By Steve Schmadeke
Tribune reporter
February 25, 2014
Anthony Bergamino Jr.
(Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune)
A real estate lawyer arrested on charges he sexually assaulted a 24-year-old woman in her upscale Near North Side hotel room smeared his hands with lip balm as he was being booked by police in an attempt to thwart the 2012 investigation, prosecutors said Tuesday as his trial began.
Anthony Bergamino Jr, now 51, was arrested near the alleged victim’s room at the W Chicago Lakeshore Hotel at 644 N. Lake Shore Dr., moments after she saw him in the hallway and identified him as her attacker, according to testimony.
At the Near North District police station, investigators handcuffed one of Bergamino’s hands to a wall and placed a tube of lip balm found in his pocket on the bench next to him, Officer Willie Peoples testified.
Peoples said he began filling out paperwork from the arrest when he noticed that Bergamino had covered his hands with lip balm.
“His hands were shined up like a glazed donut,” Peoples testified. “I smelled (lip balm).”
Cook County prosecutors implied Bergamino took the action to taint potential DNA evidence on his hand.
In her opening statement, Assistant State’s Attorney Tracy Senica told jurors that rapists come from all walks of life.
“Stranger-danger rapists are not only lurking in alleys wearing trench coats,” she said as Bergamino listened while dressed in a gray suit. “Sometimes they wear suits and ties and trendy glasses. Sometimes they hang around five-star hotels.”
Prosecutors allege that Bergamino entered the woman’s 31st floor hotel room early in the morning on Aug. 7, 2012, shortly after she left it propped open by extending the lock. She was expecting a male friend to visit.
But Bergamino’s attorney, Juliet Sorensen, told jurors her client met the woman as he was walking back to his apartment across the street from her hotel as she was returning to the hotel from dinner at a Rush Street steakhouse.