seems like this slime really wanted treasure..even if imagined its there
Edward Krajewski, a former police officer who turned against the law to finance a South American treasure hunt, was found guilty on more than a dozen criminal charges in Bucks County Court yesterday.
Krajewski, 47, a thin man with a bushy moustache, sat motionless as the jury delivered guilty verdicts on 14 of 18 charges, including conspiracy to rob a Philadelphia drug dealer and a Pennsauken, N.J., storage locker. His wife, Christine, cried softly.
The 10-woman, two-man jury deliberated for nearly eight hours yesterday and Tuesday. District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein said Krajewski, a 17-year veteran of the Lower Southampton police force, could face 10 to 20 years in state prison after his sentencing hearing, expected in December.
``I think the evidence they had against him spoke for itself,'' said Lower Southampton police chief Edward ``Duke'' Donnelly.
For more than 10 years, Krajewski had been trying to find silver bars sunken off the coast of Ecuador that he said belonged to Sir Francis Drake.
``Wouldn't it be a wonderful punishment, years from now, if Ed Krajewski is sitting somewhere - hopefully in a cell - and reads that somebody else has found that treasure?'' Rubenstein told the jury in closing arguments Tuesday.
Krajewski's partner in the plot, Joseph DiGirolamo, the son of the Bensalem township mayor and a ``wacko goofball moron,'' in the words of Krajewski's attorney and Rubenstein, pleaded guilty to the same charges last August.
Posing as a police officer, DiGirolamo planned to rob the dealer's house, on Huntingdon Street in Philadelphia, on April 18. Krajewski provided him that morning with a phony search warrant, handcuffs, a defunct badge and a police T-shirt.
But authorities, tipped off early, stopped DiGirolamo while he was driving to Philadelphia. He was arrested and agreed to wear a wire when he met Krajewski in a 7-Eleven parking lot that night.
After Krajewski's arrest, detectives found tickets for an American Airlines flight to Ecuador, scheduled to leave the next morning.
Krajewski, who has four children and was a commercial diver in Singapore and Indonesia before joining the police force in 1979, said National Geographic had expressed an interest in filming their recovery of the treasure.
Krajewski said he never planned any of the crimes and thought DiGirolamo, who had a reputation for telling ``tall tales,'' was just joking during their April 18 meeting.
Two hours into their deliberations Tuesday, jurors asked to hear a tape of the April 18 conversation between Krajewski and DiGirolamo for a third time.
``Did you ask her where the dope or the money was?'' Krajewski says on the recording. ``I figured we would have got at least a hundred grand, but I'm not going to cry over twenty-five thousand.''
One juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Krajewski did not fare well with the tape. ``It sounded like he knew what had just gone on and was in on it,'' she said. ``The conversation was just too smooth, and he was just too aware of what questions to ask.''
Krajewski testified that he sent DiGirolamo to Philadelphia only to gather more information about the dealer. Krajewski planned to turn that information over to authorities, he testified, who might help grant his son Joseph, 21, an early release from Bucks County Prison, where he is serving time for minor theft charges.
