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Middlesex County Sheriff James DiPaola found dead in an apparent suicide in a Maine hotel

Print Posted by Janet Walsh November 27, 2010 06:40 PM

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By John M. Guilfoil, Andrea Estes, and Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

The embattled sheriff of Middlesex County, James V. DiPaola, was discovered dead today of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in an oceanfront resort in Wells, Maine, according to Wells police amid an ethics investigation of his office and a week after he announced his retirement.

A statement released tonight by the police in Wells, a coastal town in southern Maine, said DiPaola was discovered by hotel workers lying on a bed, with an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

A hotel maid had become concerned when DiPaola failed to leave his room by checkout time and summoned the manager of the Lafayette Resorts on Mile Road.

Wells police said they were called to the hotel about 12:28 p.m. and when they entered the room, they found a note several pages long that DiPaola had left behind, along with a gun.

The Middlesex Sheriff's Office confirmed "the sudden death" of DiPaola, a former Malden police officer and state representative who was first elected sheriff in 1996 and re-elected this month.

"At this time we ask that the family's privacy be respected during this difficult time," the statement reads. "Operations at the Middlesex Sheriff's Office will continue under the direction of Special Sheriff John Granara."

Reaction from top state officials to the news of DiPaola's death was swift.

"I am deeply saddened by the death of Sheriff DiPaola, with whom I had the chance to serve in the House of Representatives," House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said in a statement. "My thoughts and prayers go out to his family."

DiPaola's name had burst into the news in the past week, when the Globe reported that the longtime sheriff had hatched a scheme that would have allowed him to collect a $98,500 pension at the same time he earned a sheriff's salary of $123,000.

After reporters confronted him, DiPaola abandoned his plans to take advantage of the loophole in the pension law and said that, instead, he would resign in January.

Just a day after that Globe report, DiPaola acknowledged that the State Ethics Commission is investigating the Middlesex Sheriff's Office. That probe, he said, had nothing to do with his pension. Instead, ethics investigators are reviewing whether workers in the sheriff's office raised money for his re-election, a practice forbidden by state law.

"When it comes out, I am confident it will find no wrongdoing on my part," the sheriff told the Globe. "Nothing happened under my direction."