State Prison

DONTA CRADDOCK and Ivan Rodriguez were brought to tears Wednesday afternoon upon hearing that they had been found guilty of four counts of second-degree murder and would spend the rest of their lives in state prison. "Sorry, Mom, for letting you down and everything. Even though I'm going to be in for the rest of my life, I'm sorry," Craddock, 21, softly said from the wheelchair he has been confined to since the fatal car crash he caused while fleeing a robbery scene on June 10, 2009.

A 31-year-old man wanted in the fatal shooting of the owner of a North Philadelphia check-cashing store during a robbery surrendered to homicide detectives, police said Friday. Eric Locke turned himself in about 8 p.m. Thursday, hours after police announced they were looking for him and released his photograph. He was charged with murder, robbery, and related offenses. Locke had been sought in the killing of Joel Blumer, 53, a married father of two from Holland, Bucks County. Blumer was shot shortly before 9 a.m. last Saturday while opening his B & R Check Cashing store at 26th and Sterner Streets by a gunman who fled with a duffel bag filled with cash, police said.

Baby dies in NE home * Hellerman Street near Loretto Avenue Police are investigating the death of a 3-month-old boy in an Oxford Circle home that may have been operating as a day-care center. Emergency personnel arrived at the home about noon yesterday. They found the infant nonresponsive. He was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, and pronounced dead a short time later. The cause of death is under investigation. Inmate and visitor attack officers * 4th Street near Morton Avenue, Chester A 27-year-old inmate at the state prison in Chester and a woman who was visiting him assaulted three correctional officers Sunday afternoon, state police said.

RE THE LETTER by Lauren Ukkerd of Broomall, "Dial P for Prison" (Aug. 16): Who or what gives her the right to judge letter-writer Harum Fox, let alone anybody else who's incarcerated about what we should or shouldn't have in prison without knowing our situation. Unfortunately, people fail to realize that not everyone incarcerated is a bad person, some of us just made bad choices and the wrong decisions in our lives that we are paying for now - and our families are paying for them as well.

While waiting to stand trial with his mother and twin brother next year on burglary and conspiracy charges, Taleon Goffney was sentenced yesterday to four to eight years in state prison for a one-man burglary last December. Goffney, 26, of Maple Shade, N.J., gained notoriety in February when he and his twin brother, Keyontyli, with whom he co-starred in several Internet gay-porn videos, were arrested for allegedly breaking in through the roofs of area businesses. They were arrested Feb. 19 in South Philadelphia by a tri-state Rooftop Burglary Task Force that was created to investigate 45 similar crimes.

When Ryshaone Thomas was sent to prison in 2005, Linda Reis was outraged that one of the men who abducted, beat and strangled her daughter might be free someday. Reis wanted Thomas, 32, to die in prison. On Sunday morning, she got her wish. "It's funny how God works," said Reis, 54, of Mount Ephraim, N.J. "I really feel that things happen for many reasons. " Thomas, of Camden, was serving a 43-year sentence for the murder of Reis' daughter, Christine Eberle, on Nov. 12, 2001.

A Morrisville man pleaded guilty yesterday to a weeklong crime spree in which he stole at least five vehicles, drove one into the Delaware Canal, and escaped police custody through a bathroom window. Jesse N. Baker, 21, was given four sentences to state prison - with terms ranging from one to two years, to two to five years - for a string of auto thefts and other crimes in early June. Bucks County President Judge Kenneth G. Biehn said Baker would serve the sentences concurrently.

Surrounded by a 12-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire and laced with swirling rows of razor-sharp steel ribbon, the Mid-State Correctional Facility is an imposing structure. But its remote location - along a winding road that leads to the rifle ranges and bivouac sites of the Fort Dix Army post - has contributed to a low profile that, some say, has made it one of the best-kept secrets in Burlington County. "A lot of people don't know we're here, but a prison is not the type of business you advertise," said David Maver, director of custody at Mid-State.

Elizabeth "Betty" Greenawalt embezzled more than $900,000 from her long-time employer and neighbor, robbing him of money that he could have taken into his retirement. Ralph Bucci went to Delaware County Court yesterday for Greenawalt's sentencing. Instead of seeking revenge, he offered forgiveness. "I do not seek a prison sentence on my behalf," Bucci told Judge James F. Nilon Jr. Joan Bucci, his wife, called it a difficult day for her. She mentioned Greenawalt's gambling addiction and said Greenawalt's actions had hurt the family emotionally and financially.

