At about 5 p.m. on February 22, 1984, two men walked into the Metro Fuel Oil & Burner Company on 10th Street near Susquehanna in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They drew handguns and robbed 21-year-old employee Adrian Crosby of $150. A third man, who was wearing a ski mask, also armed with a handgun, then joined the two gunmen.
The robbers marched Crosby into the first floor office and made him lie on the floor. They confronted another employee, Tom Dolan, and took $17 from him. The man wearing the ski mask demanded more money. Dolan said it was in the safe, but he didn’t know the combination. The two unmasked robbers then escorted Dolan to the second floor where 38-year-old William Gambrell, the manager of the business, was sitting at his desk.
Gambrell had a .357-magnum pistol in a shoulder holster. One of the two robbers opened fire, striking Gambrell at least three times. Dolan later told police that he was then ordered into a closet, but heard the shooter ask Gambrell if he had the combination to the safe. Dolan said that after Gambrell said he did not know it, all three robbers left, taking a shotgun that was in the office with them.
The police and paramedics were called. Gambrell died of his wounds.
On March 4, 1984, police arrested 19-year-old Mark Mitchell. During an interrogation, he admitted being involved and named 19-year-old Eric Joseph and 19-year-old Herbert Lee Baker as his accomplices. Mitchell said Baker shot Gambrell.
On March 7, police arrested Joseph, who did not make a statement. On March 8, police arrested Baker, who gave a statement implicating himself, Mitchell, and Joseph.
All three went to trial in September 1984 in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. The statements of Mitchell and Baker were admitted into evidence with all references to Joseph redacted. Baker, in his statement, asserted that he was not the shooter. He said that Joseph reached over Baker’s shoulder and shot Gambrell.
Crosby testified and identified Joseph as one of the robbers. He said he was pumping kerosene and noticed two men walking by. They walked up to him, pulled a handgun, and told him to hand over his money. Crosby said Joseph put his arm around Crosby’s shoulder and held a gun to his head while the other man, who he said was Baker, rifled his pockets and took $150 out of his wallet.
Crosby said Baker and Joseph forced him inside the office, and a third person, who was wearing a ski mask, joined them. Crosby said he was on the floor when he saw Joseph and Baker walking behind Dolan up the stairs. He said he heard three shots, and all three ran out of the building. Crosby said he ran up the stairs and found Gambrell with three bullet wounds.
Crosby said that Joseph was wearing a “cool cap” and a short-waisted jacket. He identified a cap and jacket that had been seized from Joseph as the clothing that Joseph was wearing during the robbery.
Crosby testified that in his first statement to police right after the shooting, he gave descriptions of the three robbers, but none of them by name.
A detective testified that Crosby gave a second statement several days later and was shown a photographic array from which he selected Joseph’s photograph as one of the unmasked robbers.
Dolan testified, but did not identify Joseph. He said Baker and another man led him upstairs where Baker confronted and then shot Gambrell.
Calvin Budden, who was outside the oil company property, testified that he had seen Joseph, Baker, and Mitchell walking toward the oil company minutes before the robbery, but did not see them enter the building.
Another witness, Floyd Jenkins, testified that he had seen Joseph and Mitchell walking together outside the property, but not with Baker.
No weapons were ever recovered. Marcus Hargrove testified that about one week after Gambrell’s murder, Joseph shot him in the calf.
A police officer who was qualified as a firearms expert, testified that he had viewed an x-ray of Hargrove’s calf where the bullet was still lodged. He testified that the bullet was a .38-caliber bullet, the same caliber as the bullets that killed Gambrell. Another officer testified that when Joseph was arrested, he gave a false name.
No other evidence linked Joseph to the crime.
The defense presented evidence that on the day of the crime, Joseph was canvassing for a state senate candidate with his brother and another campaign worker. Joseph’s brother, his sister-in-law, a campaign field staffer, and a ward leader all testified that Joseph was with them that day. The defense also introduced into evidence a field sheet and a day journal entry made by the ward leader that reported Joseph was canvassing that day.
During closing arguments, the prosecutor, Thomas Bello, noted that Crosby “never wavered in his identification of Mr. Joseph, who stood face to face with him.” Bello asked the jury to infer that Hargrove’s testimony about being shot established that Joseph had possession of the murder weapon. Joseph’s giving a false name, Bello declared, demonstrated his “consciousness of guilt.”
On October 4, 1984, Joseph, Baker, and Mitchell each were convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, criminal conspiracy, and possession of an instrument of a crime. Baker was sentenced to death. Joseph was sentenced to life plus 17½ to 35 years in prison. Mitchell was sentenced to life plus 15 to 30 years in prison.
