By Shira Schoenberg
The Concord Monitor
NEW HAMPSHIRE — Twenty-one years ago, Dale Robinson gave a SWAT team the green light to kill Michael Guglielmo. Now, Robinson, a retired deputy police chief from Manchester, has agreed to help Guglielmo, an ex- convict, run a bone marrow drive dedicated to saving lives.
“We’re not personal friends. I still have reservations about him, but everything I’ve seen seems to be genuine,” Robinson said. “He’s taken a different path, and he seems to be doing good.”
Over the past year, Guglielmo, of Belmont, earned national attention for his attempts to find a bone marrow donor for his 1- year-old son, Giovanni, who was stricken with a rare immune deficiency disorder. Guglielmo says more than 9,000 potential donors have joined a national registry through bone marrow drives organized by his supporters.
But before he was a celebrity, Guglielmo was a criminal. Originally from New York, he was wanted for probation violations when he terrorized a Manchester neighborhood in 1985 by shooting 200 rounds from a machine gun, holding off a SWAT team for five hours.
At the time, Guglielmo was a 23-year-old unemployed carpenter upset that his baby daughter was being put up for adoption, according to reports in the Union Leader.
“He was drug-involved, alcohol-involved, immature and simply didn’t have the tools to understand what he needed to do to succeed,” Guglielmo’s attorney, Alan Cronheim, said last week.
Guglielmo recalled, “I was inebriated, high on cocaine, waving a gun around. I shot the house up, over 200 rounds from a Mac 10 machine gun with a silencer. When the police arrived, I just started shooting at everyone.”
“I remember it being cold, being scared and being there a long time,” said Manchester Deputy Police Chief Glen Leidemer, who was on the SWAT team that night. “He fired hundreds of shots at us in an attempt to kill us.”
The standoff started about 4 a.m. on Dec. 30, 1985, at a rented single-family home on Montgomery Street. A 2004 profile of Guglielmo in the Hartford Courant described the scene as a house party with bikers and beer, where Guglielmo got angry after hearing his friend brag about a Mac 10 submachine gun the two had bought.
According to the Union Leader, more than 45 police officers responded, including two special reaction teams, or SWAT teams, one of which Robinson had led. At one point “Mr. Guglielmo came out of the house onto the porch with a gun in his hand,” Robinson recalled. “If he made it up the walkway a certain distance, his fire zones would have opened to the point where the public would be in danger. I gave a conditional green light to the sniper that if he crossed a certain imaginary line in the walkway, they were to take him out. He didn’t cross that line.”
About 9 a.m., Guglielmo ran out of ammunition. He emerged from the house with a beer in one hand and a machine gun strapped to his back and surrendered, according to news reports. The police never fired a shot.
Guglielmo was convicted of first-degree assault and reckless conduct and sentenced to three consecutive 7 1/2 - to 15-year sentences.
In prison, Guglielmo earned a master’s degree, mentored prisoners and taught law. He wrote a college thesis on programs to keep kids out of the criminal justice system, said John Eckert, executive director of the state parole board.
In 2000, the parole board allowed Guglielmo to start his third sentence, after serving the minimum on the second. In 2002, a judge cut five years off his final sentence, after the retired judge who had sentenced him testified on his behalf.
But Robinson testified against Guglielmo. “By the grace of God, no one got killed,” Robinson said last week. “He shot at several police officers, and I felt he should have served the rest of his time.”
Guglielmo was released in July 2003 and will remain on parole until December 2014. Since his release, he built up a construction business and had a son, Giovanni, with his girlfriend, Christina Poulicakos. After Giovanni was hospitalized, Guglielmo focused on his care, organizing bone marrow drives and cultivating media attention for his son’s plight. When Giovanni’s condition improved after a cord blood transplant, he continued the drives. About a month and a half ago, he reached out to Robinson.
“I always wanted to make it right with the police, and I always wanted them to know I was sorry for what I did,” Guglielmo said. “I thought the best way of reconciliation was to ask the Manchester police to have a bone marrow drive. If they had killed me, none of this would have happened: Giovanni wouldn’t have been born, I wouldn’t have gone on this crusade.”
Guglielmo said the Manchester police did not respond to his letters. Leidemer, who said he did not receive the request, said, “I’m confident that allowing Mike Guglielmo to host something in collaboration with our department would not have been very well received, for all his actions that he was responsible for, especially coming so soon after the shooting death of Officer (Michael) Briggs. That said, I’m sure there will be several officers and their families that participate in the marrow drive.”
But Robinson, who Guglielmo called personally, did respond.
“I was kind of surprised. I’d never spoken to him personally. But he explained what he was doing, and I told him I’d be happy to assist him,” Robinson said. “I don’t have animosity to him. As a police officer, you can’t carry cases or hatred with you.
“Sometimes you find it hard to believe people can turn around and change, but they have,” Robinson said. “I just marvel at the fact that he’s not only benefited his son, but other parents who have kids who need the same thing.”
Robinson, who works at Manchester City Hall as an ordinance violation supervisor, said he offered to help Guglielmo with permits and city logistics. And, he said, “I’ll go in and let them take a swab of my mouth. If my bone marrow can help someone, God bless them, let them have it.”
Copyright 2007 The Concord Monitor