Sentencing postponed for woman in Piazza double murder

Monday's sentencing of Katoya Jones for her role in the 2009 Piazza at Schmidts double murder was postponed to Jan. 19 to give lawyers more time to prepare.

Jones, 27, was to have been sentenced by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner on her guilty plea to two counts of third-degree murder in the June 27, 2009, slayings of Rian Thal and Timothy Gilmore at the new, upscale complex in Northern Liberties.

Jones, a pharmaceutical-manufacturing worker, admitted letting the shooters into the security-coded Navona building, where she lived five floors below Thal's unit.

Jones testified she believed she would get a cut of what her friend Will "Pooh" Hook told her was a stash of a half-million in cash and multiple kilograms of cocaine in Thal's apartment.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Thal, 34, an event planner, and Gilmore, 40, were active in the city's drug trade and that her apartment was being used to distribute a load of Mexican cocaine that Gilmore, an Ohio-based long-distance trucker, had just hauled in from a Texas supplier.

Jones was a key prosecution witness in the trial of Hook, 43, and Piazza gunmen Edward Daniels, 44, and Antonio Wright, 30.

Hook - also known as Keith Epps - Daniels, and Wright were found guilty by the jury Thursday of second-degree murder. Each was sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms by Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart.

In Pennsylvania, each count of third-degree murder carries a prison sentence of 20 to 40 years, but Jones' sentence will depend on the recommendation by Assistant District Attorneys Carlos Vega and Jennifer Selber.

Three others among the eight charged in the killings pleaded guilty on the first day of jury selection on Nov. 7: Langdon Scott, 28, who prosecutors say backed out and left the Piazza before the shootings; and Robert Keith, 30, who joined Hook in burglarizing the wrong Navona apartment in the predawn hours of June 27, 2009. Minehart will sentence them Jan. 4.

The third gunman, Donnell Murchison, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder to escape the possibility of a death sentence. He was sentenced that same day to two consecutive life prison terms without parole.

An eighth person, arrested a year after the shootings, will be tried later.