By Matt Lakin
The Knoxville News-Sentinel
LOUDON, Tenn. — A police career didn’t work out for Steve Robert Gutt. Neither did a life of crime.
Gutt, a former part-time Loudon police officer, earned a 12-year prison sentence Monday for statutory rape, attempted bribery and a series of burglaries in neighboring Monroe County. Under state law, he will serve at least three years and seven months of the sentence.
The 25-year-old joined the Loudon Police Department in April and lost his job in August when the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office charged him and two other men, Hubert Phillip Elam Jr. and Danny Lunsford, in a string of nearly two dozen burglaries. The other two still await trial.
The burglaries began last year, according to court records, and stretched to as recently as July 25. An informant’s tip led to the arrests, authorities said.
More charges followed in October when Gutt tried to bribe a jailer to let his 17-year-old girlfriend sneak a cell phone into the jail.
The jailer tipped off his supervisor, Sgt. Tim Pierce, and investigators Lt. Jennifer Bledsoe and Lt. Pat Henry. The next time Gutt offered a bribe, the jailer got the conversation on tape. The girlfriend admitted to the plot and to having sex with Gutt, officers said. Investigators charged her as a juvenile.
Gutt pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of aggravated burglary, along with the statutory rape and attempted bribery charges.
Loudon Police Chief James Webb said he has reviewed the department’s hiring procedures and can’t figure what went wrong. Gutt, a former security guard, passed a background check, drug test, polygraph and psychological examination and had racked up 120 hours of training.
He didn’t have a set schedule and filled in whenever the department needed him.
“I don’t have any excuses for how he could slip through the cracks,” the chief said. “There were no red flags. He had absolutely no criminal record. We’ve had 30 to 35 people put through the same process over the years, and we’ve not had any problems with any of them. I just pray between now and the end of my career, that’s the only one that slips through.”
Copyright 2007 Knoxville News-Sentinel