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The man at the center of the latest controversy surrounding the frozen body of baseball legend Ted Williams said Sunday he was sorry for posting pictures of Williams' body on a Web site.
Larry Johnson, whose interview with Sports Illustrated magazine spawned another round of media attention over the fate of the remains of Williams, posted the pictures on a Web site Tuesday, where people could see them for $20. The pictures were removed within hours.
Johnson resigned as chief operating officer of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, an Arizona cryonics clinic where Williams' body is frozen, just before the Sports Illustrated article was published.
Williams' body was brought to Alcor within hours of his death on July 5, 2002, at Citrus Memorial Hospital in Inverness. The body was taken there in the event technology might someday revive the dead.
"It was a mistake," Johnson said of the decision to post the pictures. "It was a last-minute decision, done under a lot of pressure. But it was just an honest attempt by me to explain to people what happened to Ted Williams over there."
The Sports Illustrated story said Alcor decapitated Williams, lost DNA samples and cracked his head multiple times.
Johnson said he was already feeling the effects from the decision to post the photos. "This is surely going to create a burden for me with legal fees," he said. "I didn't do it for the money."
The company has dismissed the accusations in the Sports Illustrated article, contending they were supplied by a disgruntled former employee.
Johnson also said that he didn't think the picture incident has done anything to damage his credibility.
"Everything in the Sports Illustrated article is a fact," he said Sunday in a phone call to the Citrus Times.
"I just wanted to expose Alcor and let the world know what has happened to Ted Williams," he said. "It's important for the world to know the truth."
- Information from Times files was used in this report.