JAMES 'WHITEY' BULGER GETS PUBLIC DEFENDER

TOO POOR?

FORMER mob king pin James 'Whitey' Bulger is to get a public defender for his multiple murder trial, because he can't afford to pay for his own lawyer, a court ruled yesterday.
Despite being caught with more than $800,000 in cash, when his Santa Monica apartment was busted last week, the taxpayer will fund his defense.
His provisional attorney Peter Krupp, said authorities have seized all of Bulger's assets as the proceeds of illegal activity, leaving him with no way to pay for his defense.
And although prosecutors argued that his family including his brother and former Massachusetts Senate president, William Bulger could pay, he said no relatives had come forward and offered to help him financially.
A former member of the Boston underworld said: "Whitey's bound to have cash stashed away somewhere, but he's not going to make it easy for them. If they want to try him, he's going to make them pay through the nose for it."
Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler however agreed that the one time leader of Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang couldn't afford a defense lawyer.
She said: "I find at this time that the defendant is unable to retain counsel privately."
So she appointed J.W. Carney Jr., a prominent Boston defense attorney, to represent him.
Carney has represented a long list of high-profile defendants, including John Salvi III, who was convicted of killing two people and wounding five others in a shooting rampage at two Planned Parenthood clinics in Brookline, Mass., in 1994.
He also represents Tarek Mehanna, a Sudbury man now awaiting trial in an alleged terror plot to shoot shoppers at U.S. malls, assassinate two politicians and kill American troops in Iraq.
Bulger, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, is accused of participating in 19 murders during his decades as one of Boston's most notorious gangsters.
Carney said it is too early to say whether he will ask for the trial to be moved out of Boston.

JURORS VISIT ANTHONY SOWELL'S HOUSE OF HORROR

CREEPY TONY

CREEPY Anthony Sowell's house, where he is accused of killing 11 woman and hiding their remains was visited by jurors before opening statements in the potentially explosive case. The alleged serial killer is thought to have lured his victims many who had a history of drug abuse  with the promise of booze or narcotics into his Cleveland, OH home.
Then, prosecutor's assert that when they were wasted, he struck, strangling or beating them to death. 
So far 11 bodies have been identified at his duplex.  
The women disappeared one by one, starting in October 2007 and ending in September 2009. It was thought that showing the jurors the Cleveland, OH home where it's believed the killings took place, would help them gain some perspective for the upcoming testimony.
But Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose was keen to point out that what jurors see 
"is not evidence, since conditions may have changed since the time of the events in this case."
It took nearly three weeks to seat the jury from a pool of about 200 prospective jurors and now the trial is expected to start today.
Sowell, a former marine, faces the death penalty if convicted of  eighty-five counts of murder, rape and kidnapping.
He originally pled not guilty by reason of insanity but has since changed his plea to simply "not guilty."

CASEY ANTHONY'S BROTHER BREAKS DOWN IN COURT

MORE ANTHONY TEARS

CLIMBING INTO THE POOL

CASEY Anthony's brother broke down in court yesterday as he recalled how his sister kept her pregnancy a secret from her. 
Lee Anthony joined his whole family in tears as he watched a video of his dead niece Caylee, climbing into a swimming pool on her own, shown by defense lawyer to bolster their claims that the tragic toddler drown in the family swimming pool.
But then he shed tears of his own as he explained that his sister and parents kept her pregnancy a secret from him, despite him asking them about it.
He said: "I was very angry at my mom and I was also angry at my sister. I was just angry at everyone in general that they didn’t want to include me and didn’t find it important enough to tell me, especially after I had asked."
He added that he did not learn of his sister's pregnancy, for sure, until just a few days before Caylee was born according to WKMG.
Prosecutor's however, disputed his claims, arguing that in a sworn 2009 deposition he stated that he had never directly asked Casey about her pregnancy.   
They also pointed out that far from trying to sweep the pending birth under the carpet, his mother and father had gone 'over the top' to prepare for their grand-daughter’s arrival. 
Buying a crib, taking their daughter shopping for baby items,  turning their spare room into a nursery with a Winnie the Pooh theme, and organizing a baby shower, they wondered how he had missed all this as he was living at home at the time.
Mr Anthony replied: "Two years ago, I did not 100 percent hold the belief that Caylee was dead…during that two-year span I have come to the place that I believe she is."
He later added: 'I don’t want to be here. I don’t want my sister to be here and my parents to be her. This is obviously just very very emotionally draining."
He alos testified that he initially drove the white Pontiac Sunfire that the prosecution has said Casey Anthony put Caylee's body in after she died, leaving a stain in the trunk.
On the stand, Lee Anthony said that the stain in the trunk could have been the result of something he put in the car when he drove it, the station reports.
The trial continues.