Investigators discovered a handgun Tuesday in a maroon Buick Century driven by Anthony Scarduzio. They are exploring whether the former Camden Parking Authority head used it to shoot a whistle-blower before killing himself Monday with a shotgun.

The whistle-blower, Joseph Bowen, had accused Scarduzio in a lawsuit of attempting to set up a phony brokerage account to launder money and rig bids.

Bowen was beaten and shot Monday about 10 a.m. at Aaron' s Ice Cream, which he leases to a tenant, on Hurffville- Cross Keys Road in Washington Township. Bowen was in critical condition late Tuesday at Cooper Hospital/ University Medical Center in Camden. He was able to talk, according to his attorney, Bill Bowe.

Results of Scarduzio's autopsy were not released. His funeral is Friday.

Authorities were tight-lipped about the shootings' details, but friends and political allies were calling it an attempted murder and suicide.

Friends say Scarduzio was driven by a fear of prison and financial ruin resulting from a state criminal investigation into his activities as the authority's executive director. They believe Scarduzio beat and shot Bowen, then used a shotgun to kill himself.

Authorities had offered Bowen "soup to nuts" police protection, but he declined it.

Adding to the pressure, the parking authority voted Friday to create its own investigative committee to explore deals that Scarduzio had been negotiating on the agency's behalf.

"He must have just flipped out," said family friend Tony Marsella of Washington Township.

Marsella said Scarduzio also was agitated that the parking authority began exploring ways last month to break an agreement to pay him a $130,000 buyout for leaving his job. Scarduzio, of Scotch Drive, Washington Township, already had been paid $65,000. A second payment of that amount was due Jan. 1. Authority officials said they did not know about the state corruption investigation when they made the agreement and were looking for ways to get out of it.

"That really made him upset last week," said Marsella, a former Democratic assemblyman and former chairman of the Gloucester County Democratic Party. "He's gone now. Whatever he did, he paid the ultimate price. He killed himself. I hope for the sake of the wife and children that they honor the contract."

Meanwhile Tuesday, Anthony "Butch" D'Alessandro, whose son discovered Scarduzio's body inside the front door of the elder D'Alessandro's Williamstown house, described the horrific scene.

"He blew half his head off," said D'Alessandro. "There was blood on the ceiling.

"And this whole wall was full of blood," he said, pointing to stains still visible after the room was scrubbed clean early Tuesday.

D'Alessandro said he saw a two-by-four in a police car that he thinks Scarduzio may have used to beat Bowen.

Scarduzio once hired Bowen to do some remodeling at his house, D'Alessandro said.

"He (Bowen) needed the money, and Tony let him work on his house," said D'Alessandro. "He cuts the guy a break, and then the guy rats on him. That ain't right."

Although Medical Examiner Gerald Feigin has completed an autopsy on Scarduzio, he has not issued a cause of death.

"The autopsy is complete," Feigin said, "but sometimes you can't do an autopsy without an investigation. Certain things come up in the autopsy that raise other questions. When they are answered, I will sign the death certificate."

More details emerged Tuesday about the increasingly strained relations between Scarduzio and Bowen, once such good friends that they were pictured in Puerto Rico hoisting beer glasses in a toast. Scarduzio got Bowen his parking authority job in May 1997 as property manager. But the lawsuit Bowen filed in October with fellow employee Thomas Del Rosario, a systems specialist, said things soon went sour.

In 1998, the suit says, Bowen and Del Rosario began noticing irregularities in the collection of meter funds. The next year, Scarduzio asked Bowen to open a stock brokerage account in his name. Scarduzio would then give him cash to deposit, essentially laundering money, the suit claims. Bowen, 50, who lives in Sewell, said he refused. But he said he began to notice a string of other possibly criminal offenses.

The state also was starting to look into parking authority practices. Scarduzio was forced to resign May 31 from the parking authority because of the allegations swirling from the state investigation and lawsuit. Authorities have confirmed that Scarduzio had cooperated in a larger probe of the parking authority. The scope of the investigation and any other targets were not clear, although Scarduzio had spoken to the FBI.

But it was Bowen's lawsuit filed last fall that really riled Scarduzio, who called the suit bogus.

The handgun found Tuesday was discovered after the the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office searched the Buick left at the D'Alessandro house in the 1900 block of Pitman- Downer Road in Williamstown. The car is registered to Scarduzio and his wife, Janet, of the Turnersville section of Washington Township.

Prosecutor Andrew Yurick said in a written statement that investigators were unable to determine immediately if the handgun was used to shoot Bowen. Ballistics tests have been ordered. Yurick would not release the make, model or caliber, saying it would "jeopardize this investigation."

When asked what was left to investigate now that Scarduzio was dead, Emily Hornaday, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Criminal Justice, said, "A lot."

One investigation witness, Warren Plank, who lives next to the ice cream shop, told police that Bowen said Scarduzio attacked him.

Scarduzio had recently threatened Bowen's life through a third man. Hornaday said, however, that the state did not have enough evidence to prosecute Scarduzio for the threat.

But authorities believed Bowen was in enough danger that they offered Bowen protection, including relocation. Bowen declined taking such a drastic step, Hornaday said. Instead, he requested that police drive by his home on Di's Court in Sewell more frequently.

Authorities also met with Scarduzio. "We talked to him and told him we were aware of the threat," Hornaday said. " We took the threat seriously."

She dismissed allegations made by Bowen's attorney, Bowe, that the state should have acted sooner in taking action against Scarduzio. Bowe claimed that a quicker investigation would have spared his client harm.

Even if the state had charged Scarduzio, Hornaday said, he most likely would not have been in jail and could have still reached Bowen. Scarduzio was most likely facing two or more counts of official misconduct, a second-degree crime with a maximum 10 years in prison, being barred from holding a government office for life and a $150,000 fine, Hornaday said.

Also, court papers and police reports turned up an odd arson connected to both Scarduzio and Bowen. On March 18, 1999, someone set fire to a barn on Bowen's property behind the ice cream parlor. Firefighters arrived to find the structure engulfed. Bowen kept equipment and supplies from the ice cream parlor in the barn, according to township Fire Marshal John Spangler. The barn and its contents were destroyed.

"We determined a flammable liquid was poured on the floor," Spangler said.

Investigators found footprints in the ground near the barn and tracked them to a nearby residential development under construction. The footprints ended there, according to Spangler, who added that the arsonist may have had a getaway car in the development. Investigators ruled the fire was arson. The case is open; no arrests have been made, police said.

But Bowen made it a point to note the fire in the lawsuit he filed against Scarduzio and other parking authority officials. Scarduzio called Bowen the day of the fire and said he had seen another parking authority official, Peter McHugh, near the barn that day, the lawsuit states. Bowen reported that to Washington Township Police.

Scarduzio was spreading the rumor, the court papers allege, in an attempt to play McHugh against Bowen. In an interview earlier this year with the Courier-Post, however, Scarduzio said he was only joking with Bowen about seeing McHugh near the fire. Scarduzio instead claimed Bowen started the fire.