Jury hears chilling details from admitted hit man

An admitted hit man provided a federal jury with a chilling account yesterday of how he pumped two bullets into the back of the head of a female government witness and then turned his gun on her adult godson, who had the misfortune of being in her Montgomery County home on the morning the murder-for-hire went down.

"I told her to lay down on the floor," Bryant Phillips said as he recounted the June 25, 2002, execution of Chineta Glanville, a suspected money-launderer for a multimillion-dollar drug ring, who had begun cooperating with authorities.

"I leaned over and shot her in the back of the head twice," Phillips said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice.

At that point, Phillips said, he turned toward Dane King, Glanville's 29-year-old godson, in the Springfield Township home.

"The dude . . . he started screaming and hollering and kicked me in the knee," Phillips said. "I shot him. . . . I shot him until I couldn't shoot no more."

The jury was also shown crime scene photos of the two victims, each sprawled on the floor in pools of their own blood.

Phillips said the murder of Glanville, 50, was ordered and paid for by his cousin, Maurice Phillips, on trial with two codefendants in a multi-count drug-conspiracy case. Maurice Phillips, 38, also faces murder charges that could carry the death sentence.

Authorities have described Maurice Phillips, a North Jersey resident, as a drug kingpin who trafficked in multiple kilos of cocaine, generating more than $30 million in a network that stretched from Texas to New York.

Glanville, described in trial testimony as an accomplished money-launderer, began working with Maurice Phillips after he started dating her niece, Chanell Cunningham, in 1999.

Cunningham, who authorities said became a primary operative for Phillips in the Philadelphia area, has also testified for the prosecution in the trial, which opened Feb. 1 before U.S. District Judge Curtis Joyner.

Both Cunningham and Bryant Phillips have entered plea deals with the government.

Bryant Phillips, who has an extensive criminal arrest record for burglary, robbery, fraud, weapons charges, and statutory rape, said he pleaded guilty to a murder-for-hire charge and agreed to cooperate after being arrested in 2003 for an unrelated federal weapons offense.

Under the terms of his plea deal, he said, the prosecution will recommend a sentence of 112 months for the murders.

Questioned for nearly three hours yesterday by Assistant U.S. Attorney L.C. Wright, Bryant Phillips described how he had grown up in Newark, N.J., and Tennessee, part of an extended family that had roots in both locations.

He said that Maurice Phillips' father was his mother's brother and that as a teenager he had grown close to his cousin and his family.

"We played ball, hung out, talked about females and about life," he said of his time growing up in the Newark area with Maurice Phillips and other members of the family.

Problems with the law resulted in two lengthy prison sentences and brought him in contact with a drug underworld in which, he said, his cousin was an active player.

He described one incident with his cousin at a location in North Jersey where he saw "bundles of money" all over the floor in one room. The money, stacked in $50,000 bundles, was "everywhere," he said.

On another occasion, he told the jury, he went with his cousin to Brooklyn, where they stopped at a hair salon and picked up a duffel bag. Inside the bag, he said, was $780,000 in cash.

Bryant Phillips said that early in June 2002, Maurice Phillips summoned him to New Jersey from Tennessee and said "he had a problem."

There was, he said, "a lady under investigation" who had helped Maurice Phillips launder his drug proceeds.

"She knew how to take illegal money and make it look like legitimate money," Bryant Phillips said his cousin told him.

But, he said, Maurice Phillips now suspected that she was cooperating with authorities.

"He was afraid she would testify and give information about him," Bryant Phillips said. "He wanted to get rid of her. . . . He wanted me to kill her."

Bryant Phillips said he drove up from Tennessee to North Jersey on June 24, 2002, met with his cousin, and was taken to Wyndmoor and shown the home where Glanville lived.

The next day, he said, his cousin gave him a .45-caliber pistol and a Federal Express uniform shirt, hat, and delivery envelope.

Bryant Phillips said he drove from his cousin's home in Roselle, N.J., to Wyndmoor, donned the FedEx clothing, and knocked on the door of Glanville's home.

"A guy came to the door," Bryant Phillips said, describing Dane King as a "chunky kind of guy."

Bryant Phillips said he had a delivery for Chineta Glanville. When King said he would take the package, Phillips said he told him he had to deliver it himself.

He was then led to an office off the garage of the home. When he saw Glanville, he said, he pulled the .45 out from under his FedEx shirt.

"She said, 'I don't have any money,' " Bryant Phillips said.

Then he told her to lie on the floor, and he shot her in the back of the head.

Phillips said that, after gunning down King, he walked back to his car, which he had parked at a nearby supermarket parking lot, and drove back to Tennessee.

He said that, while he had been promised $18,000 for the murder, he was paid only $16,000.

He said his cousin made up the difference by allowing him to pick out clothes and shoes from a high-end clothing store he owned in Atlanta at the time.

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