New trial halted in Main Line restaurant killing

A state appeals court on Thursday halted new trial preparations for a former Main Line chef currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his restaurant business partner.

A lower appellate court erred last year in deciding that the verdict in Guy Angelo Sileo Jr.'s case was tainted because jurors had not received adequate instructions on how to judge his alibi, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled.

"There is no reasonable probability . . . that the trial counsel's failure to request alibi instruction would have altered the outcome of trial," the court's judges wrote.

Montgomery County prosecutors welcomed their appellate victory, 10 years after the initial decision in one of its highest-profile cases to date.

"Guy Sileo was fairly and justly committed of first-degree murder," said Assistant District Attorney Robert Falin, who oversaw the appeal. "With this decision, he will continue to spend his life in prison."

A jury convicted Sileo, 44, formerly of Nether Providence, Delaware County, of murder in 2001 after a blockbuster trial that gained nationwide attention.

Then-District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. alleged that the chef fatally shot his business partner James Webb on Dec. 22, 1996, during a dispute over the crumbling finances of the General Wayne Inn, the restaurant they owned in Lower Merion.

Prosecutors contended that Sileo was under pressure to repay a loan and killed Webb to collect on a life insurance policy taken out on the business that named Sileo as its beneficiary.

Sileo maintained, however, that he had been at a bar at the time the shooting took place and argued that his girlfriend Felicia Moyse - an restaurant employee - confessed to him that she had killed Webb. She committed suicide before his case went to trial.

Since his conviction, the former chef has launched a handful of appeals claiming his trial attorneys provided an inadequate defense on various grounds.

Last year, a three-judge Superior Court panel agreed that his lawyers should have asked the judge to instruct jurors on how to weigh their client's alibi in making their decision. The panel vacated his sentence and ordered Sileo be granted a new trial.

But Wednesday's opinion by a larger Superior Court panel put a stop to that process - at least temporarily.

Sileo's whereabouts during Webb's slaying were not clear from testimony given at trial, the judges found. No witnesses were able to verify his story and many contradicted it.

The state's "overwhelming evidence" against the chef - including his lying about owning a gun and knowledge of details of the murder that investigators had never publicly released - supported his conviction whether or not special alibi instructions should have been sought, the appellate court said in its ruling.

Sileo could still appeal that decision, or launch another appeal on new grounds in federal court, said Falin, the assistant prosecutor. Sileo's appellate attorney Jules Epstein did not return calls for comment Wednesday.

For now, though, the one-time chef remains incarcerated at a state prison in Somerset.