Final guilty plea in Piazza at Schmidts murder case

Almost four years after a double murder cast a pall over the opening of the Piazza at Schmidts complex in Northern Liberties, a final suspect has pleaded guilty.

Caesar Holloway, 37, pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of third-degree murder and two counts of robbery and conspiracy involving the June 27, 2009, botched holdup. Party planner Rian Thal, 34, and Timothy Gilmore, 40, a friend and an Ohio-based long-distance trucker, were shot to death in the hall outside Thal's seventh-floor Navona apartment.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart tentatively set sentencing for July 19.

Defense attorney Donald Chisholm II said Holloway did not plead guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors, although he said Holloway would not face the possibility of a life-prison term.

Under Pennsylvania law, third-degree murder carries a sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison but two third-degree convictions may result in a life term without parole.

Holloway was one of the eight people sought in the Piazza shooting but Holloway disappeared and was not arrested until a year after his seven codefendants.

Four pleaded guilty before jury selection began in the trial in November 2011. On Dec. 1, 2011, a jury found three men - Will "Pooh" Hook, 44; Edward Daniels, 45; and Antonio Wright, 32 - guilty of first-degree murder and they were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Though not one of the gunmen who shot and killed Thal and Gilmore, Holloway was identified at trial as the right-hand man of the mastermind, Hook, and the person who drove gunman Wright to the Piazza for what turned into a deadly robbery.

According to trial testimony, Thal and Gilmore were both involved in the drug trade and Gilmore had just arrived from Texas with about 11 kilograms of cocaine from Mexico.

As word circulated on the street that Thal had large amounts of cocaine and cash in her apartment, witnesses said Hook and his associates planned to rob them.

When the three gunmen confronted Thal and Gilmore outside her apartment, the scheme went awry. Gilmore resisted and he and Thal were shot and killed. The gunmen fled without the cash and drugs they came for.

Police said more than $100,000 in cash and 8.5 pounds of cocaine were later found in Thal's apartment.