Unlicensed Wis. dealer sold handgun used to kill officer
Thomas Caldwell once told a federal agent that selling guns was an addiction.
Even after being told to stop because he had no license, the Wisconsin man kept peddling firearms, posting more than 200 ads on a controversial website.
One of those guns, a Glock 26 9mm handgun, ended up in the hands of a four-time felon who used it in February to kill Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in a shocking daylight shooting in the heart of the Loop, according to recently filed federal documents.
The records give a rare look at how shadowy gun deals flourish between private owners and over the internet — how easy and lucrative they are. And how lethal they can be.
“I’m not surprised that gun changed hands and came from out of state,” said former Chicago police First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante, Bauer’s childhood friend. “I think they (gun sellers) don’t want to think about that. They are seeing the bottom line, which is money in their hands. If that gun winds up being used to shoot someone, they’re thinking, ‘Well, I didn’t shoot the guy. I didn’t pull the trigger.’ ”
The Chicago Tribune reported in March how the gun — known as a “Baby Glock” for its compact size — made its way from a gun shop near Madison, Wis., to Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago. Now the open and unregulated market that carried it into Chicago has come into sharper focus as federal charges have been filed against Caldwell and a second Wisconsin man, Ron Jones.
Agreed to stop selling guns
In the hours after Bauer’s death, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the Baby Glock to a man who bought it from the gun shop in December 2011, according to federal records reviewed by the Tribune. From there, the investigation led federal agents to Caldwell. But this wasn’t the first time he had appeared on the ATF’s radar, court documents show.
Caldwell first drew the agency’s attention in June 2015 when Milwaukee police found a Glock 29 10 mm pistol while serving a search warrant at a felon’s home during a narcotics investigation. Police ran the gun’s serial number through a national law enforcement database and learned that Caldwell had bought the firearm the day before from a licensed dealer.
Four months later, the ATF conducted what it calls a compliance inspection of the dealer and learned that Caldwell had bought 41 guns from him in a year. The agency also discovered that Caldwell had had no reportable income since 2012.
Sometimes the dealer would have several handguns to sell to Caldwell, according to the ATF. But Caldwell would buy only one of them at a time, every six days, to get around a federal requirement that the dealer report the purchase of two or more firearms by the same buyer within a five-day period, according to court records.
“I didn’t think I was doing it as a business,” Caldwell said during a court hearing last month in Madison while pleading guilty to a federal charge of selling firearms without a license. “I thought it was legal, but it was brought to my attention it was illegal.”
Caldwell, 68, told the ATF he was paid about $21,000 each year in Social Security and disability checks. He bought about 30 to 40 guns a year, spending roughly $2,000 a month on them. He sold the guns he didn’t like through armslist.com — a website that connects buyers and sellers of weapons without requiring registration, proof of identity or background checks.
When the ATF asked Caldwell about the gun seized in Milwaukee, he said he had no record of it in a notebook he kept of his firearm transactions.
By the end of 2015, the ATF served Caldwell with a letter warning him to stop selling guns until he got licensed.
“Mr. Caldwell signed the warning letter, and he told (an ATF agent) he would stop selling guns,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy O’Shea said during the hearing last month. “He didn’t want to be in trouble.”
In 2016, Caldwell filed for bankruptcy. He listed among his assets 47 guns — 24 rifles, 22 handguns and a shotgun — worth a total of $9,300.
Baby Glock reaches Chicago
Caldwell had bought the Baby Glock in March 2015 for about $350 from the man who had purchased it from the gun shop outside Madison. The two belonged to the same gun club. Two years later, Caldwell sold it to a Milwaukee man named Ron Jones — whom Caldwell knew as “Kevin Sweepee” — over armslist.com, according to federal authorities.
The two had done business before, further evidence of the extent of Caldwell’s gun selling.
Caldwell told the ATF that Jones bought at least 15 guns from him over a fiveyear period. Jones was once arrested on felony drug charges, but they were later dropped. Jones told federal agents he spoke by phone with Caldwell about three times a month about gun sales.
The Baby Glock appears to have landed on the streets of Chicago by the summer of 2017, about two months after Caldwell sold it to Jones. Shell casings found at the scene of a Loop shooting on July 10 that year were traced to the Glock.
A man was sitting in a car at Garland Court and Lower Wacker Place — just blocks from where Bauer was shot months later — when he was shot in the side. The man, 33, told police someone in a passing black sedan shot him, but he changed his story and then refused to cooperate, a source said.
No charges were filed, and it’s unclear how the gun got into Chicago.
Meanwhile, Caldwell continued to sell firearms in Wisconsin, and the transactions once again caught the attention of the ATF.
In fall 2017, Madison police confiscated a Taurus 9 mm handgun from a reputed drug trafficker. Police traced it and discovered that Caldwell had bought the gun just two weeks earlier. ATF Special Agent Michael Klemundt, a former Chicago police officer, conducted a background investigation and learned that Caldwell still was not licensed as a firearms dealer.
Caldwell had posted 202 ads for gun sales on armslist.com after getting the warning letter, the ATF found. He also had bought at least 95 handguns and 11 rifles from nearly 60 different sellers during that time. At least 11 firearms recovered during police investigations were traced back to Caldwell between 2004 and 2017, according to court documents.
