Law-enforcement source had no doubt that nude young man in gay-porn photos was the "Bill Pryor" who grew up to become a federal judge in 11th Circuit

Robed Bill Pryor and disrobed Bill Pryor

Whenever we publish a post about the gay-porn days of U.S. Circuit Judge Bill Pryor, you can count on it happening: Several commenters will question whether the individual in the nude photographs is Pryor. I've written extensively about the background on how the photos surfaced -- and the sources who said the nude "Bill Pryor" is the same one George W. Bush appointed to the federal bench. Still, some folks refuse to get it -- they apparently assume I stumbled upon a nude photo of someone who looked like a young Judge Pryor and published our reports based only on that.

The young fellow in the photo does look like Judge Bill Pryor (because it is him), but that's only a small chunk of the foundation upon which our posts have been built. I interviewed about a half dozen people connected to the Pryor/BadPuppy story before ever running the first post, in September 2015. Since then, I've talked to about a half dozen more sources, including three who say they knew Pryor when he was at Northeast Louisiana University (now Louisiana Monroe). One of those individuals, a male, said he had a brief sexual encounter with Pryor. One other said he played in the university band with Pryor, and that Pryor's homosexuality was well known throughout the band.

A key source was a former Alabama law-enforcement official who became aware of the photos shortly after Pryor was appointed state attorney general in the 1990s. Concerned the new AG might be subject to blackmail because of the photos, our source opened an investigation on the matter. When I interviewed the former law-enforcement official, this is part of what he told me: (A video with a recorded segment of the interview is embedded at the end of this post.)

I was working at ABI criminal intelligence at the time. An informant called and said,"You're not going to believe this: Bill Pryor was being displayed on a gay Web site out of Florida. I looked it up and there he was, with his name on it . . . It was about '94 or '95 maybe. It was an old photograph, but it was gay porn. A coworker and I made some copies of it, and (a source) presented it to one of the Republican (state) senators . . . I don't remember who it was, but it was someone he trusted, and (the senator) went to Pryor who expressed surprise, of course.

He was saying, "That's not me," but Bill Pryor is hard to fake a photo of, and it had his name on it. I don't know where the photographs originated or who made them. He was AG at the time, before he made federal judge, and he was lobbying for (a judgeship), however. Even though being homosexual isn't illegal, it could conceivably result in him being blackmailed as a judge.

The Web site went down (after Pryor was shown the photo). Matter of fact, I showed it to a reporter who worked for The Birmingham News . . . I showed it to her to get an opinion. She was in shock over it. No, she did not have doubt, nor did we (about who it was).

Why would it be hard to fake a photo of Bill Pryor? For one, Pryor has strabismus (crossed eyes), a fairly rare eye condition, and it clearly is present in the photo of "young Bill Pryor." As for origins of the photos, another source said they had been traced to Monroe, Louisiana, where Pryor went to college. More from our law-enforcement source:

It had his face, and his name was on the photograph. It looked like he was in his late teens or early 20s. The only thing he had on in one of them was an old-style soft motorcycle hat. It was hilarious when we saw them.

They were black and white, with a sepia tone. I think there were 8 to 10 of those. One of our analysts found them on a gay web site out of Florida.

As soon as Pryor found out they were out there, the Web site vanished.

How did that happen? Our source has some insights on that, and we will explain in an upcoming post.


(To be continued)