A former Montpelier man who had been accused by prosecutors of acting as a lookout when Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger was beaten to death in a federal prison has reached a plea deal, agreeing to a reduced charge that will allow him to avoid serving anymore time behind bars.
Sean McKinnon, 38, was indicted in August 2022 on a charge of conspiring with two other incarcerated men to murder Bulger while they were all lodged at U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia in October 2018.
On Monday, that charge — which carried the possibility of life behind prison — was dropped and McKinnon entered a guilty plea to a lesser offense of lying to federal agents in connection with the probe into Bulger’s death, according to court records filed in the case.
Under the plea agreement, McKinnon faced up to five years behind bars. However, Judge Thomas Kleeh credited McKinnon with the nearly two years he had been in prison following his arrest in the case and did not impose any additional jail time.
McKinnon, who has always maintained he had nothing to do with Bulger’s killing, was then allowed to leave the courtroom after the hearing, the Boston Globe reported Monday.
“I wish this for nobody to find themselves in something like this,” McKinnon told the Globe outside the courthouse Monday. “I’m just going to go home and try to live my life.”
Neither McKinnon’s attorneys nor the federal prosecutor handling the case could be reached Tuesday for comment.
The initial charging documents indicated Fotios Geas and Paul J. DeCologero beat the 89-year-old Bulger in a cell at the prison while McKinnon acted as a “lookout.”
But the plea agreement reached between the prosecution and McKinnon’s attorneys does not include that allegation against McKinnon. Instead, the filing stated, it was DeCologero who acted as the lookout. “Further,” according to the document, “DeCologero assisted Geas in placing Bulger’s body in his bunk and covering him with bedding.”
As part of the plea agreement, McKinnon admitted to making “false, fictitious, fraudulent statements and representations” to a federal agent investigating Bulger’s death on the day it happened, the filing stated.
Specifically, according to the document, McKinnon reported to the federal agent he was not aware of what happened to Bulger in the prison cell and knew nothing about an incident involving him on the day he was beaten to death.
But, the filing stated, before speaking to the federal agent, McKinnon had “met with and discussed the assault of inmate Bulger with Geas and DeCologero” and knew that the two men caused the crime boss’s death.
Geas and DeCologero have also reached plea agreements with prosecutors in the cases against them related to Bulger’s death. Terms of their plea deals have not yet been released and they are both set for sentencing later this summer.
McKinnon had been sentenced in January 2016 to eight years in federal prison following his conviction in the theft of about a dozen firearms from R&L Archery in Barre, and for later trading the guns for heroin.
Following his release from custody in July 2022, he was living in Ocala, Florida, before his arrest in 2022 in connection with Bulger’s death.
Bulger had been on the run from authorities for more than a decade before he was eventually captured in 2011. He was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison later that year for 11 murders and other offenses.
Bulger, who was using a wheelchair, was found dead in his cell hours after being transferred to Hazelton from a facility in Florida on Oct. 30, 2018.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Ex-Vermont man gets time served after admitting to lying in probe into James ‘Whitey’ Bulger’s death.