Homicide Watch Trenton

A Pennsylvania inmate testified Wednesday that Sheena Robinson-Crews, the widow of a Trenton gang member, confessed setting up her husband’s Sept. 12, 2008 murder.

Maria Cappelli appeared by video conference from state prison in Muncy, Pa., and said she could no longer keep the alleged confession a secret so she reported it to corrections officials about two years after Robinson-Crews reportedly confided in her sometime in 2009 while they were housed at the Bucks County jail.

Cappelli said Robinson-Crews told her she conspired with two gang members — Robinson-Crews never named them — to have her husband killed because he was physically and emotionally abusive.

Cappelli also said Robinson-Crews admitted handing the killers keys to the couple’s apartment. She said she believed Robinson-Crews told two other inmates about the conspiracy, based on conversations she had with those inmates in which they reported the same story.

“The whole thing was all set up,” said the orange jumpsuit-clad Cappelli, a short white woman with shoulder-length hair. “It was eating my conscience up.”

Robinson-Crews has denied under oath that she set up her husband’s murder or spoke with Cappelli about her alleged role in setting it up. Robinson-Crews described a distant relationship with Cappelli, who is five years into a maximum 20-year sentence on a conviction on drug, unlawful gun possession and forgery counts.

Cappelli described a much-closer bond with Robinson-Crews, saying the women were cellmates for four months at Muncy. Cappelli said she and Robinson-Crews played cards together, watched TV and talked about their families and personal lives.

Robinson-Crews had testified she and Cappelli were “cordial” with each other but didn’t have “conversations.” They simply exchanged pleasantries whenever they encountered each other in prison.

Gary Britton, the lead police detective who worked the murder case, previously testified at a hearing outside of the jury’s presence he disregarded Cappelli’s story as “unreliable” because she was wrong about certain details of the murder and he believed she cobbled together the story by reading newspaper accounts.

Cappelli said she never read newspaper coverage of Crews’ murder and only learned the details through conversations with Robinson-Crews.

Cappelli testified Robinson-Crews told her the couple was out the night of the murder. They returned home with their two children and Crews grabbed one of the sleeping children out of the back seat and went to tuck the child into bed while Robinson-Crews parked the car.

In actuality, the couple drove in separate cars after a day of shopping and running errands. Britton previously pointed out the couple didn’t have two children. But it came out during testimony that Robinson-Crews was eight months pregnant with Crews’ baby at the time of the murder.

The couple also each had a child from prior relationships.

The prosecutor, Al Garcia, hammered these details on cross examination, also bringing up Cappelli’s extensive criminal history. Cappelli admitted she has been arrested more than 200 times.

Her most recent arrest which led to her being sent to Muncy was for filling fake prescriptions and hawking the pills to support her family, Cappelli said.

Defense attorneys were quick to point out that Cappelli — unlike the state’s two jailhouse informants, Isaiah Franklin and Terrell Black — isn’t receiving time off her sentence or other benefits in exchange for her testimony.

Franklin, the state’s star witness, previously testified Dawson admitted shooting Crews in the neck with a 9 mm luger during a botched home invasion. He and co-defendant William Brown were reportedly at Crews’ home to rob him of $40,000.

After Cappelli testified, the defense rested its case, which was predicated on a third-party guilt defense. Summations are scheduled for Tuesday morning.

The defense was dealt a blow earlier in the morning when the judge, Andrew Smithson, ruled the defense could not call Trenton Police Detective Nathan Bolognini and Matthew Norton, a detective from the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, to the stand.

Bolognini was tangentially related to the murder investigation. He is the police officer who overheard Robinson-Crews telling someone police believed was Crews’ killer, “You didn’t have to shoot him. You got what you came for. You didn’t have to shoot him.”

Bolognini testified at a hearing held outside the jury’s presence he couldn’t recall hearing the exact comment, nor could he recall reporting it to Norton. But he said he had no reason to dispute its authenticity based on the fact that it appeared in Norton’s search warrant.

In fact, defense attorneys said, the state used Bolognini’s reporting as justification for at least three search warrants, including one filed last month, around the time Robinson-Crews was released from state prison.

Robinson-Crews’ conversation appeared in quotations in Norton’s search warrant, making Norton believe he received the information directly from Bolognini.

While Norton said he was “pretty sure” Bolognini was the source of the information, he wasn’t certain.

Smithson ruled Robinson-Crews’ phone conversation, as reported by Bolognini, was “unreliable.” Smithson was “shocked” Bolognini didn’t recall such a potentially incriminating statement.

“I find it untrustworthy,” he said.

Defense attorney were overheard in the lobby outside the courtroom complaining that the ruling “gutted” their third-party guilt defense.