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Ex-Sheriff Dodges Trial Over Bad Check

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By DAVID SOMMER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - Jim Gillum's flirtation with the dark side appears to be over.

Pasco County's sheriff from 1984-92, Gillum was on the lam for about a month last year after a local judge ordered his arrest for failing to appear in court on a worthless check case.

Deputies tracked him down in Deltona in May, and he spent a few hours in the Volusia County Jail before posting bail.

Gillum was supposed to be in court again this week to fight the charge, but the state decided not to prosecute.

"Further investigation of this case by the State Attorney's Office has revealed that further prosecution is not warranted," Assistant State Attorney Mary Handsel wrote in a memorandum filed Monday.

Gillum, who lives in Deltona, also will get his driver's license back, court records state. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The bad check charge, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, was filed by Pasco prosecutors on March 26 after former landlord Lisa Egan of Palm Harbor complained that Gillum's rent check for $1,200 had bounced.

The check, dated April 19, 2006, was intended to pay the rent on his wife's home on Laurel Vista Loop in Port Richey, court records indicate.

An address on the check showed Gillum living on Westport Drive in Port Richey. The landlord of that property, Priscilla Stryder of Davie, said she had to evict Gillum after his rent went unpaid for several months in 2005.

"His own guys had to come to evict him," Stryder said in May. "He had a bunch of kids, and I felt bad."

Gillum left the sheriff's office in 1992 after he was defeated in the Republican primary.

His fall from grace came after a messy divorce and a much-publicized affair with an aide.

He twice tried, unsuccessfully, to regain his former job, running in 1996 and 2000.

In a 2000 interview, Gillum said he was struggling to make ends meet and had worked as a painter and furniture builder before opening a private detective agency in New Port Richey a few years earlier.

He said the private detective work helped keep sharp the skills he honed as a Tampa police officer from 1968-80.

Gillum said he had applied for jobs as a sheriff's deputy in other counties but had not been hired.

At the time, he was the father of eight children, ages 4 to 35.

Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.

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