Sheriff Rudy Bartolomei of Lake County, Ind., who is under federal indictment on racketeering charges, was informed Friday that another federal grand jury has charged him with illegal possession of a handgun silencer.
Disclosure of the latest charge, which stemmed from a federal raid on the sheriff`s office last year, came as U.S. marshals served him with a copy of the indictment in his office.
Bartolomei, 61, who has rejected suggestions that he step aside pending trial, refused to comment on the latest accusation that he illegally possessed and failed to register a silencer for a .38 caliber handgun.
R. Lawrence Steele, U.S. attorney for northern Indiana, said the indictment was returned late Thursday by a federal grand jury in Hammond, a successor to the panel that indicted Bartolomei and his wife, Dorothy, a sheriff`s office employee, on racketeering charges March 1.
In that case Bartolomei was charged with corruption while serving as a Lake County commissioner between 1976 and 1983, years in which he was voted into office by fellow Democratic precinct committeemen. He now is filling out the term of a sheriff who died in office.
Steele said the silencer, which lacked a serial number and had not been registered with federal authorities, was confiscated in April by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The agents reported finding the silencer in Bartolomei`s personal office safe, along with 50 guns, most of which had been reported stolen but had not been listed on sheriff`s records as having been recovered by authorities.
Bartolomei is to be arraigned on the racketeering charges April 1. His attorneys, who said he will plead innocent, have characterized that case as politically motivated.
