‘I kept my word’: Chester man charged with murdering high school classmate after 2023 reunion
Daryl Beckett phoned a friend in prison to seemingly gloat about the murder of Christopher Gordy in 2023. And in that call, police say, he also insinuated he was the one to pull the trigger.
Hours after two men were ambushed and shot multiple times, one fatally, as they drove home from their Chester High School reunion, one of their former classmates phoned a friend in prison to seemingly gloat about it.
Daryl Beckett, 36, said “life is good” in the October 2023 phone call, made not long after Christopher Gordy, 41, was killed as he drove on I-95 in Upper Chichester Township, according to court documents.
Police said Tuesday that Beckett seemed to insinuate he was the one who pulled the trigger over a decades-old high school grudge.
“I still got it in me, boy,” Beckett told Bryant Foreman, another Chester man serving a life sentence in an unrelated murder. “It’s like muscle memory.”
After two years on the run and named one of the state’s most wanted fugitives by U.S. marshals, Beckett was taken into custody in Pittsburgh late Monday. He remained in custody there, awaiting extradition back to Delaware County.
Beckett was charged with murder, conspiracy, aggravated assault, and related crimes in the shooting of Gordy and another man who had been driving with Gordy at the time of the shooting. Investigators did not identify the surviving victim.
His alleged coconspirator, Ronald Collins, 37, was arrested in 2024 and remains in custody facing similar charges for allegedly driving a car that carried the gunman to the scene of the killing.
Collins’ attorney, Brian Malloy, declined to comment Tuesday.
Investigators say Collins, Beckett, Gordy, and the other victim all attended the same class reunion on the night of the killing at the Waterfall, a banquet hall in Claymont, Del.
During that 2023 prison call made by Beckett, Foreman was incarcerated at the state correctional institute at Rockview, the same prison where court records show Beckett had served part of his sentence for a 2008 attempted murder case.
“I told you before I left, it’s on,” Beckett said in the call, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. “Give me a little time, but it’s on.”
Investigators have not provided a specific motive for the shooting, but said multiple pieces of evidence tie Beckett and Collins to the killing.
Gordy’s Jeep was recorded on surveillance cameras leaving the reunion and driving toward the highway, the affidavit said. Not long after, a Chevrolet Malibu that Collins drove to the reunion was recorded heading in the same direction at a high rate of speed.
Two days after the shooting, Collins was pulled over in that Malibu wearing a bulletproof vest, the affidavit said. He declined to answer questions from police about his whereabouts on the night of the shooting.
An illegally modified Glock handgun allegedly was found inside a hidden compartment in the vehicle. Collins’ DNA was found on the gun, and forensic tests showed gunshot residue was present inside Collins’ car, investigators say.
Data pulled from Collins’ cell phone showed he communicated with Beckett months before the killing, texting him a picture of the two victims, the affidavit said.
Beckett had been released from state prison earlier in 2023, after serving a 14-year sentence in state prison for attempted murder.
It was unclear Tuesday if that earlier case is linked to Gordy’s slaying.
Beckett’s codefendant in that 2008 shooting, Robert Muhammad, was also present at the reunion, investigators said, and parked his car across the street from the Waterfall. Muhammad also communicated with Beckett and Collins multiple times on the night of the killing, according to the affidavit.