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Police Say Man Adds To Long Criminal History
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Published: June 13, 2008
TAMPA – A year after Thomas Guth was released from federal prison in 2003, his lawyer told a judge in Chicago that he wanted to start a new life away from the city in Pueblo, Colo.
The judge agreed to release Guth early from probation so he could move away with his then-15-year-old son.
Somehow, Guth, whose criminal record spans 33 years, wound up living with his son in a $500,000 Gulf Boulevard condominium he purchased in Clearwater. And before too long, authorities say, he was back to his old ways, selling a gun to another felon and planning an armed robbery, authorities say.
Investigators also suspect he was involved in mortgage fraud and a pump-and-dump stock scheme, according to court documents.
Unbeknownst to him, he was being secretly recorded when he talked about committing two murders, killing a dog and bombing a liquor store, court documents say. After he was arrested in March, he told agents he was responsible for a bombing, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court here. Agents think the bombing was connected to organized crime and happened in or near Addison, Ill., in 1982.
Agents are trying identify the murders Guth, 58, spoke about in a recorded conversation, but didn't admit to when interviewed by law enforcement, according to the prosecution court filing.
Guth was scheduled to go on trial this month on a federal weapons offense that carries up to 20 years in prison, but the trial has been postponed. His attorney, Steven Crawford, said he couldn't discuss the case because he has just recently been appointed to represent Guth.
Guth told investigators, according to a court filing, that he settled in the Chicago area when he was discharged from the military after serving in Vietnam. He wanted to work in law enforcement, but when that didn't work out, he started working in a massage parlor, finding the business to be quite profitable.
He started opening up his own massage parlors in the Chicago area and started associating with the local Italian mobsters, committing crimes with them, the prosecution filing states. Mobsters approached him and told him a pair of Polish brothers who owned several liquor stores were not paying money to La Cosa Nostra and needed to be sent a message.
Goth said he agreed to blow up one of the liquor stores, and set the place on fire using gasoline.
He was not arrested for the fire, but his record includes at least 19 different prison sentences and arrests, starting with a Feb. 27, 1975 arrest for keeping a house of ill fame, according to a prosecution court filing. He was also charged in 1975 with keeping a house of prostitution in Shiller Park, Ill., and arrested the next year for pandering, keeping a place of prostition and soliciting for a prostitute in Waukegan, Ill.
It's not clear whether each of the arrests led to convictions, but in 1982, he was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to the court filing. That same year, he was convicted of bank robbery.
His most recent conviction on drug charges in 1991 led to a 15-year prison sentence.
Guth's former attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender A. Fitzgerald Hall, wrote in a court filing that agents had no information to establish or link Guth to the bombing or murders.
Guth is now being held without bond.
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