A former Montpelier man charged for his alleged role as a lookout when crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger was beaten to death in federal prison has reached a plea deal.
A federal prosecutor filed paperwork Monday in U.S. District Court in West Virginia indicating that Sean McKinnon has “executed a binding plea agreement.”
Terms of the deal, including what charges he was admitting to as well as a proposed sentence, were not revealed in the three-page filing.
McKinnon was indicted in August 2022 on a charge of conspiring with Fotios Geas and Paul J. DeCologero to murder Bulger while they were all incarcerated at U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia in October 2018.
Neither the prosecutors in the case nor McKinnon’s attorney could be reached Tuesday afternoon for comment.
According to the charging documents, Geas and DeCologero beat the 89-year-old Bulger in a cell while McKinnon acted as a “lookout.”
McKinnon was living in Ocala, Florida, at the time of his arrest in 2022 and has been held without bail since. He was on federal supervised release at the time of his arrest, according to federal prosecutors.
McKinnon was convicted in the theft of roughly a dozen firearms from R&L Archery in Barre and then trading the guns for heroin. He received an eight-year prison sentence in January 2016.
Bulger, after years on the run from authorities before he was eventually captured, was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison later that year for 11 murders and other offenses.
According to court filings Monday in federal court in West Virginia, the two other co-defendants in the case, Geas and DeCologero, have also reached plea agreements with prosecutors, although terms of their plea deals were also not released.
News that plea deals were reached in the case for all three men was reported Monday by The New York Times.
The three men, according to the Times article, all agreed to “cooperate” with the government for a report outlining the events leading to Bulger’s killing at the federal prison, located in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
Bulger, who was using a wheelchair, was found dead after being transferred to Hazelton in October 2018, just hours after his transfer there from a Florida facility.
Prison officials, according to The New York Times report, identified Geas shortly after Bulger’s killing as having played a role in the death.
Following an extended investigation, the newspaper reported, prosecutors said DeCologero also played a role in beating the former Boston crime leader to death while McKinnon served as a lookout.
