Former fugitive gets 6-12 years in prison for 2003 homicide

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Over the past 15 years, Keith Thompson II started a car rental and sales company in the Bahamas, got married, raised two children, became an ordained deacon in his church and led youth groups and couples’ Bible studies.

“He’s a person of integrity,” his wife, Deleya Thompson, said Thursday in court.

“He’s making an incredible impact,” said his pastor, Mario Moxley.

He also participated in the 2003 murder of a New York man and then fled.

Thompson, 37, was arrested in February in Jamaica and extradited to Allegheny County to face charges.

On Thursday, he pleaded no contest to third-degree murder and was ordered to serve six to 12 years in prison.

“The life Mr. Thompson was living at the time of this crime is vastly different that the life he seems to be living now,” said Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani. “That doesn’t have any impact on the victim who was bound and thrown away like garbage.”

Police said that Thompson and another man killed Michael Brown, 34, of the Bronx, N.Y., on June 29, 2003. Mr. Brown had traveled from New York to Thompson’s apartment in Banksville to sell him marijuana.

Instead, police found Brown’s body the next day in Hazelwood in garbage bags. His face, arms and feet were bound with transparent packaging tape.

He had been repeatedly shot in the hip and groin.

Mr. Brown’s girlfriend told police then that he had gone to Thompson’s apartment twice before to sell him marijuana, and she led investigators to the building.

Inside Thompson’s apartment, police found an earring that matched one Mr. Brown had been wearing. They also found two rolls of clear packaging tape, including one with blood on it, as well as a receipt that showed it was purchased at an area Giant Eagle the night Mr. Brown was killed. Video surveillance from the store, police said, showed Thompson bought the tape.

Carpet inside the apartment also appeared to have been bleached.

Police said Thompson took a bus to Miami five days later and then returned to his home in Nassau.

No co-defendant was ever charged.

After his arrest and return to Pittsburgh, Thompson admitted to police that he bought the tape but denied that he harmed Brown. He claimed he didn’t know the man with him was going to rob and attack the victim.

Defense attorney Stanton Levenson said his client accepted the plea offer to third-degree murder because he thought it likely a jury would convict Thompson of