TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Man No Newcomer To Crime

ADVERTISEMENT

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 14, 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.

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 long, authorities say, he was selling a gun to another felon and planning an armed robbery.

Investigators also suspect he was involved in mortgage fraud and a stock scheme, according to court documents.

He was also secretly recorded as he talked about two slayings, killing a dog and bombing a liquor store, court documents say. After his arrest in March, he told agents he was responsible for a bombing, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court in Tampa. Agents think the bombing was connected to organized crime and happened in or near Addison, Ill., in 1982.

Agents are trying to identify the slayings 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.

He opened 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. Guth said he agreed to blow up one of the stores, records said.

He was not arrested for the fire, but his record includes at least 19 prison sentences and arrests, starting with a 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 Schiller Park, Ill., and arrested the next year for pandering, keeping a place of prostitution 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 link Guth to the bombing or slayings.

Guth is being held without bond.

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT