Warlocks motorcycle gang member convicted of killing fellow member, dumping his body in cemetery crypt

A member of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club has been convicted of killing an associate member, then leaving his body in an underground crypt at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where his remains lay undiscovered for nearly three years, authorities said Tuesday.

Michael DiMauro, 51, was found guilty of first-degree murder, abuse of corpse, and related charges in the 2017 death of David Rossillo Jr., a prospective Warlock member.

Standing under the gates of the Southwest Philadelphia cemetery on Tuesday, prosecutors described how DiMauro shot Rossillo, 33, four times in the cemetery one night in December 2017, tied a rope around his neck, dragged him across the property with a car, then left his dying body into an underground crypt.

Rossillo was missing for nearly three years. His body was not discovered until April 2020 amid the search for another Warlock associate member who had disappeared.

Philadelphia police were searching for Keith Palumbo, a 36-year-old musician from Drexel Hill, who had disappeared a few months earlier. Palumbo had told a relative that, were he to ever go missing, to check Mount Moriah, where the Warlocks had ties.

In April, investigators trekked through the mostly abandoned cemetery, to the vault where Capt. A.H. Cain and his family were buried in the 1800s. They found the crypt’s top marble slab slightly ajar, with fresh scratches at the base where someone had pried it open, said Assistant District Attorney Robert Wainwright, who prosecuted the cases.

When police opened the vault, they found Palumbo’s body wrapped in a carpet, lying next to a second badly decomposed body.

A DNA test later confirmed the second body was Rossillo’s, Wainwright said.

The arrests and testimony through the four-day trial offered unique insight into the Warlock Motorcycle Club, which law enforcement considers to be a dangerous outlaw motorcycle gang. The club, founded in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, has chapters across the region. Other members have been charged with various violent crimes over the years, including the fatal shooting of a South Jersey police officer and trafficking meth. Members have called themselves “one-percenters,” or the 1% of the population that doesn’t follow the rules.

Rossillo and Palumbo were prospective club members, working toward full status, Wainwright said. Their killers, and those who helped dispose of their bodies, he said, were full-fledged members.

Aided by “incredible detective work” and crucial witness testimony, prosecutors were able to prove that DiMauro, of Delaware County, had shot Rossillo those years ago, Wainwright said. Those witnesses then described how, three years later, Michael DeLuca and three fellow Warlocks returned to that same crypt, where they knew Rossillo’s body was hidden, and left Palumbo’s body.

DeLuca, 41, pleaded guilty earlier this year to murder and related crimes for fatally shooting Palumbo at a nearby Woodland Avenue house, known as the Warlock headquarters. Three others — Billy Gibson, Buck Evans, and Donna Morelli — then helped DeLuca, known as “Kaos,” bring Palumbo’s body to Morelli’s house on Trinity Street, which backed up to the cemetery, before putting it in the crypt, Wainwright said.

The motives behind Palumbo’s and Rossillo’s killings remain unclear, Wainwright said. Rumors had circulated that Rossillo and Palumbo had broken “club rules,” but specifics were never substantiated, he said. All the people involved, including the victims, were using methamphetamine at the time of the murders, he said, but it did not appear that they were trafficking drugs.

Morelli — who was a member of Mount Moriah Cemetery’s board of directors — was previously married to the former president of the Warlocks, and acted as a de facto leader after he died in 2015, said District Attorney Larry Krasner.

As police zeroed in on the case, Morelli was so desperate to warn the others that she delivered a note for DiMauro.

“TELL DIMAURO THEY FOUND DAVE. HE NEEDS TO RUN NOW,” she scribbled on the paper, according to evidence.

Morelli, Gibson, and Evans cooperated as witnesses for prosecutors and testified at trial. All three pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in disposing of Palumbo’s body.

Gibson and Evans were sentenced to two years of probation. Morelli was sentenced to up to two years in prison.

But Morelli, in a final attempt to avoid appearing as a “rat” following her open plea, sought to intimidate the other witnesses in the case by posting their information and testimony online, Wainwright said. She has been charged with two counts of witness intimidation, and those cases remain ongoing.

In the aftermath of the arrests and the unwanted attention brought to the motorcycle club, the Philadelphia Warlocks have largely disbanded, Wainwright said members testified at the trial.

Meanwhile, DiMauro, who represented himself at trial, is expected to be sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole, at a hearing later this month.