State prosecutors are looking for Mayor Sheila Dixon's fur coats and have been seeking information on gifts she received from people doing business with the city, new lines of inquiry in the probe of City Hall contracts involving her friends.
On the same day that investigators from the state prosecutor's office raided Dixon's home, they called the owner of a fur coat company in Timonium to ask whether he was storing Dixon's two fur coats this year, as he had in the past.
Dixon refused to answer questions about the investigation yesterday. At one point, after a supermarket ribbon-cutting, she was whisked away by staff to a vehicle that sped away from reporters seeking comment about the two-year-old probe.
Prosecutors spent seven hours searching Dixon's home Tuesday and emerged carrying boxes and other items. They have repeatedly declined to comment on what they were looking for or what they removed from Dixon's home.
Some news reports indicated that they were looking for a fur coat in the home, but it appears they were searching for it elsewhere.
On the day of the raid, investigators called Aumann Furs in Timonium to ask if the 104-year-old family-owned company was storing the mayor's furs, the store's owner said yesterday.
Eric Aumann said he told prosecutors that his business stored two of Dixon's furs last summer but that the mayor did not return this spring with her full-length black mink coat and Persian lamb waist-length jacket. He valued the mink at about $5,000 and the Persian jacket at $2,500. He said his company stores about 4,000 coats during the warm months for people who want to prevent them from being damaged by humidity.
"They did call asking if I had them or not," Aumann said of state prosecutors. "I've had them in the past."
Dixon's attorney, Dale P. Kelberman, and her spokesman, Sterling Clifford, declined to answer questions about whether the mayor had ever received a fur coat as a gift or whether prosecutors had sought one during their search of her home. Asked about fur coats at a news conference Wednesday, Dixon said, "I own several," but she declined to discuss the matter further.
Deputy State Prosecutor Thomas M. McDonough would not answer questions about Dixon and said his office does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
The search for the fur coats is the first indication that state prosecutors are probing into possible gifts, according to a source familiar with the state investigation. Five years ago federal investigators followed a similar avenue.