Their convictions were upheld on appeal.
In 1990, Joseph, acting as his own lawyer, filed a Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition alleging the jury was given erroneous instructions on the law. It was denied without a hearing. In 1998, he filed a second PCRA petition, which was dismissed without a hearing. He filed a third PCRA petition in 2000 requesting reinstatement of his right to appeal the dismissal of the second PCRA petition. That was granted, but the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the denial of the second petition in 2001.
In 1997, Joseph filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He later withdrew it because he needed to first exhaust his state remedies.
In August 2005, a federal district court granted a habeas petition filed by Baker challenging the jury instructions in the case. His conviction and sentence were vacated. The ruling found that Baker’s trial defense lawyer had provided ineffective assistance of counsel by not objecting to a jury instruction that allowed the jury to convict Baker of capital murder without specific proof of intent to kill. On remand, Baker pled guilty to third-degree murder and was re-sentenced to 35 to 50 years in prison. Baker was later released on parole.
In 2006, Joseph filed his fourth PCRA petition, asserting that the prosecution violated the law prohibiting racial discrimination in jury selection. This petition was dismissed.
In 2014, Joseph filed his fifth PCRA petition raising a claim that he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing life sentences for juveniles. The petition was dismissed. It had been filed too late, and Joseph was not a juvenile at the time of the crime.
In 2015, Joseph sought to reinstate his federal lawsuit, but the federal court dismissed it as time-barred.
In 2023, attorney Derek Steenson began representing Joseph, and in January 2024, he filed a sixth PCRA petition. After the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office provided access to the prosecution files and after Steenson reviewed the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide file, he filed an amended PCRA petition.
The petition cited several claims, most prominently that the police department and the prosecution had failed to disclose nearly a dozen police reports found in the homicide file. The reports documented interviews with witnesses, including Crosby, that not only identified a half-dozen alternative suspects, but showed that Crosby had identified others as the robbers before identifying Joseph.
The police and prosecution were so confident of Crosby’s initial identification that an arrest warrant was issued after being approved by a prosecutor. The man Crosby identified, however, had been in a South Carolina prison since 1980.
The file contained a report of an interview with Dolan who had identified the same person that Crosby initially identified as “definitely” one of the robbers.
The reports documented an interview with Larry Tucker, an oil company employee, who did not testify at the trial. He implicated two of his cousins and a third man in the crime. Tucker said that he had told them where the money from sales was kept, when the money was picked up, and where people would be in the building. “[T]hey wanted to just rob the place, there wasn’t supposed to be any trouble,” Tucker said.
Another report said that one of the men implicated by Tucker also gave a statement. He told the police that Gambrell’s son orchestrated the robbery with Tucker and a third man.
The file also contained a detective’s note that an anonymous call was received two days after the murder. The caller implicated Larry Tucker, as the inside source, his two cousins, and a third man.
In response to the petition, the prosecution agreed that Joseph’s conviction should be vacated.
“Here, the Commonwealth agrees that this evidence was suppressed. The 11 pieces of evidence at issue here were in the sole possession of the government, and the evidence was never disclosed to the defense pre-trial,” the prosecution said. “The withheld evidence, had it been disclosed, would have allowed Joseph’s trial defense attorney to undermine the credibility of eyewitnesses, in particular Crosby, to question the reliability of the police investigation, and to allow the defense to pursue an alternative suspect defense.”
“Taken together, these suppressed statements would have supported an alternate-suspect defense at trial,” the prosecution said. “The statements tend to show that people other than Joseph and his co-defendants had planned to rob the oil company.”
The prosecution also noted that Joseph had been adversely affected by the erroneous jury instruction, which had allowed Baker to avoid his death sentence. Joseph had never raised that issue and was precluded from doing so by the passage of time.
“The Commonwealth does not concede that Joseph has proven his innocence,” the prosecution said. “There is evidence in the record that inculpates him, including the statements by his co-defendants that implicate him, testimony by disinterested witnesses placing him in the area, and circumstantial evidence that could support a conclusion that he was one of the robbers.
“However, the newly discovered evidence casts Joseph’s trial in an entirely different light,” the prosecution said. “We now know that the prosecution suppressed a large amount of evidence that would have been favorable to Joseph’s defense. That evidence, if presented at trial, could have undercut the prosecution’s theory of the case, damaged the credibility of the central eyewitness, and allowed Joseph to attack the good faith of the police investigation.”
On January 21, 2026, Joseph’s convictions were vacated, and he was granted a new trial. On March 6, 2026, the prosecution dismissed the charges. Joseph was released, 42 years after the day of his arrest.
Mitchell remained in prison.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 03-17-2026
