Bulger Victim’s Bro Calls Men Who Killed Gangster ‘Heroes’

Steve Davis wants to make sure the person who killed Whitey Bulger in prison is living his best life from here on out.

The notorious Boston gangland boss was accused of killing Davis’ sister Debra in 1981, after which her body remained missing for almost two decades.

“Bless the man who did it,” Davis told The Daily Beast. “I’m going to send him $500 for his canteen, and a letter thanking him… Because I live every day thinking of my sister—and that piece of shit.”

On Oct. 30, 2018, prosecutors allege, convicted Mafia hitman Fotios Geas and Massachusetts gangster Paul DeCologero beat the 89-year-old Bulger to death with a padlock while Sean McKinnon, a third inmate at USP Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, acted as a lookout.

DeCologero believed Bulger was a “snitch,” and said he wanted him dead, according to another inmate-turned-state’s-witness.

Prosecutors said in a court filing on Monday that the three have agreed to plead guilty and proceed to sentencing; details of the deal have not yet been made public.

Davis, 67, has “an idea” as to which of the trio orchestrated the assassination and struck the fatal blow, and has a special place in his heart for him, he said on Wednesday. He said he didn’t want to name any names before the plea deal is completed “because that would be like me pointing the finger at him.”

Still, Davis continued, “He is a hero. He is a hero to all. He did the world justice. And does he deserve any additional time on what he’s done? I don’t think so.”

Davis described himself and his sister, who were very close in age, as “Irish twins.” He said he’s “glad everything turned out the way it did,” and that Bulger’s violent demise was “nothing that I would really frown on.”

“Those guys who did what they did, they couldn’t be honored or blessed as anything better than the hero of heroes,” he went on. “I’ve had old ladies say the same thing: he got what he had coming to him, that sonofabitch. He was an evil sonofabitch, and I tip my hat to the guys who did what they did… They should be given a Medal of Honor.”

Tony Cardinale, an attorney who represented big-time crime bosses Bulger ratted out to the feds but never Bulger himself, also said on Wednesday that he’s “ecstatic that he’s dead,” and he is also “ecstatic” that Geas, DeCologero, and McKinnon were offered a plea bargain.

“As far as they’re concerned, I’ll be making regular deposits into their commissary,” Cardinale told The Daily Beast, almost exactly echoing Davis’ sentiments. “They’ll definitely be on my Christmas list… If anybody deserved what happened, and how it happened, it’s [Bulger]. I just wish it was worse, they did it too fast. They did a good job, don’t get me wrong. But [the suffering] should have been longer.”

Cardinale said he helped bring to light the fact that Bulger was a top-echelon informant for the FBI, and, accordingly, was given nearly free rein to commit crimes with impunity.

“He was a psychopath anyway, but when he knew he could go after anyone and get it squashed, he became the devil personified,” Cardinale explained. “They were killing innocent people, left and right.”

Davis, too, recalled Bulger and his crew’s wanton brutality, becoming emotional as he remembered his sister. “They were killing women, they didn’t give a fuck,” Davis said. “They weren’t ‘gangsters.’ They were shitbags, you know what I mean? They thrived off the weak, took from anybody they could.”

“I did not fear this guy,” Davis said of Bulger. “Everybody feared him. I did not fear him. I would have killed him in a second, myself, [but] you know, I don’t have that in me. But I would’ve. When they took my sister, it was no holds barred.”

Debra Davis was 26 years old when Bulger allegedly strangled her to death and then dragged her down a flight of stairs before making Davis’ boyfriend, an area gangster and Bulger associate named Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi,” dig her grave.

Flemmi, who was an FBI informant for years, testified about the killing during Bulger’s 2013 trial. He said Bulger believed Debra knew too much about his crew’s dealings with corrupt law enforcement officials, and that she needed to be permanently silenced. But when Flemmi was unable to carry out the murder himself, Bulger stepped in and fatally throttled Debra with his bare hands, according to Flemmi, who at that point was a decade into a life sentence for 10 murders.

At the time, Steve Davis said listening to Flemmi testify about his sister’s death was “like throwing salt on an open wound.”

Some 19 years after her death, Debra’s corpse was found just below the waterline of the Neponset River in the Boston suburb of Quincy. Bulger, who spent 16 years as a fugitive before FBI agents arrested him in Santa Monica, California in 2011, was later convicted on 31 federal counts, including 11 murders.

He was tried but never convicted of killing Debra Davis.

“From the age of 19, 20, I carried a pistol all the time,” Steve Davis told The Daily Beast. “I looked over my shoulder my whole life. It wasn’t any way to live. But I lived the way I lived. And I’m still here.”