"He sounded like a loose cannon," said the coworker, who asked not to be identified to avoid entangling his new employer in the controversy. "He was very bitter about how things ended with the Patriots and he seemed like he was keen on using whatever he had to get back at them by going public and really trying to damage the team."
The former coworker, who was questioned last month by an NFL investigator, was among more than 30 individuals interviewed by the Globe during a monthlong inquiry into Walsh's controversial role in Spygate - a saga in which Walsh has all but single-handedly continued to cast Patriots coach Bill Belichick and the Kraft family's $1.2 billion franchise under a lingering cloud of suspicion.
In an otherwise unmemorable career as a low-level staffer for professional football teams and golf clubs, Walsh has been able to command center stage in the Spygate drama by suggesting he possesses more damaging information - and physical evidence - about the team's video practices than the Patriots previously have acknowledged.
Amid news yesterday that Walsh is close to reaching an agreement to tell what he knows, the Globe found that Walsh broke league rules under orders from the Patriots by videotaping opponents' signals between 2000 and 2002, and could have video recordings to prove it, which has not been previously reported.
But if he illegally videotaped the St. Louis Rams in their final practice before the 2002 Super Bowl, as widely suspected, team and league officials say he must have done it on his own. One league source detailed the circumstantial evidence that persuaded NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to accept the team's explanation that it never sanctioned, or knew of, any spying of that sort.
In developing a portrait of Walsh, a personable sports lover now working as an assistant golf pro in Hawaii, the Globe also learned that he has exaggerated or misrepresented elements of his online biography, and that he was dismissed from the Springfield College golf team in 1995 after he played a dangerous prank on a woman.
Walsh, 31, did not respond to numerous requests for interviews and his lawyer, Michael Levy, declined to comment.
Controversial connection
