On June 17, 2008, Edwards was partying at a club at 21st and Market streets in Center City, when he left about 1 a.m. to get a batch of promotion cards from his car.
A gunman - or gunmen - lay in wait. Edwards was fatally shot multiple times near his car.
Hook's gang, meanwhile, had developed another moneymaking scheme: ripping off drug dealers, who would not report the thefts to the police, according to sources close to the drug world and in law-enforcement.
"Anybody [Hook] knows who's making money in the neighborhood, he goes and [allegedly] takes it," said that source. "And then he takes over the territory and puts his people out there.
"Donnell Murchison - that's the kind of guy [Hook] has around him, [allegedly] cold killers," the source added.
Murchison, 33, is accused of firing the fatal shots at Thal and Gilmore, a drug associate from Ohio, outside Thal's seventh-floor apartment at the Piazza, according to law-enforcement sources.
"You never see Pooh-Pooh alone," said the source close to the drug world.
"He did so much dirt to people, he's scared to be by himself."
