A Brooklyn ex-con who pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal gun charge may be linked to a pair of 2024 Brooklyn murders committed by a gunman wearing a distinctive pink-and-black wig, court filings reveal.
Authorities suspected Thomas Weston, 37, had played a role in two Crown Heights slayings in September and October when U.S. marshals staged a pre-dawn raid at his apartment on Jan. 15.
The marshals, who were part of a regional task force, came knocking with a battering ram because Weston had violated his supervised release in 2021 from an earlier gun case, and the deputy marshal planning Weston’s arrest, David Roman, learned he was a suspect in two murders.
“I discovered that there was an overlapping investigation conducted by the NYPD,” Roman said at a suppression hearing in Brooklyn Federal Court Friday. “Well, the person we were attempting to locate was a suspect in two homicides.”
Details of those homicides line up with the Sept. 1 killing of Donnell Thomas, 37, who was shot in the chest on St. Johns Place near Troy Ave., just two blocks away from his home, and the Oct. 23 fatal shooting of Kendall Friday, 25, on the same block in Crown Heights. Weston lives around the corner from both killings.
So Roman reached out to detectives in the 77th Precinct, and two of them joined his raid team, hanging back in a “rear security” position while Roman and his team breached the door of the St. Johns Place apartment.
They found Weston inside and cuffed him. One of the two NYPD detectives, David Gomez, entered the apartment at one point — and noticed a wig on a table in the living room, partially covered by a pile of junk food.
He sent a photo of it to another detective with the text message, “Good morning bro. We got Weston. I see a wig in the apartment. We’re going to hold the location. We need a search warrant.”
It’s not clear if the wig is the same one used in the homicides. The wig in the photograph is orange, while the one used in the killings is believed to be pink and black. Law enforcement sources said a second wig was discovered in the apartment later.
When police got their warrant, they found a 9-mm. handgun in a black bag, according to court filings. Sources familiar with the case said the gun did not match the bullets in either killing.
Weston’s lawyers tried to suppress the discovery of the gun, arguing that the search was illegal. After Friday’s suppression hearing, though, Weston decided to plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, and to violating the terms of his supervised release.
He could face roughly four to five years behind bars on the gun charge based on sentencing guidelines, plus up to 18 months for the supervised release violation.
Weston’s lawyer, Jullian Harris-Calvin of the Federal Defenders, said Weston denied involvement in the two murders.
No one has been charged in either slaying.
Originally Published:
<