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Local Man Renews Friendship With Alleged Mob Kingpin Through Letters

WASHINGTON, Pa. (KDKA) -- A Washington County man has renewed an old friendship with reputed Boston-area mob kingpin "Whitey" Bulger, who is in prison awaiting trial on several charges, including murder and money laundering among other things.

Richard Sunday, 81, and Bulger served time in the same prisons back in the early 1950s, and just last July Bulger started writing Sunday regularly and they have become pen pals.

Sunday told KDKA-TV: "I know he [Bulger] is a bad guy, there's no two ways about it. And he knows I don't approve of his way of life, but he says he's being mistreated now while waiting to go on trial and that's just not right."

Bugler has been in and out of the hospital recently being treated for health problems, and Sunday wonders if his friend will ever get his day in court.

Sunday says in the letters, Bulger writes he never killed any women and he was never an FBI informant.

The government accuses Bulger of 19 murders, including two women.

"Bulger says he wants his day in court for the truth, and I feel I owe it to him to stand by him," said Sunday. "We were [once] good friends."

According to Sunday, "Whitey Bulger, the mob kingpin, is not the Whitey Bulger I knew."

Sunday claims he went to prison after being court martialed on false evidence, and that's probably one of the reasons why Bulger and he developed a bond.

Bulger was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and was finally captured in California in 2011 after being on the run for 16 years.

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