In December 2017, ATF agents, working undercover as part of their investigation of Caldwell, met him at his Madison home and bought a Walther P99 .40-caliber handgun for $500. The meeting was arranged through armslist.com.
Yet no charges were brought against Caldwell until after Paul Bauer was killed.
‘Like an addiction’
Chicago police officers patrolling Lower Wacker Drive about 2 p.m. on Feb. 13 approached Shomari Legghette. They had questions about a recent shooting in the area and about drug sales there.
Legghette was wearing body armor and carrying the Baby Glock, now outfitted with an extended magazine. He bolted to Upper Wacker Drive and started running southwest toward the Thompson Center, authorities said.
Bauer, fresh from an active shooter training drill and downtown to meet aldermen, was parking his police car at Clark and Lake streets when he heard a description of Legghette over the police radio. Legghette ran past, and Bauer chased him.
Bauer caught up to Legghette at the top of a stairwell outside the Thompson Center, and the two struggled. Legghette stumbled down the stairs, and Bauer either fell or followed him down the stairs to a landing. Legghette drew the Glock and fired seven times, hitting Bauer in the head, neck, chest and forearm, authorities have said.
Other officers quickly arrived, apprehending Legghette and seizing the Glock in his possession, authorities said. Bauer was rushed by ambulance to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Legghette, 45, was charged with first-degree murder, armed violence and possession of body armor as well as weapons and drug offenses. He’s in custody awaiting trial.
The day after the shooting, the ATF tracked down the Glock’s original buyer, who told an agent about selling the gun to Caldwell in March 2015.
The ATF returned to Caldwell’s home in Madison and reviewed about seven or eight ledgers detailing firearms transactions. The agent estimated at least 100 gun sales were mentioned in the ledgers, dating to around 2015. The most recent sale was recorded on Dec. 20, 2017. But Caldwell told the agent he had traded a gun earlier that same day, Feb. 14, and had sold three guns that month.
“Mr. Caldwell described several recent firearm transactions, showed the officer a large inventory of firearms inside his residence, and explained that selling firearms was like an addiction,” O’Shea, the assistant U.S. attorney, said at Caldwell’s court hearing last month.
Caldwell told the ATF he sold the Baby Glock to Jones months earlier. ATF agents executed search warrants on the homes of both Jones and Caldwell in the days after Bauer’s death.
Agents seized 40 guns from Jones’ home in Milwaukee, records show. According to a law enforcement source, agents also found more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition, body armor, a ballistic helmet and drug paraphernalia. The source said several extended pistol magazines, similar to the one found in the Baby Glock used to kill Bauer, also were seized.
Agents at Jones’ home uncovered evidence of a possible connection to the Chicago area, including information about someone with a possible link to Legghette, the source said.
Meanwhile in Madison, agents returned to Caldwell’s home and seized 44 guns, ledgers documenting gun sales, a computer and a phone.
Still, federal agents say Caldwell kept dealing. He sold a pistol in March 2018 for $290, again to an undercover ATF agent through armslist.com. He was charged in August and pleaded guilty the next month to selling firearms without a license, including the handgun that killed Bauer. He declined to comment for this story.
Jones was charged with federal weapons and narcotics violations in Milwaukee. He has pleaded not guilty, and neither he nor his lawyer would comment.
Federal authorities could not say why Caldwell was not charged years earlier when the ATF first had found him dealing a high volume of firearms without a license.
Since the ATF served Caldwell with the warning letter in December 2015, he had made more than $19,000 in cash deposits from arms sales, according to O’Shea, the federal prosecutor. “He understood the process but claims he became frustrated with all the paperwork and decided not to do it,” O’Shea said in court.
Myra Longfield, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Madison, said the ATF did not refer the case to federal prosecutors after Caldwell ignored the letter to cease and desist. Longfield declined to say whether Caldwell was finally charged because of Bauer’s killing, explaining that “it is the policy of this office to not make public internal discussions about prosecutorial decisions.”
She referred further questions to the ATF, whose spokeswoman in its office in St. Paul, Minn., declined to comment.
Mark Jones, a former ATF agent who was not involved in the investigation, said the evidence gathered against Caldwell and Jones highlights the need for regulation and scrutiny of private gun sales.
Jones said people illegally trafficking in firearms know the ATF can’t chase down every violation and that, even when charges result, the consequences often aren’t that tough.
He noted that Caldwell, as is common, pleaded guilty to a single count despite all the guns he admitted to selling. He faces up to five years in prison at his scheduled sentencing next month. “The point is, is it creating enough of a deterrent?” Jones said. “I don’t think so.”
Star 29 retired
Escalante, Bauer’s friend, returned to police headquarters last month to watch the department retire Bauer’s star — No. 29 — that he received on attaining the rank of captain.
Bauer’s wife, Erin, and their daughter, Grace, placed the star in a case with the hundreds of other Chicago police officers fallen over the years as department leaders and rank-andfile officers pledged to never forget Bauer’s service.
Escalante, who once led the department as its interim superintendent, stood quietly in the back. To this day, he has not read a news report about Bauer’s death. He is not ready and knows he hasn’t totally accepted what happened.
“Paul was everything that was good about the Chicago Police Department,” Escalante said later. “He did things the right way. It wasn’t just who he was to the Police Department. It’s who he was to his family and friends and the people who didn’t even know him. In his district. On his block. You weren’t going to find a better person than Paul. And there was no reason for him to have died the way he did.”