Tag: East Falls

He called himself “the Beast,” and he killed six people in six months.

Several of his victims were retail store workers who gave up cash or goods during robberies, and he decided to shoot them anyway. One of the victims was his mother — he shot her at her office because he wanted the payout from her life insurance policy.

On Tuesday, Keith Gibson, 44, was delivered a measure of accountability for his killing spree — one of the worst in recent city history — when a jury convicted him of four counts of first-degree murder and related crimes for the killings he committed in the city in 2021.

He was immediately ordered to serve four consecutive life sentences in prison. That’s on top of the seven life sentences he had already been handed for two murders and a string of robberies he committed in Delaware.

The case attracted attention when the crimes happened five years ago, in part because some of Gibson’s targets were compliant and effectively defenseless when he shot them. In one murder, at a Dunkin’ store in Fairhill, surveillance video showed an employee speaking with Gibson for several minutes and handing him cash before he shot her in the head and left her for dead.

Assistant District Attorneys Jeffrey Hojnowski and Katie Wood called Gibson’s crimes despicable.

“These were regular, ordinary people, fellow Philadelphians going about their business, trying to work, and they were gunned down callously, needlessly,” Hojnowski said. “This was never about the money. This is about control. This is about dominance.”

The case also stood out because of questions about why Gibson had been free to kill in the first place. In April 2021, he was jailed in Delaware for a probation violation, and a probation officer told a judge that police considered Gibson a suspect in his mother’s killing. But the judge ordered Gibson released, and in the weeks after, he went on to kill three more people.

The weeklong trial that led to his conviction in Philadelphia relied heavily on surveillance video and ballistics evidence. Testing showed that Gibson had used the same revolver in every crime, and officers in Wilmington found the gun as they arrested him for robbing a Rite Aid store.

A former friend, Amanda Masteller, took the stand and testified that Gibson, who she said referred to himself as “the Beast,” carried that revolver everywhere — including into her house and around her children when she let him stay in a spare room from time to time.

She wanted to tell him to stop coming over, she said, but the gun and his aggressive demeanor left her afraid of what might happen if she did so.

“I was petrified of this man,” she said.

Gibson’s crimes

Gibson’s killing spree began Jan. 28, 2021, at Al-Madinah Traders store in Germantown. There, he rummaged through the shop and stole several watches. He forced employees Roy Caban and Eric Flores into a back room, where he shot Flores in the head and Caban in the back as he tried to flee.

The following week, Gibson set out after his own mother.

Christine Gibson, 54, told family members she was afraid of her son and wanted him to move out of her North Philadelphia home. And, prosecutors said, she had made plans to remove him as the beneficiary of her life insurance policy.

On the morning of Feb. 8, Keith Gibson accompanied her to the United Peers Community Center in East Falls, where she worked as the director of a mental health counseling program. Once inside, he took her to a small office room in the rear of the building and shot her in the back of the head. Her body was found two days later.

Soon after, probation officials in Delaware sought to have Gibson held in jail, filing paperwork saying he was a suspect in his mother’s killing and that violated the terms of his probation from a 2010 manslaughter conviction.

But Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla declined to extend Gibson’s time in custody. He was released in late April.

A few weeks later, in late May, Gibson robbed an AT&T store in Elsmere, Del., of cash and phones, and shot and killed the store attendant before stealing her car.

And in early June, his crimes continued in Philadelphia.

Surveillance video played at trial showed Gibson wandering the city on foot before dawn on June 5. After leaving his house on the 2700 block of North Croskey Street at 4:25 a.m., evidence showed, Gibson walked about a mile and a half to the Dunkin’ at Fifth Street and Lehigh Avenue.

Christine Lugo was unlocking the store to start her shift when Gibson walked over to her with his gun and shoved her inside.

Cameras from inside the store captured the lengthy encounter. Lugo did not appear to panic, and was not aggressive toward Gibson. Instead, she could be seen shrugging at times and showing Gibson her wallet, as if to suggest she didn’t have anything for him to take.

Eventually, she sat down on a chair in a closet-size office and gave Gibson about $300 from the cash register trays.

Gibson then glanced at his watch, shot Lugo in the head, and walked out.

Later that day, he went to Wilmington, where he shot and killed Ronald Wright, 42, during a robbery.

His string of crimes began to unravel there three days later, when he robbed a Wilmington Rite Aid and stole a bag of cash — with a tracking device inside. Police quickly arrested him with a revolver behind a rowhouse. Ballistics tests later showed the same gun had been used at Al-Madinah Traders and in the killings of Gibson and Lugo.

Tips from the public identifying him in surveillance footage then bolstered the investigation. After Lugo was killed, police released some footage from the incident to try to identify a suspect. Masteller — his former friend from Delaware — said she saw it and called to tell police the man in the video was Gibson.

Gibson’s attorneys, Jonathan Strange and Brian Johnson of the Defender Association, said homicide detectives rushed to tie Gibson to other crimes as a means of closing old, unsolved cases. They failed to collect or test certain evidence, Johnson said, including surveillance video and DNA in some of the cases.

“The police had to take the easy way out,” he said.

Following his convictions, Gibson, in a lengthy ramble, said he was not happy with his legal representation and intended to appeal his convictions. He was not guilty, he said. And he only briefly addressed his victims’ families, saying: “I’m extremely sorry for your loss.”

It brought no comfort to the loved ones of his victims who had filled the courtroom throughout the trial.

Lugo’s children, Frances Rodriguez and Christian Lugo, said the disturbing video of their mother’s death will remain etched in their memories. Still, as prosecutors played it several times, they stayed to watch.

“I didn’t want my mom to be alone,” said Rodriguez, 27. “She already had to experience it alone already.”

Lugo, originally from Massachusetts, had a vibrant laugh and believed fiercely in giving people second chances, they said. She had two children and three grandchildren.

Also in the courtroom Tuesday were members of Gibson’s family, who had spent years praying he would be held accountable for killing his mother.

David Thornton, 68, said his nephew stole the golden years of his sister’s life.

Christine Gibson overcame years of addiction, he said, and went on to earn a master’s in sociology from Widener, bought a house in Philly, and was working a job she loved. She was strong, outgoing, and full of joy.

She had told Thornton she was afraid of her son, he said, but did not want to call the police.

“She’d say, ‘That’s my son,’” Thornton said. “That was her only child.”

They never imagined it would come to this.

“Some things,” he said, “are not meant to be understood.”