Man gets up to 25 years for conpiracy to commit a racial killing

Despite saying he wished he could wash away the tattoos he once prized as a white supremacist, former skinhead Thomas Gibison yesterday was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison by a Common Pleas Court judge for conspiring to commit a racial killing more than two decades ago.

Earlier in the year, Gibison, of Wilmington, had been found innocent of killing the black victim, Aaron Wood, 33, in 1989. But yesterday, Judge Teresa Sarmina emphasized that he was still found guilty of "conspiring to kill." He was also convicted of firearms charges, and Sarmina gave him the maximum sentence on both counts.

The June acquittal by a racially mixed jury had left law enforcement officials scratching their heads.

"Beam me up, Scottie," then-prosecutor Roger King had said. Members of Wood's family called it "a travesty."

Sarmina said she sentenced Gibison "based on the seriousness of what you conspired to do."

She added that, though evidence of recent rehabilitation had been presented, "rehabilitation is not the only concern. Another concern is punishment."

Retired Detective Richard Iardella, who sparked the investigation of the case along with his federal agent wife, Dianne, testified yesterday that in a taped conversation, Gibison made threats against him and his family. Those threats had forced him to change his lifestyle and begin carrying a gun wherever he went.

Gibison testified yesterday that he had not always been a radical. He told the court he came from a "loving" and "liberal home." He said that two family deaths turned him into an "angry young man" in adolescence, and that he adopted neo-Nazi and skinhead beliefs for "shock value."

Gibison conspired to kill a black man to earn a webbed tattoo, which gave him bragging rights, according to the prosecution.

Gibison and coconspirator Craig Peterson, who was given immunity, drove from Delaware to North Philadelphia, prosecutors said. They prowled around Girard College looking for a victim, and Gibison spotted Wood coming out from between two parked cars.

The case had gone unsolved for nearly two decades until a spurned girlfriend of Gibison's told law enforcement officials that he bragged about killing a Philadelphia black man.

Carlos Vega, who took over the prosecution for King, refused to comment on the verdict, though he pointed out that in a 26-page letter written by Gibison boasting of his rehabilitation, Gibison never once expressed remorse for the slaying of Wood.

In his remarks, Gibison, hands cuffed in front of him and wearing a pink shirt that hid the tattooed word

radical

on the back of his neck, said that he was relieved by his earlier murder acquittal but that he had "reinvented" himself since the killing.

"I'm ashamed," said Gibison in an emotionless voice. "People can't believe who I was. . . . I am not a lifelong neo-Nazi. I'm embarrassed by it. . . . I'm ashamed of that entire philosophy. I rejected the tattoos."

He also said, "I take full responsibility for everything."

After the sentencing, Iardella said that Gibison had just hit the lottery.

"I really think it's a travesty," he said.

Wood's family members agreed.

His uncle, Arnold Wynn, put it this way: "He got away with murder."