NEW YORK – A man who stole the gun Theodore Roosevelt used in the Spanish-American War’s most famous battle has pleaded guilty to violating a law designed to protect cherished U.S. antiquities, prosecutors said.
“Today’s guilty plea effectively ends a 16-year-old mystery, and a treasured piece of American history has been returned to the public,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said Thursday in a statement.
Roosevelt carried the 1892 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, which was valued at up to $500,000, was stolen in April 1990 from the Sagamore Hill National Historical Site, Roosevelt’s former home in Oyster Bay, N.Y. The revolver had been in a display case that had no alarm.
The FBI recovered the gun this year. It was returned to Sagamore Hill, which was Roosevelt’s home from 1885 until his death in 1919.
Anthony Joseph Tulino, a postal worker from DeLand, Fla., who was living in New York, pleaded guilty to a violation of the American Antiquities Act of 1906, which Roosevelt signed into law. It prohibits the theft of relics from U.S. government property.
Tulino, 55, faces up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Police were tipped off after Tulino’s best friend saw the gun, which was kept in a closet at his Florida home.
The .38-caliber Colt revolver originally was acquired by the U.S. government for the Navy in 1895. It 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.”
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