Bucks jury convicts man of murder, rape, kidnapping

A Bucks County jury yesterday convicted Omar Sharif Cash of all 19 counts against him in the kidnapping of a Philadelphia couple, the execution of the boyfriend and the multiple rapes of the girlfriend.

The six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for about 6 1/2 hours over two days. Cash, 28, of Kensington, showed no emotion when the jury foreman read "guilty" after "guilty" verdicts.

The jury this morning will hear arguments in the trial's penalty phase and will determine if Cash gets life in prison or the death penalty.

Cash killed Edgar Rosas-Gutierrez, 32, with a shot to the back of his head about 4:25 a.m. May 11, 2008, near a ramp from Route 1 onto Street Road in Bensalem.

The rape victim, a 43-year-old Brazilian woman, teared up as she sat in the front of the courtroom. She did not comment afterward.

Cash, who the woman said drove away "singing and dancing" after the murder, did not say anything to reporters as he was led away from the courtroom.

His family and friends declined comment.

Marc Furber, Bucks County chief deputy district attorney, said he was "very pleased."

Defense attorney Michael Goodwin said the defense would present family members and a psychologist in the penalty phase.

Cash also faces a murder trial in Philadelphia in the April 2008 slaying of Muliek Brown, 19, who was shot in the back of the head at a car wash on Frankford Avenue near Castor.

Philadelphia prosecutors will also be seeking the death penalty in that case.

During the nearly two-week Bucks County trial, the rape victim tearfully testified that about 3:30 a.m. May 11, 2008, she and her boyfriend got into his car in the back of Jalapeño Joe's nightclub on Castor Avenue near Wyoming.

Cash snuck into the back seat and put a gun to her boyfriend's head and forced him to drive. He then ordered her to get into the back seat where he pushed her to perform oral sex on him, and then raped her at gunpoint.

On the ramp in Bensalem, Cash dragged Rosas-Gutierrez out of the car. The two walked up an embankment and the girlfriend heard a gunshot. Cash came back to the car alone.

Cash then raped her two more times - on the hood of the car in a parking lot, and then in a Comfort Inn in Lawrenceville, N.J. Afterward, the woman was able to escape and screamed to the hotel clerk to call 9-1-1. Cash was arrested in New York the next day.

Cash claimed in his testimony that he met the Brazilian woman at the Comfort Inn because a man he knew set her up to be his prostitute. He claimed they had consensual sex, and that she then robbed him.