MASSACHUSETTS
Los Angeles Time
From Associated Press
August 1, 2013
BOSTON — James “Whitey” Bulger’s defense team released photographs showing the reputed Boston gangster’s softer side — including images of him cuddling with animals — in a possible prelude to him taking the stand in his racketeering trial.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Fred Wyshak complained to the judge that Bulger’s lawyers were merely trying to bolster his image after weeks of testimony from prosecution witnesses who described killings and extortion schemes he is accused of committing.
The photos show Bulger holding dogs, a parrot and even a goat. Others show him with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, and one appears to show him on vacation, smiling, shirtless and sitting on a wall overlooking the ocean.
“This is obviously an attempt to salvage Mr. Bulger’s public reputation by publishing dozens of photos with him holding all sorts of animals,” Wyshak said. “I don’t know if being an animal lover is going to salvage his reputation.”
One photo that probably won’t help Bulger’s defense shows him sitting with a priest who was identified Thursday as Msgr. Frederick Ryan, the former vice chancellor of the Boston Archdiocese who was defrocked for allegedly sexually abusing teenage boys in the 1980s.
Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who sued the archdiocese on behalf of two men who said they were abused by Ryan as teens, said one of his clients and a man who used to work with Ryan both identified the priest as Ryan after seeing the photo published in the Boston Globe.
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