Handyman admits killing Nutter neighbor
A handyman and amateur artist with a history of drug addiction pleaded guilty Wednesday to bludgeoning to death a neighbor of Mayor Nutter.
A handyman and amateur artist with a history of drug addiction pleaded guilty Wednesday to bludgeoning to death a neighbor of Mayor Nutter.
Edward Gause, 45, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the Nov. 5, 2010, slaying of Robert Lancaster Sr., who had hired Gause to work on his Wynnefield house.
Gause's plea deal with prosecutors resulted in his being sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison.
"I'd like to apologize for my actions to his family," he said to Lancaster's son Robert Jr. and sister Carole Pegrem. "I'm sorry it ended like this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Common Pleas Court Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi referred to the elder Lancaster's decades of community work: counseling gang members, serving as a committeeman, and employing addicts such as Gause to do maintenance on his house and properties.
"This was a good being in the world, which we need more of, but you snuffed his life out," DeFino-Nastasi said.
Lancaster, 76, was found dead in bed in his house in the 2300 block of North 50th Street. He had been beaten about the head.
According to Assistant District Attorney William Davis, there were no witnesses to the crime and no evidence except a receipt for art supplies from a store at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue.
That receipt led Homicide Detective Timothy Scally to the store's security camera and the identification of Gause as the man who bought the supplies.
Davis said detectives found some of Gause's clothing in Lancaster's house, and a trace of Gause's cellphone use placed him where Lancaster's stolen truck was found and at service stations where someone tried to use Lancaster's stolen ATM card.
Gause, a native of Maryland, went on the lam but was arrested in June 2011 at an Upper Darby shelter and food kitchen.
Defense attorney Fred Goodman said Gause was extremely remorseful. Goodman said Gause had been sober for some time before the crime, but then again began using crack cocaine. He had become estranged from his family and homeless, and, desperate for money for his drug habit, decided to rob Lancaster, Goodman said.
Goodman said Gause was also angry at Lancaster about a pay dispute for work he did.
Robert Lancaster Jr. - like his father a contractor - told Gause in a victim-impact statement that pay disputes were common in construction work and were usually resolved.
"My father meant this defendant no harm," Lancaster added. "He extended an olive branch to him."
Pegrem said that her brother was the oldest of eight children and that "after Mom and Dad died, he was our dad. When this tragedy happened, we never got over it."
