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Posted: Tuesday, 09 February 2010 8:40AM
The candidate, the party and the case of the missing mink
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CHICAGO (STMW) -- The Sun-Times is reporting pawn shop owner Scott Lee Cohen's election-night party at the Palmer House Hilton had some unexpected guests -- Chicago Police -- who arrived within an hour after Cohen gave his victory speech in the Democratic lieutenant governor's race. Police weren't responding to anything involving steroids or a domestic dispute -- topics that led to Cohen withdrawing Sunday night as Gov. Quinn's running mate.
Instead, police came because of a missing full-length woman's mink coat valued at an estimated $5,000.
When Cohen aides "saw I was calling police, they asked me, 'Please don't do that. It's going to cause negative press,'" said Cecili Tomlin, a Cook County medical examiner's autopsy technician who was at the party with a friend.
The coat check, Tomlin explained, had closed at 10 p.m. last Tuesday, so she was forced to move her mink inside the hotel's Empire Room.
Tomlin, 35, briefly left the room and returned to find the coat missing. A police report states officers viewed a videotape and canvassed the hotel but couldn't find the coat.
Tomlin said Monday she's aggravated not only because the coat remains missing but because she felt hotel staff and Cohen workers weren't taking her seriously. She also was perturbed by an offer from Cohen's brother, Randy, to sell her a mink coat from a Cohen-owned pawn shop.
"I'm not sure she really had a coat there, but I offered to take care of her because I felt bad," Randy Cohen said. "I offered her a coat at less than cost. For her, I would have charged $500 to $600 for a mink coat."
A Palmer House executive didn't return a telephone call seeking comment.
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Sun-Times Media Wire Chicago Sun-Times 2010. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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