Pastor wanted colleague, judge killed, police say

A former youth pastor at a Chester County mega-church who impregnated a teenage girl has been accused of attempting to hire an inmate at a state prison were he was serving time to murder the head pastor at the church where he served and the judge who had sentenced him.

Jacob Matthew Malone was charged by State Police on Tuesday with attempted murder, criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated assault, and terroristic threats, in a criminal complaint filed at a District Court in Somerset, where the alleged attempt to hire the “hit man” was made.

Malone allegedly offered a fellow inmate $5,000 to kill the pastor at the church where he worked in 2015, and who reported his affair with the

teenager girl to police after she gave birth to his child. There would be more money if the inmate killed the judge in his case, according to the complaint.

Malone, 37, of Reading is now incarcerated at the State Correctional Institute Phoenix in Collegeville, Montgomery County, according to court documents. It was unclear whether he had yet been arraigned on the attempted murder charges. A preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Kenneth Johnson of Somerset has not been set.

He had been sentenced to serve a prison term of three to six years after pleading guilty to charges of corruption of minors, institutional sexual assault and endangering the welfare of children. An earlier sentence of two to four years was rejected as being too lenient given the circumstances of the case — that he had groomed the young woman from her early teens and began having sex with her while she lived with his family in Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

According to the complaint by Trooper Patrick Hauser of the Somerset barracks, he was told last week that Malone was attempting to arrange the murder of Cal vary Fellowship Church Pastor Harold Lee Wiggins and Common Pleas Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody while he was incarcerated at SCI Laurel Highlands.

Hauser said that he spoke with inmate Anthony Yerger, who said he was cellmates with Malone from September 2019 until Malone’s parole sometime last year. Yerger said that Malone asked him where he was from and stated that Yerger “seemed like the person to find someone for me.” While not being specific, Yerger said Malone mentioned that he wanted “to get revenge on people involved in his case.”

When Yerger counseled Malone to drop the matter, he said Malone agreed to “put it behind him.”

Ha user also wrote, however, that he had been in contact with a member of the Chester County Detectives Office, who told him that he had received letters from another inmate at the prison. The detective said that in mate Angelo Tomeot old him in July 2019 that Malone was attempting to arrange for the murder of Wiggins and Cody while still at SCI Laurel Highlands.

The detective reportedly visited Tomeo at the prison, and confirmed that Tomeo had written the letters. The detective then visited with Wiggins at the church and had him walk through the procedures used during Sunday church services at Cal vary and the collection of money. Those details matched what Tomeo said Malone had told him about the church, the affidavit states.

On Feb. 21, Hauser reviewed the letters sent to the Chester County Detectives in July 2019 by Tomeo. In them, according to the affidavit, Tomeo said Malone offered him $5,000 to kill Wiggins, who had been a key witness in the case against him, and additional money for Cody’s death. He said Malone blamed Cody for his harsher sentence. The letters contained a map of Calvary Fellowship in Uwchlan.

Attempts to reach Wiggins were unsuccessful. Cody could

also not be reached for comment.

District Attorney Deb Ryan, who had been the original prosecutor on the Malone case as a member of the DA’s Child Abuse Unit, declined immediate comment Wednesday.

Malone was arrested in January 2016 after the girl gave birth to her child and implicated Malone in sexually assaulting her while she lived with his family.

The woman, whose last address was in Arizona, told officials that Malone, whom she thought of as a father figure, took advantage of her “mentally, physically, spiritually.” She said she thought Malone as a “godly man,” but learned that he was, “something else when no one was watching.”

The woman eventually reportedto West White land police that Ma lone began to sexually assault her in the fall of 2014, after she moved with his family from Minnesota, where he had been a pastor, to Pennsylvania and he began working at Calvary Fellowship.

When he appeared before Cody in April 2017 to plea guilty and accept a sentence of two-to-four years that had been negotiated between his attorney, Evan Kelly of West Chester, and Assistant District Attorney Emily Provencher, Cody surprised the participants by rejecting the sentence after the victim said she thought Ma lone should serve a longer term behind bars.

Cody, a former county prosecutor who had helped form the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit, of which Provencher is now a member, questioned why the charge of rape had been dropped by the prosecution in the plea. Proven ch er said her office believed there would be difficulty proving that the woman had not consented to the physical contact between the two. She also noted that the woman was older than 16, the age of consent in Pennsylvania, at the time the sex occurred.

Provencher and Kelly returned later and presented Cody with the three-to-six year term which she accepted.

“You are serving a sentence much lighter than the crime deserves,” Cody told Malone as he stood before her in handcuffs and shackles at the time. “The things you have done are inexcusable,” she said.