Broomall man charged in rape now faces murder plot rap
Friday, September 3, 2010
By MICHAEL P. RELLAHAN, Staff Writer
WEST CHESTER – A native of Sierra Leone who raped a fellow immigrant at her apartment in the borough, and who then tried to force the victim to keep quiet about his crime, has been charged with trying to hire a fellow inmate at Graterford state prison to kill her.
Foday Phillip Kanu, 37, formerly of Broomall, is currently awaiting a preliminary hearing in Montgomery County on charges of criminal solicitation to commit murder. The hearing is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 7 before District Magisterial Judge Albert Augustine of Skippack.
Kanu, who worked as a nursing assistant at a senior facility in West Goshen at the time of his arrest, is serving a 16- to 32-year sentence in state prison. He was found guilty of rape by forcible compulsion, sexual assault, aggravated assault, intimidation of witnesses, and false imprisonment in October in a trial that featured testimony about the cultural stigma and attitudes towards victims of rape in Sierra Leone, from which he and the victim in the case immigrated in the early 2000s.
In April, about one month after he was sentenced by Judge Ronald Nagle, Kanu allegedly approached another inmate at Graterford and told him Kanu asked him to kill the victim, whose name is being withheld by the Daily Local News, in exchange for $5,000.
Kanu said he wanted the murder to look like an accident, and that it had to occur before the date of his next court appearance, at which he intended to ask for a new trial, according to court documents.
“The bitch has to die,” Kanu is quoted as telling the inmate, whose name is being withheld because of concerns expressed by authorities for his safety.
In addition, prison authorities were able to intercept two letters from Kanu to his brother, Ibrahim Conteh, also asking that he make arrangements to have to victim killed. He apparently believed that he would win a new trial in the case and that with the victim out of the way, the case against him would be dropped.
“We take this very seriously, especially considering the defendant’s status as an inmate,” said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney John Gradel, who is prosecuting the case. He said that Chester County authorities had taken steps to insure the victim’s safety, but did not specify what had been done.
Chester County Assistant District Attorney Deborah Ryan, who prosecuted the rape case against Kanu and who had called the victim’s travails “the stuff of novels,” was cautious when responding to questions Friday about the mater. She confirmed that the victim had been relocated by county authorities because of fears for her safety, but declined to discuss her whereabouts.
“She is completely distraught,” Ryan said.
Indeed, the victim had undergone severe trauma concerning the July 2008 rape in its aftermath not only because of the attack itself but because of the pressures placed on her by family and friends – both hers and Kanu’s – to maintain silence about the rape and to accept Kanu as her “husband.” In her testimony, she described being targeted by Kanu’s supporters with voodoo practices and tribal religious rites to get her to recant.
In one incident, she was driven to a home in Philadelphia where several of Kanu’s friends and family berated her and tried to get her to have the charges against him dropped.
Ryan, in describing the woman’s demeanor at the time, recalled for the jury in the case the victim hiding under a conference table in her office, paralyzed by fear, when she first met her. She initially declined to appear at one preliminary hearing for Kanu, and not until early 2009 could she summon the courage to appear in court and testify about what happened.
Kanu appeared in Common Pleas Court at the Chester County Justice Center on Tuesday for a hearing on his motion for a new trial. When Ryan told Nagle of the pending solicitation to murder charges, his attorney, Jack McMahon of Philadelphia, expressed surprise.
“I didn’t even know about that factor,” McMahon told Nagle.
According to a criminal complaint filed by state Trooper Keith Verbilla, he was initially contacted on April 28 by Chester County Detective Harold "Butch" Dutter, who informed him of contact he had had with the mother of an inmate at Graterford about the alleged murder contract.
Verbilla interviewed the inmate on May 15, at which time the man told him of conversations he had with Kanu. He said Kanu had first offered him $5,000 for the alleged “hit,” but later dropped that to $2,500. He said the two had between six and eight conversations about the request to have the victim killed.
Earlier, a corrections official had given Verbilla copies of two letters written by Kanu to his brother. In them, Kanu said he was going to be deported unless he was able to have the charges against him dismissed,
“If she die, I will still have to put the government in court,” Kanu allegedly wrote. “Without (her) they have no case against me. That is why I don’t mind to spend $10,000 to pay somebody to kill her before the next trial.”
In June, state police monitored a wiretapped conversation between Kanu and the inmate he tried to recruit. In it, Kanu is heard telling the man, I want it done right now, I’m not gonna wait for the conviction to be overturned.” He said he would pay either $4,000 or $4,500.”
In her testimony at trial, the woman said both she and Kanu had come from Sierra Leone after winning a government lottery that guaranteed them a United States visa. They met at work in 2005 when she lived in West Chester. But then after he began borrowing large sums of money from her and not repaying it, she said she confronted him. Growing angry, he forced her to have sex with him — assaults she said occurred over a period of months.
The rape for which Kanu was found guilty occurred on July 21, 2008. The woman said she had come home from a long day of going to work and to school and began to make dinner — a pot of African oatmeal. She said that Kanu snuck up on her while she was in the kitchen, grabbed her and forced her into her bedroom, where he pushed her onto a mattress. She struggled but at some point saw a knife on the mattress and gave up the fight.
At the court proceeding on Tuesday, McMahon argued that Kanu had not been given a fair trial because his attorney, Jacob Gurwitz of Reading, did not call any witnesses on his behalf. Nagle, however, said such an argument normally is made in a post-conviction motion to state Superior Court, and told McMahon he would rule later on whether McMahon would have to go that route.
More than a dozen of Kanu’s supporters appeared in the courtroom. The victim did not.
http://delcotimes.com/articles/2010/09/03/news/doc4c8133b4a5f5a278966662.txt
