By Les Stewart
The Lebanon Daily News
LEBANON, Pa. — A judge on Wednesday sentenced a 59-year-old city man to state prison for committing what he called the “reprehensible” crime of plotting with others to rob his own wife.
President Judge John C. Tylwalk sentenced George E. Gulliver of 1011 Willow St. to state prison for 16 months to seven years and ordered him to pay a $750 fine for conspiracy to commit robbery.
The judge gave him credit for time he already has served in prison. That means Gulliver will serve a little
more than two more months in prison. He was arrested on March 25 last year and did not post bail.
A jury convicted Gulliver at a Dec. 9 trial of charges related to the Jan. 11, 2009, robbery of his wife, Dorean, as she was making a cash deposit at Wachovia Bank in Palmyra. The money, which totaled $3,300, was from the Sunoco gas station in Annville Township, where she worked.
Defense attorney Tim Engler asked the judge to give Gulliver credit for the time he already served in prison.
Gulliver has been self-employed for 40 years, is married and has children, Engler said. Gulliver has worked as a carpenter. His only prior criminal record is two drunken-driving convictions, the defense attorney said. One of those was served in state prison, Tylwalk noted.
John Ditzler, first assistant district attorney, said Gulliver did not deserve a county prison sentence.
“This is as offensive a case as I’ve been involved in,” said Ditzler, who prosecuted Gulliver at his December trial.
During the trial, the jury heard a tape-recorded conversation Gulliver had with Vincent Lighty when they met on Sept. 15, 2009. Police obtained court approval to record the conversation.
“Did she know it was — she was going to get robbed?” Lighty asked Gulliver, according to a transcript of the tape.
“No. She didn’t know she was going to get robbed. How the (expletive) would she have known?” Gulliver responded.
“On the one hand, you’re a lucky man,” Tylwalk told Gulliver. “Your wife still loves you.”
Gulliver’s wife was in courtroom Wednesday when her husband was sentenced.
The judge asked Gulliver to consider what would have happened if Lighty, charged with committing the robbery, had had a knife and stabbed his wife.
“You’re all lucky something worse didn’t happen,” Tylwalk said.
The cases against Lighty, 30, of Palmyra, and Stephen Boyer, 31, of Myerstown are pending the trials of other codefendants.
Also charged with playing a role in the robbery of Dorean Gulliver was her stepson, Justin Gulliver, 31, of Lebanon.
The four were arrested along with William S. Beatty Jr., 44, of Fredericksburg, and charged with committing a series of robberies and burglaries from 2007 to 2009 in a three-county area, with most of them occurring in Lebanon County.
The five men were not charged with committing all the crimes together.
At Gulliver’s preliminary hearing in May, Lighty testified that Gulliver called him on a cell phone and told him when his wife would be leaving her job at Sunoco APlus in Annville Township to make a deposit at the Palmyra bank.
Lighty testified in May that he sprayed Dorean Gulliver with mace and grabbed the bank deposit bag.
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