JACKSONVILLE (AP) - An intern at a North Carolina district attorney's office was arrested Friday after investigators said he offered to sell confidential documents in a high-profile case of a slain pregnant Marine for an "astronomical" fee to an undercover agent.
Robert Paul Sharpe, 33, of Jacksonville was charged with embezzlement and misdemeanor larceny for taking files in the murder case against Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean, who is accused of killing Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach and burying her burned body in his backyard.
Sharpe is accused of taking investigative files, law enforcement reports and other written and electronic documents while working in the office of Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson.
Sheriff Ed Brown said Sharpe offered the documents to a sheriff's deputy posing as a reporter for a news magazine and asked for an astronomical amount of money. He declined to specify the dollar amount.
Sharpe was arrested Friday around 2 a.m. outside Hudson's office with about a dozen expandable brown folders and several CDs, investigators said. Sheriff's office deputies searched his car and house but didn't find additional copies of the file. He began his internship in May.
Hudson and Brown said the case wasn't in jeopardy.
Sharpe was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond and did not return repeated calls for comment Friday. Sharpe is senior studying political science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, college spokeswoman Dana Fischetti said.
Lauterbach, 20, of Vandalia, Ohio, was eight months pregnant when she disappeared in December. Her burned remains, and those of her unborn child, were found in January in a shallow grave in the backyard of Laurean's home near Camp Lejeune, a sprawling military base on the North Carolina coast.
Laurean, who Lauterbach had accused of rape, fled to Mexico when investigators began questioning him in her disappearance. He was arrested there in April and is awaiting extradition. He has been charged with first-degree murder but cannot face the death penalty under an agreement with Mexican authorities.
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