KINGSTON, MASS. (WHDH) - The Donahue family learned of ‘Whitey’ Bulger’s prison murder through text messages Tuesday morning. 
 
 And Tommy Donahue, whose father, Michael, was among the 11 murder victims linked to the notorious South Boston mob moss, said his immediate reaction was elation. 
 
 “I grew up going to Catholic school,” Tommy Donahue said. “It just brings me a lot of joy knowing that for the rest of his life, he’ll be getting a pitchfork in his (expletive) from the devil himself to eternity.” 
 
 The Donahues are somewhat relieved to put this chapter of their lives behind them. 
 
 “Thirty-something years of him putting my family in distraught, finally it’s all over,” Donahue said. “We weren’t ever going to be able to move on until he was dead.” 
 
 Tommy and his mother Pat attended nearly every court appearance Bulger made and when the crime boss was convicted for killing Donahue’s dad, Tommy said he hoped the next time he saw Bulger was on his deathbed. 
 
 “I said ‘next time I’m going to talk to the media will be when he’s dead,'” Donahue said. “Very true. Here I am, a happier man.” 
 
 Tommy’s mother, Pat, also expressed relief following the 89-year-old’s death. 
 
 “I want to open a champagne bottle and pop that cork. That’s how I feel,” Pat Donahue said. “Whitey Bulger meant nothing to me.” 
 
 The Donahues said that while they wanted Bulger to sit in prison for all of his crimes, especially the murders, getting killed in prison wasn’t the easy way out. 
 
 “He died the way he lived,” Pat Donahue said. “He killed people and he was killed.” 
 
 Pat Donahue is working on a documentary about Bulger’s trial. 
 
 (Copyright (c) 2018 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.) ||||| Whitey Bulger Killers Tried to Remove His Tongue ... Victim's Fam Says Justice was Served 
 
 Whitey Bulger Killers Tried to Remove His Tongue, Victim's Fam Thinks Justice was Done 
 
 Exclusive Details 
 
 Whitey Bulger was targeted for a mob hit and the killers did what mob killers do with so-called "rats" -- they try to cut out their tongue and gouge their eyes out. 
 
 Sources at the USP Hazelton prison in West Virginia tell TMZ, Bulger was killed in his cell at around 6 AM Tuesday, NOT in a common area as first reported. We're told 4 inmates walked into the cell where Whitey was sitting in his wheelchair. 
 
 They brutally beat him with a lock in a sock and used a shiv to try and gouge his eyes out. They also attempted to cut out his tongue. We're told there was a lot of blood in Bulger's mouth but we don't know if the tongue was actually removed. 
 
 We're told surveillance cameras captured the 4 inmates walking into Bulger's cell and walking out with their clothes clearly bloodied. The attack was not caught on video. 
 
 We're told the killers went back to their cells, changed out of their bloody clothes and then walked back to Bulger's cell with a mop and a bucket to clean up the mess. 
 
 As for the motive ... our prison sources say prison officials believe it was mob retaliation because Bulger was considered a rat and an informant who helped put away several members of the mob. 
 
 The officials believe the mob put out a hit on Bulger and removal of the eyes and tongue are signs of such a hit. 
 
 BTW ... Patricia Donahue -- the widow of Michael Donahue whom Bulger killed in 1982 -- reacted to the news by saying justice was served. She also told us how she plans to celebrate. Her son, Tommy, agreed, saying how Bulger's death brought some much-needed relief. 
 
 Originally published -- 6:41 AM PT ||||| FILE - This undated file FBI photo found in Boston during an evidence search and released Dec. 30, 1998, shows James "Whitey" Bulger. Officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Bulger died Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This undated file FBI photo found in Boston during an evidence search and released Dec. 30, 1998, shows James "Whitey" Bulger. Officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Bulger died Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018, in a West Virginia prison after being sentenced in 2013 in Boston to spend the rest... (Associated Press) 
 
 BOSTON (AP) — A Mafia hit man who is said to hate "rats" is under suspicion in the slaying of former Boston crime boss and longtime FBI informant James "Whitey" Bulger, who was found dead hours after he was transferred to a West Virginia prison, an ex-investigator briefed on the case said Wednesday. 
 
 The former official said that Fotios "Freddy" Geas and at least one other inmate are believed to have been involved in Bulger's killing. The longtime investigator was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. 
 
 Authorities have not disclosed the cause of death. 
 
 Bulger's killing has raised questions of why he was transferred to the prison and why the 89-year-old was placed in the general population instead of special housing. He was found dead Tuesday. 
 
 Geas, 51, and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for their roles in several violent crimes, including the 2003 killing of Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno, a Genovese crime family boss who was gunned down in a Springfield, Massachusetts, parking lot. 
 
 Private investigator Ted McDonough, who knew Geas, told The Boston Globe: "Freddy hated rats." 
 
 "Freddy hated guys who abused women. Whitey was a rat who killed women. It's probably that simple," McDonough told the newspaper, which first reported that Geas was under suspicion. 
 
