Sileo Guilty of 1st Degree Murder

A restaurant owner was found guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday for shooting his partner five years ago for a $650,000 life insurance policy. Guy Sileo Jr. will receive a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his longtime friend and business partner, James Webb, with whom he owned the historic General Wayne Inn restaurant.

Jurors started deliberating at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and returned with the verdict shortly before 6 p.m.

After instructing the jury Wednesday morning, Montgomery County Judge Paul Tressler gave the panel the option to consider a third-degree murder charge in addition to the first-degree count. A third-degree conviction would have meant a 40-year sentence.

Sileo, 33, co-owned the 297-year-old restaurant with Webb, 31, the executive chef. Prosecutors contend Sileo killed Webb to collect a $650,000 life insurance policy – to keep the cash-strapped business afloat and to repay a $100,000 gift from his father as a loan.

Webb, who prosecutors contend was about to walk out on the historic Merion restaurant and its $1.2 million debt, was shot once in the back of the head in a third-floor restaurant office on the night of Dec. 26, 1996.

Sileo filed for bankruptcy and sold the restaurant in April 1997. He is in prison for lying to a grand jury about the existence of a .25-caliber pistol that authorities believe was the murder weapon. It has never been found.

He testified this week that he traded the pistol at a gun show months before the murder, but never told authorities because he forgot when and where the show was.

Sileo lied about the pistol because he knew he was the No. 1 suspect and feared police would not believe that he really didn`t know what happened to it – but that doesn`t make him a murderer, Sileo`s defense attorney Richard Winters said in his closing statement.

The historic three-story inn was built in 1704 and later named for "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the Revolutionary War general who dined and stayed overnight in 1777. The suburban Philadelphia restaurant is also the focus of many ghost stories, one involving a Hessian soldier killed in the wine cellar by Colonial partisans and said to still wander the structure.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Author: 6 ABC - Action News