IS GILMAN JOCKEYING FOR 1ST DA ASST. DESPITE DISCREPANCIES IN DAUGHTER'S EMBEZZLEMENT CASE?

By Juan Montoya
The jockeying to see who gets the plum assignments inside the Cameron County District Attorney's Office now that Luis Saenz has trashed Chuck Mattingly has begun.
One of the names that keeps being heard is that AD Asst. Peter Gilman – who once ran for DA himself – is looking longingly at the First Assistant position now that Mattingly will be gone.
But there is trouble on that horizon, some say.
Gilman, if you'll remember, is the stepfather of Melinda Gilman Gonzalez, the child-support collection clerk who got arrested and charged with taking between $8,000 and $10,000 in payments by parents under court order. The scheme involved taking payment after 430 p.m. when the computerized system was closed and then giving out handwritten receipts which were never entered in the system.
What raises eyebrows was that when the scheme was discovered, her boss Cameron County District Clerk Aurora De la Garza attempted to keep the matter quiet and handle it in her own special way. She allowed the woman to resign, then allowed Gilman to walk her into the Cameron County Sheriff's Department and had her booked and released on her dad's signature.
To make matters worse, De la Garza is alleged to have been mentioned in a statement by a county employee who implicated her in attempting to prevent investigators from discovering the evidence (the receipt books) by urging them to make the books disappear.
The statements were then kept in the county auditor's possession and until now, have not been made available to the DA's office or the sheriff's investigators.
But even there, there seems to be a peculiar problem.
Why didn't the sheriff's investigators insist on getting the incriminating statement?
"The sheriff investigator who interviewed Gilman Gonzalez was a former classmate who went to high school with her," said a courthouse source. "He didn't withdraw from the investigation when he found out he knew the accused. It was no wonder he didn't probe that much."
This preferred treatment of an accused embezzler who happens to be related to Gilman, a DA's Office employee, is raising eyebrows in the courthouse community and local legal profession.
"Everyone starts jockeying for a position in the new administration," said our source. "But that may prove to be too much baggage for Luis (Saenz) to bear at the very onset of his term as DA. We'll see."
Meanwhile, courthouse observers are wondering whether the auditor's office will be forced to turn over the statement incriminating De la Garza. The DA's Office wrote the counsel for the Cameron County Commissioners Court asking for the document Oct. 12. So far, it is unknown whether they, or the auditors, have complied.