By DAN CROWLEY
Staff Writer
Daily Hampshire Gazette
AMHERST — Fourteen years after giving then Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury 11 guns to put on consignment, an Amherst family is still searching for answers as to whether the firearms were ever sold — and if so, what happened to the money.
Elizabeth Rolander, 77, still keeps a single-page inventory of her late father’s guns, including their serial numbers, that she and a friend turned over to Fleury at his home in June 2001. Her son, David Rolander of North Andover, had inherited the guns from his grandfather.
The assortment of vintage pistols and rifles, some from the World War II era, belonged to William B. Becker of Amherst, who died in 1997. Becker was a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Massachusetts and a gun enthusiast.
“It’s his (Fleury’s) writing and he signed it,” Elizabeth Rolander said of the list, a copy of which she shared with the Gazette at her home on Ridgecrest Road. “When he got arrested, we started thinking about it again.”
The Rolanders are not alone in their quest to determine what happened to their guns. Pelham Police Chief Gary Thomann said he has received calls in recent days from other people seeking to know whether guns they gave Fleury to sell were among the stash of 240 guns authorities confiscated last fall from the former police chief’s Pelham home.
“The exact same kind of situation where he’s taken the guns in consignment,” Thomann said of two calls in addition to the Rolanders. “They’ve either never seen the money or the guns again.”
Thomann said he’s compared the list of guns that belonged to the Rolanders with those confiscated from Fleury’s home, and none match up. He said seven additional guns described to him by callers also are not within the stockpile.
Fleury’s guns are in the hands of the Pelham Police Department pending the outcome of a criminal case against him.
Fleury was arraigned Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to five charges of improper storage of a firearm after pleading not guilty to 23 firearms-related charges brought against him last year, including 21 counts of improper storage of a large-capacity firearm.
The charges were brought after a friend, Peter Terapulsky of Pelham, reported that Fleury pointed a Glock handgun with a laser sight at his chest while they were talking outside the Veterans of Foreign Wars bar in Belchertown on Aug. 2, 2014.
Police searched Fleury’s home in September 2014 and found approximately 240 guns, dozens of which were unlocked or unsecured. Many of the guns were in plain view, in cabinets, on tables or in trash bags, according to prosecutors. Police also found a loaded, unlocked revolver under a cushion in a chair.
A Hampshire Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled that evidence collected during the search can be used at Fleury’s upcoming trial (see related story).
David Rolander said he regrets parting with his grandfather’s guns, which include a Hungarian pistol the family believes was taken off a dead German soldier in World War II. He said he hounded Fleury in the months and years after he relinquished the firearms to the former police chief, but without any success.
“When he was chief of police in Pelham, he allegedly had an interest in a gun store,” said Rolander, who was living in Atlanta at the time. “Never saw a penny from him. Everything went quiet. Finally, I gave up on it.”
Elizabeth Rolander had traveled to Atlanta with a friend, Ronald Prunty of Pelham, to retrieve the guns and drove them back to Pelham. It was Prunty — stepfather of Peter Terapulsky — who had introduced the Rolanders to Fleury as someone who could sell the family’s guns. Although not friends with Fleury, Prunty said it was his understanding that Fleury had a connection to a gun dealer in Ware.
“I never had anything to do with the guy,” Prunty said, adding of Fleury’s past gun dealing, “I suspect there’s a pretty long history there that has not been brought out.”
Fleury could not be reached for comment.
His attorney in the pending criminal case against him, Patrick J. Melnik Jr. of Northampton, did not return phone calls this week.
David Rolander said he wrote to the Massachusetts State Police to seek help, but to no avail. Prunty said he also talked with the State Police and explained the situation. He said it was his understanding that authorities were only interested if the matter involved an abuse of police powers.
“They found it was a civil issue,” Prunty said. “It’s a history of sleaze. These weapons just kind of disappeared.”
Prunty said it was his understanding that Fleury was “tied in with a guy in Ware,” but looking back he does not now believe — and nor do the Rolanders — that Fleury was a legitimate partner in a gun business.
According to the Pelham Police Department, Fleury had an FID card, a license to sell ammunition, and a Class A gun permit suspended upon his arrest last year; the Class A permit gave him the right to carry concealed handguns and large capacity firearms.
Asked what kinds of guns were confiscated from Fleury’s home, Thomann said there is “every imaginable type of gun in there other than a fully automatic weapon.”
“There’s shotguns, hunting rifles, vintage guns, there’s all kinds,” he said. “He’s a bona fide collector. It’s a really nice collection of firearms.”
Thomann said that if the pending criminal case against Fleury is resolved in court in Fleury’s favor, he will have a right to the guns and could have the right to get his permits back. But, Thomann said that as police chief he has a right to suspend the permits if he determines Fleury is unsuitable to have them.
Fleury could also transfer the guns to another licensed gun owner or dealer to sell them on his behalf, all depending on the outcome of the case and whether the guns are properly registered.
Adding to complexity of the situation is the fact that not all the guns are registered to Fleury, which Thomann said may create problems as he attempts to identify owners without supporting paperwork on gun transfers.
“There’s a lapse in paperwork somewhere either on his behalf of someone else, and that has to be resolved,” he said.
Thomann said his department is not treating the public’s queries about guns turned over to Fleury for consignment as a criminal matter because nobody has filed a complaint with the Police Department.
“Right now, it’s basically a civil action,” he said. “These are business transactions that are in question.”
David Rolander said he understands that the chances of finding his grandfather’s guns are exceedingly slim, in large part because of the lack of a paper trail detailing a business transaction.
“She (Elizabeth Rolander) took it at face value,” he said of the day his mother and Prunty brought the guns to Fleury. “The police chief was going to do things fairly, and it just didn’t turn out that way.”
Fleury was chief in Pelham from 1991 to 2008 when he resigned.
Elizabeth Rolander described how her son tried in earnest over the years to get to the bottom of what happened to the guns his grandfather bequeathed to him.
“My son was very upset about it,” she said. “Ed would never answer David’s phone calls. This really bothered my son for years. It was a hurtful thing, all his grandfather’s guns that he really didn’t want to sell anyway.”
The idea that his grandfather’s guns may be locked up or in storage somewhere continues to cross David Rolander’s mind.
When he learned that some 240 guns had been taken out of Fleury’s home, he and his mother got to thinking that maybe some or all of those 11 guns his family gave to Fleury 14 years ago were among them.
“If I could turn back time, I would want these things for my son,” David Rolander said. “I wish I knew where they were. I would go make an offer to buy them back.”
Dan Crowley can be reached at [email protected].
