Relationship Between Police Guards, Federal Informant Investigated

A mob informant and his Rhode Island police guards developed such a loose relationship over 3 1/2 years that they frolicked in Florida together and sold vehicles to each other, even though the protected witness was serving a prison term.

And security was so lax that anybody looking for informant Peter Gilbert--a prized witness who traveled to court surrounded by police sharpshooters--had only to look in Rhode Island auto title applications to find the address of his supposedly secret hideaway.

His widow, Debra, and her lawyer also alleged in recent interviews at her Florida home that police told her Gilbert to turn in phony receipts for Gilbert’s expenses.

A Rhode Island attorney general’s report also said Gilbert, serving a 10-year prison term for murder at the time he was a protected witness, illegally had guns, improperly collected welfare and often was allowed to roam freely. He frequently was ferried to Florida with his guards, some of whom allegedly brought their girlfriends.

“It was just as if they were a bunch of fraternity guys, sky-diving, drinking, women,” said Thomas Hogan Jr., Debra Gilbert’s attorney.

Her revelations are the latest about her husband’s custody that have surfaced since he died June 11, 1988. They flabbergast the man who founded the federal witness-protection program.

“Our prime goal is to keep him alive, to keep him in the right frame of mind to testify,” said John Partington, a former U.S. marshal recently named Providence, R.I., public safety commissioner.

Gilbert, 43, died of a heart attack while on an unsupervised sky-diving trip to Connecticut. The attorney general’s report later acknowledged that police knew that he had a history of heart problems. Police found cocaine in his car.

Rhode Island state police are investigating, but previous reports by the attorney general and the Providence Journal-Bulletin showed that the state spent as much as $169,000 on Gilbert and his wife during his 3 1/2 years in police custody. Purchases included bullets, liquor, jewelry, concert tickets and 52 sky-diving trips.

Two of Gilbert’s guards have committed suicide since his death and two were reassigned from the police intelligence unit to the uniform division. Former Providence Police Chief Anthony J. Mancuso, who became the attorney general’s chief drug enforcement officer while continuing to be paid by Providence after stepping down as chief, recently resigned from the attorney general’s office and the force, citing continued publicity about the Gilbert case.

Gilbert was supposed to be a key witness against six reputed mobsters but testified against only one before his death. Because he died, charges against most of the others were dropped.

Under an agreement with the attorney general’s office, Gilbert lived at the Providence police station from his arrest in February, 1985, until his transfer to a Glocester, R.I., safehouse in January, 1988. Debra Gilbert alternated between living in Florida and with her husband in Rhode Island.

Police and the attorney general’s office refused to release the safehouse address, but it was listed on a March, 1988, title application Gilbert filed at the Motor Vehicle Registry in connection with a car loan.

“That is unbelievable,” Partington said. “You don’t have to be a police chief or security expert to say it’s unthinkable” for Gilbert’s address to be in public records.

Gilbert paid Detective Jeffrey Ward $3,000 for a 13-year-old Harley Davidson motorcycle in April, 1988, according to sales tax documents provided by a source close to the investigation who demanded anonymity.

“I know about a motorcycle,” said Ward, who declined to answer other questions.

Providence and state police and the attorney general’s office will not comment on the case. Mancuso, who stepped down in 1988, denied knowledge of any transactions between Gilbert and his guards, but would say no more.

Debra Gilbert will not talk about many things because of the pending state police investigation. But Hogan said that among her other allegations are that:

* Gilbert sold a Chrysler Cordoba to police matron Eva Diaz in early 1986. No title could be found under either name and Diaz referred questions to Debra Gilbert. Diaz said she took over loan payments on Gilbert’s 1984 Buick after his death.

* Gilbert told his wife her sixth-anniversary ring in 1987 was bought from Ward, who denies it.

* Police officers told her to get phony receipts to include with the ones submitted to the attorney general for Gilbert’s expenses--receipts the attorney general’s report says often were not reviewed. Debra Gilbert says she never heeded the officers’ advice and will not name them.

She said her husband made at least a dozen state-paid trips to Florida for family visits and to clear up outstanding charges, including a prison break. Hogan said the guards often brought girlfriends.

Hogan said the guards and women would stay in hotel rooms while Gilbert stayed with his wife at her home, more than a mile away. It could not be determined who paid for the rooms or if the guards watched Debra Gilbert’s house.

WPRI television in Providence recently broadcast home videos of Gilbert and his guards frolicking in Florida and at a vacation home in Narragansett, R.I.

One tape showed an officer, with his arm around Gilbert, saying: “The criminal justice system has been very, very good to us, huh Peter?”