 It was not clear whether Geas has an attorney. Several other lawyers who represented him over the years didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 An FBI spokeswoman in Pittsburgh declined to comment on Geas. Federal officials said only that they are investigating the death as a homicide. 
 
 Bulger's death was the third killing in the past six months at the prison, where union officials have raised concerns about dozens of vacant jobs. Two inmates were killed in fights with other prisoners in September and April. 
 
 Five members of Congress wrote to Attorney General Sessions last week about what they saw as chronic understaffing at USP Hazelton and other federal prisons. 
 
 Bulger led South Boston's Irish mob for decades and became an FBI informant who supplied information on the New England Mafia, his gang's main rival, in an era when bringing down the Italian mob was a top national priority for the bureau. 
 
 Tipped off that he was about to be indicted, Bulger became a fugitive and eluded authorities for 16 years before being captured in 2011. He was convicted in 2013 in 11 underworld slayings and a long list of other crimes and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. 
 
 He had just arrived Monday at USP Hazelton, a high-security prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. He had previously been in a prison in Florida, with a stopover at a transfer facility in Oklahoma City. Federal Bureau of Prisons officials and his attorney declined to comment on why he was being moved. 
 
 Bulger's attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., blamed his death on prison officials, saying Bulger "was sentenced to life in prison, but as a result of decisions by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that sentence has been changed to the death penalty." 
 
 Bureau of Prison officials had no comment on Carney's remarks. 
 
 The Geas brothers were not made members of the Mafia because they were Greek, not Italian. But they were close associates of the mob and acted as enforcers. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker and Mike Balsamo in Washington and John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia contributed to this report. ||||| When private investigator Ted McDonough heard that Freddy Geas was suspected by authorities of taking part in the murder of James “Whitey” Bulger, he knew immediately why Geas might have done it. 
 
 “Freddy hated rats,” said McDonough, using the slang for criminal informants. McDonough had become friendly with Geas while working for him as an investigator. 
 
 “Freddy hated guys who abused women. Whitey was a rat who killed women. It’s probably that simple,” McDonough said. 
 
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 Fotios “Freddy” Geas — Mafia hitman, career criminal, prison lifer — did not like informants, and was almost certainly well aware of the fact that Bulger had led a charmed life for a long time as an informant for the FBI. 
 
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 People with knowledge of the investigation said that Bulger had requested to be housed in general population at the federal prison in Hazelton, W. Va., where he had just been transferred from a federal prison in Florida after a brief stop in Oklahoma. 
 
 Geas is serving a life sentence at the prison in Hazelton for his role in the assassination of Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, the onetime head of the Mafia in Springfield, after both the man who ordered him to kill Bruno and the hitman he dispatched to do the murder turned on him and testified against him. 
 
 People familiar with the investigation suggest that Bulger was murdered by more than one of his fellow inmates, and that Geas didn’t dispute his role in the killing. 
 
 RELATED: The long and deadly career of ‘Whitey’ Bulger 
 
 David Hoose, the lawyer who initially represented Geas in the Mafia killings, said he was not surprised to hear that Geas didn’t dispute his role in Bulger’s killing and refused to identify a possible accomplice. 
 
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 “He wouldn’t rat on anybody,” Hoose said, “and he had no respect for anyone who would.” 
 
 Freddy Geas, 51, and his brother Ty, 46, were a tag team pair of criminals from West Springfield who were well known, and feared, in Western Massachusetts. They have long rap sheets and were known for their violent impulsivity. When Ty Geas was 17, he was sentenced to a year in jail for firing an assault rifle into the air during a high school hockey game. Freddy Geas exhibited what would become a lifelong, violent animosity toward those who cooperate with the authorities, eventually pleading guilty to threatening to kill a witness against his brother. 
 
 Freddy Geas’s reputation for sudden, impulsive violence is long established. When a bar fight at a Springfield bar called Sh-Booms spilled onto the street in 1989, Freddy, then 22, wrecked an expensive vintage car parked outside. In 2006, he went to jail for beating a pair of men with a baseball bat at a strip club. 
 
 By that time, the Geas brothers were well known to local authorities as the hired muscle for an aspiring Mafia leader named Anthony Arillotta. Because they were Greek, the Geas brothers could not be “made” members of the Mafia, but they carried the mob’s imprimatur, according to Springfield and State Police. 
 
 “Nobody screwed with them,” McDonough said. “Freddy, especially.” 
 
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 In 2009, Freddy Geas was charged with a series of crimes, including the hit on Al Bruno and the 2003 murder of Gary Westerman, Arillotta’s brother-in-law. He was also charged with being the getaway driver in the botched murder of Frank Dabado, a cement union boss in the Bronx. Dabado was targeted for murder after he and Artie Nigro, a Genovese crime family boss, had a fight over some Tony Bennett concert tickets. 
 
