Yao's Attorney Once Defended Notorious Boston Mobster

If you watched the news Monday night you might have had the same reaction others did when you saw J.W. Carney Jr., defense attorney for accused murderer Jeffrey Yao. Haven't I seen that guy before?

The answer is yes, especially if you followed the trial of Whitey Bulger. Carney, a Holy Cross and BC law graduate, was a member of the former South Boston mobster's defense team. In 2013 Bulger was found guilty on 31 counts including extortion, money laundering, drug dealing and weapons possession.

Carney has also represented a number of other high-profile defendants including John Salvi, who killed two people and wounded five at two Brookline reproductive health clinics in 1994, and James Keown, a talk-show host who was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2008 after slowly poisoning his wife with Gatorade laced with anti-freeze.

On Monday, in front of the cameras at Woburn District Court following Yao's arraignment, he said all the right things, referring to the murder of Winchester's Deane Kenny Stryker as a terrible tragedy and talking about his client's mental illness. Stryker was killed Saturday while reading at the Winchester Public Library.

On his website there's a graph that says, "The reasons for Jay's success? He believes what his clients tell him. He aggressively challenges the prosecution. He fights for the most lenient sentences. He is a true advocate."

And he's representing Jeffrey Yao.

BOSTON, MA: J.W. Carney Jr., criminal defense lawyer for Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, talks to the media outside the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on April 30, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. Bob Fitzpatrick, a key witness and former FBI special agent in the Bulger case, pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he lied during the trial. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)