Trial in a suspected contract killing of a mother

It had the makings of a horror movie: On a chilly November night, a single mom and her young daughter unlock their back door and are confronted by a gun-wielding stranger in a Wolfman mask.

The real-life horror of Nov. 14, 1995 - 29-year-old Hope Thomas shot to death, her 7-year-old daughter traumatized, their Fayette Street house ransacked - stunned the city's Cedarbrook section.

That was just the start. Over the next four years, what police first thought was the tragic end of a volatile, violent marriage would be linked to the probe of a multimillion-dollar marijuana ring with ties to Jamaica and the West Coast.

Now the tale turns full circle with the trial of Thomas' estranged husband, Corbin, charged with arranging her murder because he believed she was working with federal agents investigating his drug business.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday before Common Pleas Court Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi.

Police had reason to suspect Corbin Thomas from the start. The Thomases were separated, a divorce imminent, and Hope Thomas purportedly told relatives of being hit and threatened by her husband during their seven-year marriage. She had obtained a court protection order.

But police had nothing more than instinct and the troubled marriage to go on. The masked intruder escaped. The Thomases' daughter, Danielle, had been tied up in another room during the shooting and was left to die in a basement shower stall.

Corbin Thomas was questioned and released. Four months later, he was gone, along with a cousin police suspect was the killer behind the mask.

After years in which authorities said they believed he was hiding in the couple's native Jamaica, Thomas surfaced in 2002 - in London and in custody.

It took three years for U.S. officials to get Thomas back, after District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham promised the British she would not seek the death penalty if he was convicted of first-degree murder.

Two more years passed before Thomas was convicted in federal court in Philadelphia on drug and money-laundering charges in an operation prosecutors say made millions from 1990 to 1995.

Thomas, 46, is almost three years into a 35-year federal prison term. A conviction of first-degree murder - a premeditated, malicious killing - in the Philadelphia trial would carry a mandatory life term with no parole.

In pretrial hearings before DeFino-Nastasi in early March, Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman and defense attorney Barbara A. McDermott raised the possibility of a plea agreement.

Both said last week that the talks had gone nowhere, responding with the same words: "We're going to trial."

The physical evidence linking Thomas to his wife's murder is no stronger now than it was in 1995. Instead, Fairman will depend largely on the testimony of Gary St. Louis Gordon, 41, once Thomas' "right-hand man" in the marijuana ring.

Gordon's testimony - under a guilty-plea agreement with federal prosecutors - helped convict Thomas in the federal trial.

Now serving a 10-year federal prison term set to end in 2020, Gordon is expected to tell the jury that Thomas had given him $5,000 to hire someone to kill his wife.

But the unnamed hit man took the money and ran, and Gordon has said he learned only after the murder that his boss allegedly found someone else to do the job.

Authorities have identified Thomas' cousin Winston, also known as Michael "Titos" McPherson, as the killer. Authorities say they believe Winston Thomas, who fled to Jamaica with Corbin Thomas, has been murdered in drug-related activities.

Gordon's testimony is expected to be buttressed by several people Hope Thomas purportedly told how much she feared her husband.

In the pretrial hearings, DeFino-Nastasi ruled that Hope Thomas' statements to federal agents, her mother, and her sister could be used against Corbin Thomas.

Despite her husband's alleged suspicions, Hope Thomas never did cooperate with federal investigators.

Andrew McCrossan, a retired U.S. customs agent who worked on the federal probe, testified in March about two meetings with Hope Thomas where he and other agents tried to persuade her to help them build a case against her husband.

McCrossan said Hope Thomas had been terrified of her husband and had said that he abused her and raped her and that she obtained a court order to keep him away.

A second meeting, on Sept. 8, 1995, at the old Adam's Mark Hotel on City Avenue, included her sister, Althea Smith, and their mother, Dornell Morgan.

"Her mother and sister begged her to leave him and work with" investigators, McCrossan testified. "The best she could say was, 'I would have to go home and think about it.' "