About 50 items, including many 17th century pewter utensils and oak, beech and teakwood furnishings, were taken in the burglary of the house. A week later, on Valentine's Day, the trio was caught red-handed burglarizing a Bristol Borough coffee shop - they'd hauled off a 400-pound safe holding $120 cash.
Reported by girlfriends, the three confessed and disclosed where they dumped the Penn goods.
Divers recovered many of the discarded artifacts, but about a third of the items are still missing and feared lost in the deep murky waters, perhaps forever, a museum spokesman said yesterday.
Now facing federal prison terms, the defendants' tactic of ditching the historical booty in a river could be their worst nightmare, if Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman has his way.
Wisen has a lengthy criminal record that goes back to age 15 when he was fined $300 for brutalizing a duck with a stick.
As a result, Wisen faces more prison time than his two pals - about 30 to 37 months - under federal sentencing guidelines.
Cline and Dancheck's guidelines call for ten to 16 months in prison for the Penn burglary.
But the prosecutor says the guidelines never took into consideration the greed-driven desecration of the kind they committed at the home of the commonwealth's founding father, or their dumping of treasured objects.
Goldman said yesterday that he'll ask U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz to impose sentences above the guideline range for all three defendants.
Dancheck, who is free on bail, is to be sentenced July 23.
Wisen and Cline, who have been in jail since their arrests, are set to appear in court Sept. 17.
