By Derrick Nunnally
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee County sheriff’s office filed termination papers Friday accusing a County Jail guard of a sexual relationship with an inmate who pleaded guilty to murder last year.
Cindy Bartoshevich, 31, resigned from her job with the sheriff’s office after the papers were filed, said her attorney, Bridget Boyle.
She had tried to resign Thursday, Boyle said, but the paperwork had been rejected. Then the sheriff’s office filed its termination papers Friday morning that detail a suspected relationship between Bartoshevich and a reputed Latin Kings member in the jail where she was a corrections officer.
Bartoshevich was arrested Nov. 2, accused of repeated sexual contact with an inmate, officials in the sheriff’s office said.
She had been a sheriff’s employee since March 2006 and had worked in the County Jail as a corrections officer the entire time, said spokeswoman Kim Brooks.
The Milwaukee County prosecutors are investigating the case for possible criminal charges, said District Attorney John T. Chisholm.
The termination papers do not say how sheriff’s investigators found out about the suspected situation, but the papers allege that the inmate, Michael Carroll, 21, had sexual contact with the guard multiple times while he was in jail “within the housing pod and once in an attorney cubicle.”
Contact acknowledged
Bartoshevich has acknowledged “inappropriate contact,” but denied “any sexual interaction,” the filing says. It adds that letters from her to Carroll corroborate the inmate’s version.
What she told investigators, according to the filing: The inmate tried to kiss her, tripped her, grabbed her and put his hand down her pants, but she didn’t tell other guards or supervisors.
Also in the filing: She says she used the fake name “Penny Berlin” to mail him letters, receive letters from him at a post office box and sent him $100 in money orders and cashier’s checks.
The termination papers say the actual amount he received is $700.
No time frame is specified for the suspected guard-inmate relationship, except that it began after Carroll was brought into jail on a 2005 murder charge. According to the complaint from the murder case in which he pleaded guilty, Carroll confessed to being the driver in a drive-by shooting that used a gun from “the almighty Latin King nation.”
Awaiting trial
Carroll is among dozens of suspected Latin Kings being prosecuted as gang members in federal court.
Bartoshevich told the sheriff’s investigators “she knew Carroll while growing up in the same neighborhood,” according to the County Personnel Review Board filing.
Carroll was sentenced to one year in the county House of Correction and 10 years’ probation with a 12 1/2 -year term in prison stayed from Circuit Judge William W. Brash III for his admitted role in the drive-by killing. He is still awaiting trial in the Latin Kings prosecution in federal court.
Copyright 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel