Suspect Charged in Beau Zabel Case

Reportedly killed Zabel because iPod wasn't an iPhone.

If you’re a fan of superb local journalism in Philadelphia, you probably read Mike Newall’s five-part Inquirer series on slain Philly transplant Beau Zabel, a naive, trusting, Minnesota kid who was killed near the Italian Market on his way home from a Starbucks shift in 2008. On the heels of his reporting, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office charged its lead suspect today, 35-year-old Marcellus “Ant North” Jones.

Jones, already serving a life sentence for the murder of the getaway car driver in the Zabel case, apparently killed Zabel when he realized the iPod he stole form him was not a more valuable iPhone. New witnesses interviewed last month said Jones “could not trust Taylor because Taylor was ‘bitching’ about what they had done to ‘the white boy.’ ‘He had to go,” the witness reported Jones as saying.” An arrest warrant was put out for Jones last month; today he was formally charged.

[Inquirer]