Today, Hook, 40, and six co-defendants face a preliminary hearing in a high-profile double-murder in Northern Liberties.
Police say Hook masterminded a drug robbery that was botched and that turned into a frightening case of homicide about 5:30 p.m. on June 27, as new tenants moved into loft-style apartments at the upscale Piazza at Schmidts, a retail-and-apartment complex that features a theater-size screen and outdoor dining in the courtyard.
Hook's co-defendants are charged with fatally shooting Rian Thal, 34, and drug associate Timothy Gilmore, 41, outside Thal's seventh-floor apartment, where police later found four kilos of cocaine and $111,000.
Through his attorney, Hook, of Susquehanna Avenue near Corlies Street, said that sources for this story are either "seriously misinformed or blatantly lying."
"If any of this information was reliable, my client would have been arrested and convicted a long time ago," said the lawyer, Chris Warren. "As for police sources, this is a smear campaign, pure and simple."
Court records show that Hook said he was self-employed, working full time in real estate for two years, making $400 every two weeks, and living at his mother's house.
Now he's jailed - under the alias of Keith Epps - at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road.
Origins of a drug war
Some neighbors still call him "Pooh-Pooh," his childhood name, but police have arrested him under the aliases Keith Epps, James Wilson and Willie Hook.
According to a source close to the drug world and law-enforcement sources, Hook had about 15 drug associates working for him and first made a name for himself in North Philadelphia's underworld.
