Probation for Roosevelt Gun Thief
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CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) – A man was spared a jail sentence for taking the gun Theodore Roosevelt used in the Spanish-American War’s most famous battle.
Anthony Joseph Tulino was sentenced Friday to two years probation, 50 hours of community service and a $500 fine. A federal judge noted that Tulino had changed since the 1892 revolver was removed from a Long Island museum in 1990.
“I offer my apology for my action a long time ago,” Tulino, 55, a former New York resident who now lives in DeLand, Fla., said in court Friday. “I make no excuse.”
But, he said, “I’ve matured … I’m not who I was then.”
Tulino, a postal worker, pleaded guilty last year to violating a law designed to protect cherished American antiquities. He had faced the possibility of up to 90 days in jail.
“You stole a national treasure … an item that’s irreplaceable,” Federal Magistrate Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson told Tulino. But she said she had considered his actions in the subsequent years.
She noted that friends and members of Tulino’s church had described him as hardworking and honest, and that he did volunteer work serving meals to the homeless.
Roosevelt carried the double-action six-shot revolver when he was serving as the regimental commander of the Rough Riders during the charge up Cuba’s San Juan Hill in 1898.
The gun was stolen from the Sagamore Hill National Historical Site, Roosevelt’s former home in Oyster Bay, N.Y. The revolver, a cornerstone of Sagamore Hill’s collection, had been in a display case that had no alarm.
The FBI recovered the gun last year, after getting a tip from a friend of Tulino’s. The revolver was returned to Sagamore Hill, which was the 26th president’s home from 1885 until his death in 1919.
The .38-caliber revolver was in the armory of the USS Maine when the battleship mysteriously sank in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, leading to the war. It was recovered during a salvage mission by one of Roosevelt’s relatives, who gave it to him.
An inscription on the revolver reads, “July 1st, 1898, San Juan, Carried and Used by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, From the Sunken Battle Ship Maine.”
