Coin collection could be link in slaying of 9/11 hero

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BY JOHN HILDEBRAND
john.hildebrand@newsday.com

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Police are searching for a missing collection of valuable gold and silver coins that could be linked to the killing of a former New York City firefighter from Long Island who was found shot to death two weeks ago in this upscale Phoenix suburb.

Family members say they think stolen items also include high-priced Elvis memorabilia, picked up on a visit to Graceland, including at least one item signed by the King himself.

Scottsdale police say the suspected killer, identified yesterday as Jeffery Lynn Bigham, 56, shot himself in the head and died on Friday as detectives cornered him near a motel where he was staying in San Bernardino, Calif. While police have not announced why they suspect Bigham or whether there is a definite connection between the suspect and the missing coins, they have been told that the victim received repeated calls from an acquaintance in California who had helped install the home safe where the coins were kept.

The victim, Salvatore Princiotta, 43, formerly of Deer Park, had moved to a gated, usually quiet condominium community in north Scottsdale last winter in hopes that dry desert air would ease breathing problems developed while working with rescue crews after the 9/11 attacks.

A close friend, Gus Thomas, 42, of Manhattan, who recently visited Scottsdale, said Princiotta received multiple phone calls from a man named Jeff in California, who hung up when told Princiotta was still asleep. Princiotta told Thomas that the Californian was a nice guy whom he had met at a convention in Las Vegas.

Still, Thomas, recalls a premonition of danger.

"I told him, 'You don't buy a safe from a stranger,'" said Thomas, who owns a diner in the Chelsea district.

Like Thomas, other friends and family members reacted yesterday to the latest twist in the case with expressions of relief mixed with outrage.

"You know, I would really rather that whoever did this was captured alive to pay for what they did," said a next-door Scottsdale neighbor and friend, Matt Greenhaw, 31. "At the same time, I guess justice will be served, one way or the other."

Princiotta's body was found May 14 in his fashionable, two-story condo. Police said he had been dead about two weeks. The body was discovered by a 21-year-old nephew, also named Salvatore, who attends Arizona State University in nearby Tempe, after family members on Long Island became worried that they hadn't heard from the ex-firefighter for awhile.

The nephew quickly noticed that the open safe was empty and that a solitary coin from the collection lay on the floor. Family members told Scottsdale police of the missing collection but did not discuss it publicly until yesterday.

"My son on the very first day noticed that the coins were missing," said the nephew's father, Chuck Princiotta, 53, a builder who lives in Smithtown.

Immediately following the discovery of Princiotta's body, some family members assumed he had died of complications stemming from his lung disorder. And some family members were critical of Scottsdale police for not announcing sooner that the case was a homicide.

Police say, however, that they classified the death as suspicious from the beginning and that decomposition of the body made it more difficult to determine the cause of death.

Said Sgt. Mark Clark, a spokesman for Scottsdale police, "It's very time consuming. We want to do it right for the family."