Last Piazza at Schmidt’s Killer Gets 20-40 Years

Ceasar Holloway, the apparent “mastermind” of the infamous double murder that christened the Piazza at Schmidt’s in 2009, has been sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for third-degree murder, among other charges.

After almost a year as a fugitive, Holloway was the last of eight people arrested in the June 2009 botched holdup that ended in the shootings of party planner [Rian] Thal, 34, and Timothy Gilmore, 40, a friend and long-distance trucker from Ohio…Holloway was not one of the three gunmen who killed Thal and Gilmore in the hallway outside her seventh-floor apartment. At trial, he was called the right-hand man of Will “Pooh” Hook.”

Hook was one of the three gunmen found guilty of first-degree December, 2011. [Inquirer]