That’s Not Whitey, That’s Grandpa!

When the new pictures of James “Whitey” Bulger came out a few weeks ago, we scoffed at them. Even Bulger’s ex-girlfriend said it wasn’t him. But Italian police are still on the lookout for the fugitive, and a man from Wakefield, Rhode Island got the Bulger treatment on his vacation.

Two days after the pictures of “Whitey” were released, Robert Dowdy walked out of a church in Perugia following morning mass, and was taken in by Italian police.

Dowdy sat through hours of police questioning, fingerprinting and picture-taking before getting in contact with someone from the U.S. Embassy.

“I said, ‘They think I’m Whitey Bulger, and it’s gone beyond the point of laughing because now I’m in a police station,'” Dowdy said. . . . “I have to believe that a professional police officer looking at the spec on this criminal, seeing that he’s 5 feet 6 inches, 5 feet 7 inches, 160 pounds and 10 years older than me,” Dowdy said.

While that probably put a dent in his sightseeing and pasta-eating itinerary, it does make for a pretty bad-ass travel story for the grandkids.