Jose Diaz is charged with murder, robbery, and related offenses in the 2013 killing of Carol Ambruster in her Germantown apartment. When retired Villanova University astronomy professor Carol Ambruster was stabbed to death in her Germantown apartment on Dec. 9, 2013, what was expected to be a normal day turned into “a nightmare,” a prosecutor told a Philadelphia jury Tuesday. Upon returning to her second-floor apartment at 5501 Wayne Ave. about 5:50 p.m., Ambruster, 69, encountered Jose Diaz, a handyman who worked in the building, Assistant District Attorney Jason Grenell said. “Mr. Diaz got a knife from Ms. Ambruster’s kitchen,...

Tymear Johnson was charged with murder in the 2017 shooting death of 13-year-old Khiseer Davis-Prather inside the Gold Fish Chinese takeout on Hunting Park Avenue. The fatal shooting of a 13-year-old boy in a Chinese takeout in Nicetown two years ago was a clear case of first-degree murder as evidenced by surveillance video, a city prosecutor told a jury Thursday. Despite donning a ski mask to cover his face, Tymear Johnson, then 19, wore a distinctive red jacket that witnesses and surveillance video indicated he had on earlier that night in March 2017, Assistant District Attorney Courtney Malloy said in...

Steven Simminger’s paranoid schizophrenia and anxiety were well documented, developing after a 1994 auto accident in the Navy cost him a leg, and left him with a traumatic brain injury and a disability discharge. But does that mean Simminger, 41, was legally insane early on March 13, 2016, when he fatally stabbed a man in Rittenhouse Square during an altercation over Simminger’s Jersey Devils sports cap? Assistant District Attorney Andrew Notaristefano says Simminger’s mental problems don’t come close to meeting the tough legal standard for insanity. But defense attorney Gina Capuano won a preliminary victory Thursday when Philadelphia Common Pleas...

CENTER CITY (WPVI) — A stabbing suspect faced a judge Wednesday, more than two weeks after a deadly altercation in Rittenhouse Square. Prosecutors are describing this as a case of cold-blooded murder. 24-year-old Colin McGovern of Bucks County was allegedly stabbed to death by 40-year-old Steven Simminger of Media on Sunday, March 13th right around 3 a.m. One of McGovern’s friends, who took the stand Wednesday as a prosecution witness, says it started innocently as McGovern asked Simminger about the New Jersey Devils hat he was wearing. That led to some kind of misunderstanding but quickly turn violent. McGovern, a...

The prosecution alleges that Rudolph Churchill committed two rape-murders in 1989, based on the identification of his DNA a quarter-century later on two items found near the bodies of Ruby Ellis and Cheryl Hanible. On Monday, a lawyer for the 54-year-old South Jersey man questioned the integrity of that DNA evidence. Gina Capuano spent almost two hours questioning Ryan Gallagher, supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Forensic Laboratory, during the fourth day of Churchill’s trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court on charges of rape and murder. Capuano asked Gallagher to explain why he selected certain pieces of evidence and relegated others...

Friendships, phone calls and photos do not add up to conspiracy, according to defense attorneys for four men charged as part of an allegedly violent Atlantic City drug-trafficking organization. Circumstances — but not necessarily evidence — connect Kareem Bailey, Terry Davis, Lamar Macon and Dominique Venable to the Dirty Blok gang, said their attorneys during closing arguments in their federal trial in Camden. The four are charged with conspiracy and other crimes after an FBI-led investigation ended with 34 people charged March 26, 2013, as being either members or associates of the gang that allegedly ruled the drug trade in...

WEST CHESTER – A Common Pleas Court judge has ruled that a statement taken from a suspect in two West Chester rapes cannot be used at his trial because police questioning him had improperly circumvented his Miranda rights by not telling him they had an arrest warrant in the case. Judge David Bortner on April 30 ruled in favor of Orobosa Izineg “Robbie” Enagbare’s motion to suppress the statement he gave to borough investigators in which he allegedly admitted sexually assaulting a borough woman, whose boyfriend he knew, after a night of drinking. Bortner said that Detective Stan Billie, in...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – June 10, 2009 Manuelita Buenaflor, 65, of Philadelphia became the first official with MultiEthnic Behavioral Services to enter a plea in the case, although two underlings have signed guilty pleas. The city paid MultiEthnic a $1 million a year to visit at-risk children like Danieal Kelly, a disabled girl who lived in a chaotic home with an unfit mother, and make sure they were receiving needed services. MultiEthnic documents suggest they made the required visits with Danieal, a 14-year-old with cerebral palsy. But she had severe bed sores, weighed just 42 pounds and had long stopped going...