Send lawyers guns and money. Dad get me out of this!: Jonathan Bolar guilty on all 13 counts. Paul Purpura adds additional color on Butch Ward’s shithouse land deal with Bolar.

I could be wrong folks but I think this is the cyber equivalent of the ol’ ball squeeze on Butch Ward. Paul Purpura at the Times Picayune updates the Bolar trial as the corrupt former Gretna City Councilman turned convict has gone down on all 13 counts, guilty as charged. Paul also adds a good bit more color to the land deals between Pappa Butch and Bolar which ultimately resulted in an elderly couple being scammed out of almost $4,000 by Bolar. Here is a snippet:

Two other witnesses accused Bolar of twice trying to sell a parcel in Gretna in August 2008, which he had sold to former Jefferson Parish Councilman Thomas “Butch” Ward a year before. Those witnesses, a church elder and an elderly woman, said Bolar never told them he did not own the parcel, at 400 Franklin St., when they gave him down payments toward the purchase – money they still have not recouped.

Prosecutors said Bolar cashed those checks the day after getting them, when the purchase agreements called for them to be held in escrow.

Ward, who was on the Parish Council for 25 years, testified Bolar contacted him about the first prospective sale but heard nothing else about it until his real estate attorney told him that Bolar had drawn up a purchase agreement listing himself as the seller. Ward testified that at that point, he heeded his attorney’s advice to draw up papers allowing Bolar to sell the property to the church. Ward said he wasn’t aware that Bolar tried to sell the property to the elderly woman and her husband.

Bolar said he sold the parcel to Ward to raise money for a campaign for a state Senate seat. At one point during his testimony, he referred to Ward as “a second father,” and said Ward financed many of his contruction projects as well as his restaurant and bar, 636 Franklin.

The reader that sent me the link naturally wondered:

Do you think he learned all of his corrupt, criminal practices from his “second father,” or did he just veer off the path of righteousness?

Sounds like daddy could have as easily been on trial due to the monkey business with the deed. This is getting good.

sop