A Pennsylvania court upheld theft and corruption charges against former Harrisburg mayor Stephen Reed and sent the case to trial.
Judge Richard Cashman, ruling in Dauphin County court on Sept. 15, ruled probable cause exists in the case against Reed, whom the state attorney general's office alleges used millions of dollars of bond proceeds to buy Wild West artifacts for a planned museum and hoarded them.
The bond money, according to prosecutors, was intended for the incinerator retrofit project, the school system, the Harrisburg Parking Authority and the Harrisburg Senators minor-league baseball team, which the city owned at the time.
The museum never materialized. While Reed was Harrisburg's mayor from 1982 to 2009, Pennsylvania's capital city plummeted to the brink of bankruptcy. Bond financing overruns from the incinerator project largely accounted for the city's $600 million-plus liability.
At a Sept. 14 preliminary hearing, special agent Craig LeCadre, the lead investigator for Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office, likened Reed to "a hoarder on steroids," saying his team found roughly 10,000 artifacts in the basement of Reed's apartment near the state capitol, and at a former hospital site several blocks away.
Prosecutors presented a slide show that features included a vampire hunting kit, a bronze statue of a cowboy on a bucking bronco and a Spanish armor suit. They valued the latter two at $19,000 and $14,000, respectively.
The state reduced the counts against Reed from 499 to 485.
Reed, 65, said prosecutors are railroading him.
"I have one word to describe it: it's bizarre," Reed told reporters after second-day hearing. "There are so many things, so many mischaracterizations, so many misrepresentations, so many untrue things, that it flabbergasts me."
