North Philly man sentenced to life for killing witness who testified against him
Gerard Gethers, 31, killed Jerry "Spider" White in 2020, in retaliation for White cooperating with police on an earlier case involving Gethers, authorities said.
It took a Montgomery County jury just 30 minutes to convict a North Philadelphia man of first-degree murder Thursday for killing a witness who had testified against him in an earlier shooting case.
Gerard Gethers, 31, was sentenced to life in prison without parole immediately afterward by Montgomery County Judge Gary Silow, who told Gethers that his conduct baffled him.
“Did it bother you that you ruined your mother’s life? Your child’s life?” Silow asked. “You’ve crushed the lives of so many people who care for you.”
Gethers ambushed and killed Jerry “Spider” White, 34, as the older man was standing outside of a tattoo shop in Norristown in November 2020, the jury found. White, a small-time local drug dealer, had cooperated with county detectives investigating the shooting of Rodney Harris, a friend of White’s whom Gethers had allegedly shot in the arm nearly a year earlier.
White identified Gethers as the shooter and signed a statement implicating him. And that, said Deputy District Attorney Thomas McGoldrick, was tantamount to “signing his death warrant.”
“Jerry White is dead because he did the right thing,” McGoldrick told jurors in his closing arguments Thursday. “This murder strikes at the very heart of our justice system. ... Don’t let [Gethers] get away with first-degree murder.”
Gethers’ attorney, Keith Harbison, argued that McGoldrick and his colleagues had built a weak case. There was no forensic evidence linking Gethers to the murder, no gun had been recovered, and White, given his criminal activity, could have been the target of any number of rivals, Harbison said.
McGoldrick rejected that assertion, saying all of the evidence in White’s death led prosecutors directly to Gethers.
“The only person on God’s green earth who wanted Jerry White dead was this guy,” McGoldrick said.
Gethers learned that White had identified him to detectives during his preliminary hearing and was heard on prison calls the next day threatening White, according to transcripts of the calls read in court.
Months later, during a bail hearing, Gethers’ attorney told a judge that the shooting case was built on the word of a single witness — White — and that without him, the case would never make it to trial.
White was killed weeks after Gethers was released on house arrest, and the investigation into Harris’ shooting essentially ended after Gethers was arrested for White’s murder.
Surveillance footage taken from around Norristown showed the shooter wearing clothing nearly identical to items Gethers was seen wearing in earlier photos. The gunman was seen entering and exiting a home owned by one of Gethers’ relatives.
That woman testified in court, after seeing the surveillance footage, that the man depicted at her home was Gethers.