Gregore J. Sambor, police commissioner

POLICE COMMISSIONER Gregore J. Sambor, a square-jawed military veteran, was ordered by Mayor Goode to develop a tactical plan for a possible confrontation with MOVE members. Sambor put three cops in charge of developing the plan.

Their strategy called for tear gas to be fired into MOVE's Osage Avenue headquarters on May 13, 1985, and for a satchel of explosives to be dropped on a fortified bunker atop the building. Sambor later admitted that he had no backup plan if the tear gas didn't work. When the bomb sparked a fire, he allowed it to burn, ultimately leading to a calamity that claimed the lives of 11 people and dozens of homes. He retired six months later.

1985: MOVE Commission investigators concluded that as a result of Sambor's orders, "the three officers responsible for developing the tactical plan did so hastily and without sufficient information or adequate intelligence."

Quote: "I was told any possibility for injury or death inside the bunker was minimal."

2010: There have been no tell-all books or teary-eyed interviews from Sambor in the decades since the MOVE disaster. He has spoken about his involvement in the fatal confrontation only when he had no other choice - namely, when the case was before a federal court in 1996.

Now 82, Sambor and his wife, Mary, live in a handsome stone property on a quiet, winding street in Drexel Hill.

When a reporter visited their house recently, Mary Sambor said her husband "won't talk to you about that [case]," as she smiled apologetically and closed the front door. (The Sambors were touched by personal tragedy 10 years ago, when a group of teenage robbers fatally shot their son, Nicholas, 40, outside his home in Overbrook.)

Within the police community, some now look at Sambor simply as a man who was in over his head.

"How many times had we handled that kind of thing?," said Upper Moreland Police Chief Thomas Nestel, whose law-enforcement career started with the Philadelphia police in 1985.

"You had a fortified house that was firing at police. That only happens in Fallujah [Iraq]," Nestel said. "There was almost a military-like response, and that's his background. He was using what he knew."

-David Gambacorta