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Marines try to tack theft charge onto 40-year-old case

The 65-year-old Tarpon Springs man is being held at Camp Lejeune, N.C., on a charge of desertion.

By WILL VAN SANT
Published January 5, 2006

Jerry Texiero, the Tarpon Springs man accused of deserting the Marine Corps 40 years ago, could face additional jail time for stealing cash from a military store, an official said Wednesday.

Texiero was 24, a corporal doing his second tour, when he was reported absent from Camp Pendleton, Calif., early one morning in July 1965.

An investigation into his disappearance completed in 1966 concluded that he had stolen $5,490 from a base store before going fugitive, said Lt. Col. Annita Best, a Marine Corps spokeswoman.

Best is stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where the 65-year-old Texiero is being held on a charge of desertion. Best said the larceny charge is no longer active, but military officials are reviewing the initial investigation to see if correct procedures were followed.

If so, they might reinstate the charge, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Texiero faces up to three years for desertion, Best said.

Details on the missing money were contained in an FBI file that a prosecutor working on Texiero's desertion case is reviewing, Best said. She did not say why military officials are discussing the possible larceny charge now, five months after Texiero was arrested.

Citizen Soldier, a New York-based advocacy group for service members and veterans, has taken Texiero's case. Louis Font, a lawyer associated with the group, was at Camp Lejeune Wednesday when Marine Corps officials raised the possibility of a larceny charge.

"They are grasping at straws," Font said. "They are just trying to make him appear like he was some sort of criminal instead of what he was, a soldier who was concerned about Vietnam."

The Marine Corps tracked Texiero down in August. He was calling himself Gerome Conti and selling boats near the Sponge Docks in Tarpon Springs.

Conti was serving probation for a 1998 fraud and grand theft conviction. The case involved the sale of classic cars, which Texiero has a passion for.

With help from the FBI, Marine Corps investigators matched Conti's fingerprints to those Texiero made when he entered boot camp in 1959.

Court records indicate he was regularly making restitution payments in the 1998 case in the years before his capture.

Texiero's friend Elaine Smith has been at Camp Lejeune for nearly three weeks, ever since he was transferred there from the Pinellas County Jail.

Smith, 58, believes Texiero abandoned the Marine Corps because he could not see himself taking a human life in Vietnam. She, like Font, is urging the Marine Corps to drop the desertion charge and release Texiero.

Such a move is a possibility. Texiero could be dishonorably discharged, but the Marine Corps had not decided on a course of action.

Smith, like Font, said she simply could not believe that her friend had stolen money from the military.

"They can say anything they want to," she said. "That's just not Jerry's character."

Will Van Sant can be reached at 445-4166 or vansant@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 5, 2006, 01:32:55]