Saturday, August 7, 2010

Police seize 15 guns from suspect's home

T-shirts with ˜possible blood splatter" were also found at the house belonging to Raymond F. Peake, officers say.

By CHRIS A. COUROGEN

Investigators found three T-shirts with "possible blood splatter" and more than a dozen firearms in the home of a man charged with killing lawyer Todd Getgen.

Documents filed in Cumberland County Court on Thursday detailed what police say they found inside Raymond F. Peake's house in Hampden Twp. Authorities say Peake, a guard at the State Correctional Institute at Camp Hill and a former Marine, shot and killed Getgen at a North Middleton Twp. shooting range on July 21.

Police say they found a small arsenal inside Peake's red brick split-level house with white siding in the 5200 block of Terrace Road.

Police found seven shotguns, five rifles and three handguns, the documents state. Ammunition, documents, two computers and a copy of the book "Notes of a Russian Sniper" were also taken from the home.

Peake has insisted he didn't kill Getgen, according to investigators. Peake said that he stole Getgen's rifle after finding the lawyer lying dead at the rifle range, police said.

Peake told investigators that he was stealing weapons for an unnamed organization in an effort to overthrow the U.S. government and that he was willing to kill to defend his country, court documents say.

North Middleton Twp. police and the Cumberland County district attorney's office did not return calls Friday seeking comment on the findings.

Getgen's body was found July 21 by a vacationing federal park ranger who had gone to the range to take target practice. District Attorney David Freed said Getgen had been shot several times.

Peake, 64, a retired, decorated Marine gunnery sergeant, was being held without bail in the county jail on charges that include homicide and robbery.

A second guard from the prison, Thomas F. Tuso, 34, of Penn Twp., Perry County, is charged with theft and receiving stolen property. Tuso, who was free on $100,000 bail, has not been charged in Getgen's slaying.

The weapons seized at Peake's house are in addition to the three guns that authorities said they found in a storage unit Peake rented at Midway Self Storage on Route 34 in South Middleton Twp.

Those guns included Getgen's custom AR-15 with a silencer and a Remington 700 rifle and scope, which police said was stolen from the same shooting range in May.

Police also said they found four handguns, ammunition and a set of brass knuckles in a search of Tuso's home.

In the days since the arrest, police and the district attorney's office have been close-lipped about any investigation into groups Peake might have been affiliated with.

This week, Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating said prosecutors would have no further comment until Peake's and Tuso's preliminary hearings. Those proceedings, originally set for Monday, have been postponed until Aug. 23.

A 13-page affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Peake's home and a 10-page document justifying the search of the storage unit remained sealed by the county judge who issued the warrants.

Although only three weapons were found in the storage unit, police said Peake had bought a gun cabinet designed to hold 14 weapons and placed it in the climate-controlled, 10-square-foot unit he rented a week after Getgen was killed.

By then, police were closing in on him. After developing leads based on descriptions of a suspicious man and vehicles seen in the area of the rifle range the day Getgen was killed and in May when the other rifle was stolen there, police placed Peake under surveillance.

"When he moved in, the cops were sitting up on the hill by the roller rink watching him," said Brent Group, who works at the storage facility.

Group said he noticed police on that hill on the afternoon of July 28 and on nearby roads. But he said he didn't realize why until two days later, when a group of nearly 20 law enforcement officials, many in plain clothes, arrived with a warrant to search Peake's storage unit.

Peake seemed calm when he rented the unit, paying the $110 monthly rental fee with a credit card in his name, said Gretchen Naugle, who waited on him that day. Peake told her he was in the Marine Reserve and needed a place to store belongings because he was being deployed to Iraq.

"It seemed a little odd that someone his age, with a hearing aid, was being sent to Iraq," Naugle said. But the storage center's proximity to the Carlisle Barracks has made it popular with military members and civilian contractors, including some older people who have been deployed in the Middle East, so Naugle didn't think much more about it.

Had Peake raised more suspicions, Group and Naugle might have noticed the person carrying what police said were stolen guns into the storage unit. The facility has a number of surveillance cameras, images from which rotate on four monitor screens near the customer service counter.

"The cameras displayed rotate all the time. We have a tendency not to pay much attention," Group said.

It was only after police arrived that the employees reviewed tapes and discovered images of the man carrying a rifle into the facility, and pointing the other stolen gun down an interior hallway outside his storage unit as he checked out its scope.

Getgen, 42, worked as personal-injury lawyer. He lived in Enola with his wife, Stella, and a 6-year-old son.

INFOBOX:
In house

Police said they seized the following from Raymond F. Peake's house: