Witness: Before firebombing, Savage vowed to ‘kill all the … rats

Hours before his mother, young son, and four other relatives were killed in an October 2004 firebombing in North Philadelphia, Eugene "Twin" Coleman unexpectedly encountered the man prosecutors say ordered their deaths.

Coleman had been waiting in a holding cell at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia when U.S. marshals escorted his former friend, accused drug kingpin Kaboni Savage, to a neighboring cell, Coleman told a federal jury Tuesday morning.

Savage knew that Coleman had become an FBI cooperator, and knew Coleman was within earshot when he began ranting to another prisoner about snitches.

"He's a rat, his mother, all of them," Savage said, according to Coleman. "Kill all the [expletive] rats."

Minutes later, the men were waiting with other inmates in a tunnel when, Coleman said, he glanced back at Savage.

"Then Kaboni grinned at me, looked, and just went like this," he told jurors as he slid a finger across his neck.

Coleman, 43, recounted the encounter during his second day on the witness stand in the murder and racketeering trial of Savage and three others.

The day after that encounter, at dawn, two men torched the North Sixth Street rowhouse where Coleman's family lived, killing his mother, Marcella; his cousin Tameka Nash; and four children, including Coleman's 15-month-old son, Damir Jenkins.

Authorities have called it the most vicious example of witness retaliation in the city's history.

Their deaths are among 12 murders prosecutors say Savage orchestrated or carried out during a reign as one of city's most vicious drug lords.

Already serving 30 years in prison for drug trafficking, Savage has pleaded not guilty to the murders, with his lawyers suggesting he lacked the means or authority to carry out the bombing.

Coleman was one of the most significant witnesses against Savage and three others since their trial began last month before U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick.

His testimony about the threats marked the first time he had publicly discussed it. But his two days on the stand have also given the jury a window into the culture of the drug trade, showing how a beloved insider became marked for death.

A stout, soft-spoken man with a shaved head and glinting left earring, Coleman described how he faithfully served Savage as he rose from street dealer to a multi-kilo drug baron.

Coleman spent nearly every day with Savage, he said. Much time was devoted to preparing the products or stocking corner dealers with cocaine or "wet," a smokable leaf soaked with PCP.

But he also shuttled Savage's mother to the grocery store, took his younger sister, Kidada, on outings to Great Adventure and Dorney Park, and knew everyone's favorite sandwich. Jurors saw a half-dozen photos of a smiling Coleman posing with Savage or Savage's girls, including a newborn so tiny Coleman had to hold her because Savage was afraid to.

"We was like a family, like the little black Mafia," he told Assistant U.S. Attorney David Troyer. "We had our own little thing."

And when Savage allegedly ordered an enforcer to execute a dealer in Coleman's Palmetto Street apartment, Coleman said he dutifully helped conceal the hit.

He recalled wrapping the victim, Tyrone Toliver, in green garbage bags, hauling him to a car, and abandoning the car on a darkened block. Then Coleman went back and sanded and bleached away the bloodstains in the floor.

That murder, and its aftermath, became his undoing, Coleman said. The next month, FBI agents raided the Palmetto Street unit and Savage's Darien Street home. Coleman and the now-deceased enforcer, Kareem Bluntly, were charged in Toliver's murder, and the FBI pressed Coleman to cooperate.

"I was tired, and I had had enough," he told Savage's lawyer, Christian Hoey. (The deal he struck led to a 42-month prison term, a decade of supervised release, and a new identity through the witness protection program, far less than the 20-plus years he faced for his role in the murder, Hoey noted.)

That September, Savage's sister, Kidada, sent Coleman a letter in prison, reminding him that they were family. The phrase "Death Before Dishonor" was typed at the bottom - with "to your family!" scrawled in parentheses.

"That was a message," Coleman insisted angrily.

For much of his testimony, he avoided looking at Savage or the others, and they kept their eyes buried on the defense table.

He struggled only when Troyer displayed photos of the firebombing victims on large-screen televisions in the courtroom. As he finished and the judge sent the jury to a break, Coleman climbed from the stand, walked behind a television, and cried.