Six young men charged with murder sat whispering and glancing around the courtroom. Where was the guy who led them to attack, now that they faced life in prison?
Keith Convey was bargaining with prosecutors. Just before jury selection began Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and conspiracy in the beating death of a boy he had never met before - 16-year-old Eddie Polec.Convey also agreed to testify against his buddies.
The sudden about-face was a jolt to the defendants, who contend - as Convey had until now - that Polec had died in a boyish rumble gone wrong.
But prosecutor Joseph Casey read a statement in which Convey, the grandson of a retired Philadelphia police officer, "implicated himself and others in the beating death with a baseball bat of Edward Polec."
Convey, 18, admitted striking the first blow with a taped Louisville slugger that felled Polec, Casey said.
He also landed the first blow in the trial of his friends, who are charged with first-degree murder and related offenses in Polec's November 1994 beating on the steps of a Philadelphia church. Polec, who had been an altar boy at the church, died the next day.
Convey will testify against Nicholas Pinero, Dewan Alexander, Bou Khathavong, Carlo Johnson, Thomas Crook and Anthony Rienzi, ages 17 to 20. Instead of the possible life sentence he had faced, Convey will get between five and 20 years in prison.
Jury selection resumes Thursday.
The randomness and brutality of the killing, as well as the youth and middle-class backgrounds of Polec and the accused, jolted the relative tranquility of neighborly Northeast Philadelphia and its adjoining suburbs.
"It was like a loss of innocence," said Mary Ellen Douglas, a friend of the Polec family. "The kids never heard of anything like this around here before."
The crime also touched off a furor over the city's emergency response system. Radio dispatchers rudely dismissed calls from witnesses frantically begging for help, and waited more than 40 minutes before alerting a patrol car. Three dispatchers were fired but then rehired with back pay.