brass realized she was never a fit for NBC?
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