Piazza killers' accomplice sentenced to time served

THERE ARE SOME things in life that you can't atone for, no matter how hard you try. Playing a role, no matter how small, in a double murder is one of them. Or maybe it isn't.

Katoya Jones will spend the rest of her life wrestling with that moral quandary.

Jones, an accomplice in the 2009 drug robbery that ended in the shooting deaths of Rian Thal and Timothy Gilmore inside a Northern Liberties apartment building, was sentenced yesterday to time served and two years' probation.

The 29-year-old previously pleaded guilty to charges of third-degree murder, robbery, conspiracy and burglary. She spent three years behind bars at the city's Riverside Correctional Facility before being set free last summer on $50,000 unsecured bail.

She also cooperated extensively with prosecutors and helped put her seven co-defendants behind bars, some for life.

Jones, an Army veteran who worked as a biotechnician for a New Jersey firm, fought back tears as she described the misery and guilt that haunts her life.

"I hate waking up . . . I don't feel worthy of anything, even being free," she said in court.

She begged Thal's mother, Sandy Thal, for forgiveness.

Sandy Thal read a brief statement, describing her daughter as a "beautiful young woman with her life ahead of her," one whose smile "lit up a room."

Jones was a longtime friend of Will "Pooh" Hook, the mastermind of a plot to break into Thal's apartment inside the Navona building at the Piazza at Schmidt's, where Hook believed Thal was hiding $500,000 in drug money.

Jones also lived inside the Navona building, and agreed to let three of Hook's associates inside to commit the robbery, in exchange for a $50,000 cut of the loot.

Thal and Gilmore were shot to death in the hallway outside Thal's apartment. Homicide investigators later found about $110,000 and nearly nine pounds of cocaine inside.

Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said the slayings "shook the fabric of this entire city."

Lerner also said that he believed that the trials of Hook and co-mastermind Caesar Holloway would have been more difficult for prosecutors without Jones' help.

Robert Mozenter, Jones' attorney, said she now works at a church, mentoring young people. "Saying 'sorry' is not enough," he said. "You have to do acts that indicate that you are sorry."

Thal's mother told reporters after the sentencing that she wasn't happy with Lerner's decision, but noted there was little she could do about it.

"The really bad guys are gone. They're away," she said.