By Edmund H. Mahony

The Hartford Courant

HARTFORD, Conn. — Infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger had survived at least one prison murder attempt. But his luck ran out if — as authorities suspect — Springfield, Mass., hit man Fotios “Freddy” Geas was behind the horrific beating that left him dead and barely recognizable in a high-security West Virginia prison.

Bulger made himself one of the country’s most powerful crime bosses by acting the informer — turning in underworld rivals in return for protection from corrupt FBI agents.

Geas hates informers.

He is serving multiple life sentences for, among other crimes, two murders, a murder conspiracy and an attempted murder after once-trusted mob partners informed on him. Offered the chance to reduce his sentence by becoming an informer himself, Geas told federal prosecutors he’d rather spend the rest of his life in prison.

“He is vicious, absolutely vicious,” said retired Massachusetts State Police Detective Lt. Steve Johnson, the organized crime expert who supervised the case that locked up Geas. “There really is no way to describe him other than an absolute animal.”

Federal authorities are investigating, but still not saying how Bulger was killed Tuesday morning at the federal Hazleton prison in Bruceton Mills, W.Va.

“To protect the integrity of the investigation, no further details will be released at this time,” Bill Powell, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, said in a statement issued by his office Wednesday afternoon.

Other law enforcement officials with knowledge of the events said Geas is suspected of participating with others in the beating death.

Organized crime investigators called Geas a ruthless killer affiliated with the New York-based Genovese crime family, which dominates the rackets in upstate New York and western Massachusetts. The Genovese Springfield operation has been involved in gambling and loansharking in Hartford for decades and in recent years its interests in Hartford have expanded.

But Springfield defense lawyer Daniel D. Kelly, who has represented Geas for years, has an entirely different opinion. He called Geas one of the “most personable” people he knows. He said they still correspond socially by email.

“If I introduced him to you as an insurance broker, you wouldn’t doubt me,” Kelly said.

Dislike of informants isn’t exactly a minority opinion among criminals, Kelly said. When Geas was looking at multiple life sentences for multiple murders, Kelly said one of Geas’ mob partners and co-defendants sent a back channel message informing him that the partner was negotiating a cooperation deal and that Geas shouldn’t worry because it would be a package deal that included him.

“He turned it down in like two seconds flat,” Kelly said. “The idea that he would cooperate with the government and become a rat for some kind of consideration? He wouldn’t even consider it.”

The government made a similar offer and Geas dismissed it too, Kelly said.

Geas, 51, grew up in West Springfield. He was sent to prison for life in 2011 after a sensational federal trial in New York that also convicted, among others, the acting Genovese boss Arthur Nigro and Geas’ younger brother Ty, 46.

The highlight of the trial was the 2003 murder of the cigar-chomping, Springfield Genovese capo Adolfo, “Big Al” Bruno, who was riddled with bullets as he left his weekly card game his Springfield social club, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society.

The Bruno hit was sanctioned by Nigro, who complained Bruno wasn’t sending New York enough of what he raked off Springfield rackets. As a Greek, Geas could not become a sworn member of the Italian mafia. But he did the next best thing, which was become partners with Anthony Arillotta, the gangster the family had decided would replace Bruno.

When the case went to trial, Arillotta and Frankie Roche, another killer recruited by Geas, rolled over, testifying in exchange for leniency that Geas set up and took part in the hit. It was Arillotta who offered to include Geas in a leniency deal.

Geas also was found guilty of killing Springfield area drug dealer Gary Westerman, who was beaten with bats, shot and buried in a makeshift grave. He was convicted of the attempted murder of a New York union officer, who survived nine gun shots, and of conspiring to murder Springfield drug dealer of Guiseppe Manzi, who somehow emerged unscathed from a burst of machine gun fire at a Springfield intersection.

Bulger, who was 89, had survived at least one other murder attempt. At the Arizona prison where he was first sent after his conviction in 2013 for 11 murders and dozens of other crimes. Another inmate stabbed him in the neck with a pen.

After the attack, Bulger was transferred to the high security prison at the Coleman penitentiary complex in central Florida. But recently, prison officials transferred Bulger again, when former Patriarca Crime family boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme was assigned to Coleman after being convicted of murder earlier this year.

Prison officials feared violence because Salemme knew that Bulger and his former partner Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi had been informing to the FBI about him and his mafia associates for decades.

Authorities with knowledge of the events said a decision was made to move Bulger because he was suffering from deteriorating health. His heart was said to be failing and he was rolling around the prison in a wheel chair.

Bulger was moved to a prison transportation bub in Oklahoma City and from there to Hazelton.

At Hazleton, Bulger chose to be confined in the general population rather than requesting a protected status that would limit whatever freedom of movement he had be prison.

It was the wrong decision. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons said he was found dead at 8:20 a.m. Tuesday.