 RELATED: Inmate with Mafia ties investigated in Bulger’s killing 
 
 McDonough, the private investigator, said Freddy Geas was crushed to learn that the star witness against him was Arillotta, the Mafia up-and-comer who had groomed him. 
 
 Arillotta’s testimony described a chaotic scene right out of a Martin Scorcese movie. After Freddy Geas shot Westerman in the head twice, the mortally wounded Westerman tried to break free from the Geas brothers as they dragged him to a grave. Arillotta testified that he and Emilio Fusco, a Mafia soldier in the Genovese crime family, finished Westerman off by beating him to death with shovels. 
 
 Arillotta testified that Freddy Geas complimented the assembled murderers for good teamwork. 
 
 Freddy Geas was convicted of hiring the hitman who killed Bruno, who was murdered so that Arillotta could assume control of the Mafia in Springfield. Geas met that hitman, Frankie Roche, in prison and was his friend, police said. But like so many other people who once considered themselves Freddy Geas’s friend, Roche rolled on him. 
 
 In a 2007 statement to Springfield police that was obtained by the Globe, Roche admitted that he shot Bruno outside the Mount Carmel Society social club in Springfield. 
 
 “Freddy had called me earlier in the day and told me that Al was definitely going to be there,” Roche told police. “I killed Al Bruno because I was paid to do it. Freddy Geas is the person who paid me to do it.” 
 
 McDonough said that Geas harbored a special hatred for informants, criminals who saved their own skin by giving up others. 
 
 In 2016, Taylor Geas, Freddy’s daughter, wrote a piece for The Republican newspaper of Springfield, recalling that as a child she thought her father was never around because he was in the Army. 
 
 “My dad led a double life,” she said. 
 
 She could not reconcile the father she knew with the criminal whose exploits were well documented in newspapers and on television. 
 
 “The person I know is the father that would tuck me in at night, and tell me funny stories until I fell asleep,” she wrote. “He was the person that taught me how to throw a baseball, and got me my first pair of soccer cleats. When I look in the mirror I see his smile because I have the same one.” 
 
 TIMELINE: Bulger’s crimes, escape, capture, conviction, death 
 
 McDonough described Freddy Geas as extremely personable, but a committed criminal. They met regularly at the Cafe Manhattan, a bar in downtown Springfield. 
 
 “A good conversationalist,” McDonough said. But McDonough was under no illusions. “He liked me because I was his private investigator. You would not want Freddy as an enemy.” 
 
 McDonough speculated that if Freddy Geas killed Bulger, it would elevate him in the criminal hierarchy, especially among the Mafia, whose members and associates would have felt duty-bound to kill Bulger after they learned he had fed the FBI information about the Mafia in Boston. 
 
 For those whose loved ones were murdered by Bulger, and those who hunted him down and prosecuted him, Bulger’s demise brought a sense of relief — and irony, given that the suspect in his killing was believed to have been motivated by Bulger’s informant status. They said Bulger inflicted similarly terrible ends on others, especially those he suspected of being informants. 
 
 Tom Donahue, the son of one of Bulger’s victims, said he always assumed Bulger would die in prison of natural causes. He said he took comfort from knowing that Bulger experienced some of the pain that so many of his victims did. 
 
 “I think it’s justice,” said Donahue, whose father, Michael, an innocent truck driver, was murdered by Bulger. 
 
 Donahue said he hoped he would be able to put some money into Freddy Geas’s prison canteen account. 
 
 Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Kevin Cullen can be reached at cullen@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen
– A Mafia hit man is suspected to be behind the killing of James "Whitey" Bulger, who was found beaten to death in his prison cell Tuesday. Fotios "Freddy" Geas and at least one other inmate at the West Virginia prison to which Bulger had been transferred just hours before are believed to have been involved, a former investigator briefed on the case tells the AP. "Freddy hated rats," a private investigator tells the Boston Globe of Geas, 51, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 along with his brother for their roles in multiple violent crimes including the 2003 killing of a crime boss in Massachusetts. Bulger, a former Boston crime boss, was a longtime FBI informant. "Freddy hated guys who abused women. Whitey was a rat who killed women. It's probably that simple," the PI continues. Sources at USP Hazelton prison tell TMZ that Bulger, 89, was targeted for a mob hit and that his killers did to him what is typically done to so-called rats: They attempted to cut out his tongue and gouge out his eyes. The sources say four men walked into Bulger's cell, where he was sitting in a wheelchair, and used a lock in a sock to beat him and a shiv to attempt the aforementioned two gruesome tasks. There was reportedly "a lot of blood" in Bulger's mouth but it's unclear whether they succeeded. As relatives of Bulger victims celebrated his death, questions were also raised about why he was transferred in the first place and why he was placed in the general population. Bulger, says his attorney, "was sentenced to life in prison, but as a result of decisions by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that sentence has been changed to the death penalty." (In a "surreal" case, a mob victim's body was found 23 years later.)