Gary Slick was good at what he did. He knew it - and he wanted others to know it, too. "I'm the best," he recently told a newspaper interviewer. After six years of stealing cars, he was having others do the stealing for him, the 19-year-old said after he was arrested in February by Philadelphia police for a car theft in Bucks County. He described himself as the "Godfather" of the 09 Posse, a gang of car thieves operating from the Tacony section of Philadelphia. When Philadelphia police returned him to Bucks County to face the car-theft charge, he promised the authorities information on several more thefts in return for a badge befitting his status: a state prison term.

Four state prisoners escaped from custody within 17 hours of each other, two of them making a daring dash on a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle from a work detail at a Burlington County cemetery Monday afternoon. Freedom was short-lived for the latter two, who were back in custody within hours. Sunday night, a Camden County man and a Morris County man slipped out of a prison in North Jersey. Both would have been eligible for parole by March. It's the second time, officials said, that the Morris County man had escaped from jail.

Kendall Anderson, the South Philadelphia teen who confessed to fatally beating his mother with a claw hammer and trying to cremate her in the oven because she took his PlayStation 2 away in November 2010, has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to a lengthy stay in state prison. Anderson, 17, who formerly attended the disciplinary Daniel Boone School and lived with his mother on Jackson Street near 4th, on May 4 entered into a negotiated guilty plea to third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, abuse of a corpse and related crimes connected to the Nov. 28, 2010 death of Rashida Anderson, 37. On Wednesday, Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner sentenced Anderson to a term of 25 to 50 years in state prison.

Rudolph Valentino Gary Jr., the off-duty rookie Philadelphia police officer who fatally shot his brother-in-law following a neighborhood water-gun fight in 2010, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder Wednesday, sparing himself the possibility of being found guilty of first-degree murder and spending the rest of his life in state prison. Gary, 28, entered his plea just after noon before Common Pleas Court Judge Shelley Robins New. The agreement between the District Attorney's Office and Gary calls for him to be sentenced to 25 to 60 years in state prison for third-degree murder and aggravated assault, for accidentally shooting bystander Indria Johnson in the leg. Gary, with just 11 months on the police force, murdered Howard Williams, 22, the brother of Gary's estranged wife, Shanae Williams, on May 2, 2010.

WILLIE WYCHE, a career criminal who stalked, choked and robbed six women in the Society Hill area last year - beginning just one month after he had finished serving a 20-year prison sentence - was given an even longer sentence Monday. Saying that Wyche, 40, had preyed upon women who were primarily older and smaller than he, Common Pleas Judge Dennis Cohen sentenced Wyche to 50 to 100 years in state prison. "It is clear to the court that the crimes you committed are brutal, absolutely brutal," Cohen said.

Christopher Reeves, the homeless man who pleaded guilty in October to raping a woman inside the Bella Vista coffee shop where she worked, was sentenced Friday to 31 1/2 to 63 years in state prison. Reeves, 33, sat handcuffed for more than an hour listening to the victim's friends and representatives from the Bella Vista community tell Common Pleas Judge William J. Mazzola how the March 31, 2011, attack had impacted their lives. "It's a game changer for this community. It's a game changer for everyone who lives in this area," said Matthew Armstrong, owner of the Bean Exchange Coffeehouse, at 7th and Bainbridge streets, the scene of the early-morning attack.

HARRISBURG - The mastermind of a scheme to steal millions in taxpayer money for his own political benefit stood in a courtroom Wednesday and, in a low voice stripped of its old bravado, offered an apology. "I have embarrassed myself, my family, my friends, and the people of Pennsylvania, and for that, I am truly sorry," a grim John M. Perzel said moments before being sentenced for his role in the so-called Computergate case. "They gave me a great honor, and I disgraced them," he added, "and I'm very sorry for it. " His apology was not enough.

HARRISBURG - Three former aides to onetime Republican powerhouse John M. Perzel will not be going to prison for their involvement in the political corruption case known as Computergate. Paul Towhey, Samuel "Buzz" Stokes, and Don McClintock were sentenced Tuesday to 30 to 60 months' probation, with fines of $2,500 to $5,000, for their roles in a conspiracy to use expensive, taxpayer-funded computer programs and equipment for political campaigns. The three defendants pleaded guilty in the case last year with four other defendants, including Perzel, once the top Republican in the House, and Perzel's former chief of staff, Brian Preski.