Video Released In NoLibs Double Slaying

PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia police say a double slaying in an upscale Northern Liberties apartment complex was very well planned.

Police released surveillance video Monday taken in the hallway of the building where 34-year-old Rian Thal and a companion of hers, 40-year-old Timothy Gilmore, were killed.

Slideshow: Images From Surveillance Tape

Was it an elaborate hit job or a scheme to rob a couple that police describe as "illegal activity associates"? Police sources tell us the stakes were high enough to pull it off in broad daylight, reported Fox 29's Joyce Evans.

It happened about 6 p.m. Saturday in the Navona building of the recently opened Piazza at Schmidts.

The video shows four men, armed with weapons and cell phones, carefully setting up an ambush of the two victims - 30 minutes before the shooting.

Security video shows three of them first hiding in a stairwell down the hall from Rian Thal's 7th floor apartment. Detectives say they are the gunmen. The fourth man in the elevator is the lookout.

Homicide Captain James Clark, of Philadelphia police, says Thal and Timothy Gilmore, from Ohio, appeared suspicious at first but headed on down the hallway.

"As they do, the two males come from behind them and they're actually, what you can't see, they're trapped because they have another shooter at the other end of the hallway," says Capt. Clark.

Police sources say it appears the plan was to rob Thal of her large shipment of cocaine and the money. Instead, the would-be robbers never got inside her apartment.

"The plan probably went wrong really quickly, having to shoot and kill both of them and then they fled without taking anything," says Clark.

But police sources say it wasn't over there. Someone else - another man - was seen leaving the building, carrying a large duffel bag. Our sources believe the man may have come along with Gilmore for the drop-off.

"We're still going over outside video at this point and time so I can't really comment," says Clark.

Police also could not comment on a tractor trailer that, sources say, was towed away from the crime scene. Sources say detectives will be going over that tractor trailer with a fine-toothed comb to see if it was used to deliver drugs.

Sources say four kilos of cocaine and over $100,000 were taken from the apartment.