Freed by Marines, now he could face jail
The State Attorney's Office plans to prosecute Jerry Texiero, who is accused of living under a false identity during his run from the military.
By WILL VAN SANT, Times Staff Writer
Published April 2, 2006

Since the Marine Corps decided in January not to prosecute Jerry Texiero for desertion, he has imagined, with wonder and not a little fear, meeting a mother lost to him since Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

That climactic reunion may never happen.

While the military chose a discharge over throwing Texiero in the brig for disappearing from his California base in summer 1965, local prosecutors want him to spend a few years behind bars.

The problem is that Texiero, calling himself Gerome Conti, was on probation for 1998 fraud and grand theft convictions when Tarpon Springs police, tipped off by military investigators, arrested him in August.

Prosecutors have charged Texiero with having a fake name on his driver's license and using somebody else's Social Security number, in essence, for using them as tools to maintain a new identity and elude capture.

The State Attorney's Office planned to prosecute, which could put Texiero - who said his mother is 86 - away for almost five years.

"This individual needs to spend a little time in state prison," said Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant state attorney.

With a court appearance set for Wednesday, Texiero, 65, said he feels like he's living out a bizarre comedy with stakes that are anything but funny.

"If the military decided not to send me to prison for what I did 40 years ago," he said, "then the state should not want to jail me either."

Sitting in the living room of his longtime friend Elaine Smith in Tarpon Springs one afternoon last week, Texiero wore a turquoise button-down shirt, khakis and boat shoes.

The casual yacht-broker attire fits.

He's working for his old employer, Florida Suncoast Yacht Sales. Actually, with the question of his legal name undecided, Texiero isn't selling any boats, just making connections and helping out around the office.

He teared up and left the room to gain composure when asked to talk about his time at Camp LeJeune, N.C., where he was taken after spending four months at the Pinellas County Jail.

In the brig waiting for the military to decide his fate, Texiero said, he vowed to fight any attempt to court-martial him for desertion.

Records show he joined the Marines in 1959 and enlisted again three years later. He served his country during that time, Texiero said, but at age 24, troubled by the end of a love affair and unwilling to kill in Vietnam, he fled.

And he would do it again.

"I really felt I had not dishonored my country," he said. "I spent six years in the military, which is more than most men."

For at least three years after cutting out, Texiero said, he continued to use his birth name. Then, in the late 1960s, he started working as a dance instructor at several Southern California studios.

In those days, he said, instructors often took professional names that had a little dazzle. He went by Jerry Vale for a time. Finally, he settled on a name inspired by character actor and film noir legend Richard Conte, to whom he bears a resemblance.

His bosses liked the change but wanted a first name more flamboyant than Jerry, he said. So Jerry Texiero became Gerome Conti. It's a name that has suited him.

"There's nobody that know me as Texiero, except people from my childhood," he said.

At the root of his immediate troubles are the convictions on fraud and grand theft from 1998. The charges involved the sale of vintage cars, a trade that has provided Texiero with a livelihood for much of the 30 years that he has been in Florida.

His business, Suncoast Classic Auto Sales on Cleveland Street in Clearwater, took vehicles on consignment and sold them. Texiero said things fell apart when the owner of the building that he worked from donated the property to a church, forcing him to move.

Investors who were to help him pay the lease on a new location backed out, he said, and he found himself unable to pay several people who had entrusted cars to him. He didn't have the money that they were owed on the sales of their vehicles.

Texiero would end up with 20 years' probation for 15 counts of grand theft and one count of scheming to defraud. He admitted making bad business decisions but said he struggled mightily to keep the business afloat and never deliberately stole from anyone.

He turned to selling boats after his conviction. As a felon, state law prohibits him from selling anything more than 32 feet. Despite that restriction, records show that he has consistently been able to pay the $500 a month in restitution that his probation requires.

At least until his arrest. During the last six months, Texiero's only income has been the $2,200 that the Marine Corps paid him for the time he was at Camp LeJeune. While in custody before his formal discharge, he officially was a Marine again.

Most of that money, he said, has gone to pay Smith back a small portion of what she borrowed to help defend her friend.

Texiero would not say how he came upon the Social Security number that he was charged with using fraudulently, but he said he never impersonated the person or stole from her.

Bartlett, the chief assistant state attorney, said he was not aware of any evidence suggesting that Texiero used the number to defraud anyone, but he said the case was not really about Texiero living under an assumed name.

It's about not coming clean about his identity when he was charged in 1998 and given probation.

"He failed to comply with the conditions and was perpetrating a fraud on the court," Bartlett said. "How can people think that is the right thing to do?"

The prosecutor said he hated to appear jaded but was deeply skeptical about Texiero's desire to see his elderly mother, suggesting that the story was a desperate ploy.

"When was the last time he did go visit his mother?" Bartlett said. "Suddenly, faced with prison time, he becomes a family man."

Actually, Texiero said, he never had much of a family. Born in New Jersey, his father left when he was a toddler, and his mother put him and a younger sister up for adoption a few years later.

His mother, whose first name is Kay, lives in California, is nearly blind and is not able to travel. Texiero and Smith said that in their now-regular telephone conversations with her, she has declined to speak with the media.

They said she feared reporters knocking on her door and what the neighbors may think.

Growing up, Texiero said, he was in a series of foster homes, only rarely seeing his mother. The last time the two met face to face was in California in 1963, he said. About three years after he left the Marines, Texiero said, an old school friend mentioned, wrongly, that his mother had died.

He did not seek out a grave. Texiero admitted having had issues with his mother and said there was not always much warmth in their relationship. But now, decades later, he wants another chance.

"Now that I'm older and the years have passed by, I understand more about what she may have been going through," he said. "Things are different now. It's been a long time."

Will Van Sant can be reached at vansant@sptimes.com or 727 445-4166.

Ellie