Ellen Barbara Lewis, a 20-year-old Black / African American female, died in the early morning hours of December 17, 1983, after being shot at very close range during a party inside room 521 of a dormitory building on the Cheyney State University campus in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The room was crowded with students, loud music was playing, and strobe lights were flashing as people danced. In that confusion, a gunshot cut through the party.
Ellen was struck once in the head and died from the wound. Despite the number of people nearby, court records state that there were no eyewitnesses who actually saw the shooting happen.
The investigation soon focused on Rodney Lawrence Griffin, a Cheyney student who was also connected to the same campus social circles. Witnesses placed Griffin in or near room 521 around the time Ellen was shot, including testimony that he had been near the area where the fatal shot was believed to have been fired shortly before it happened. Other witnesses said Griffin had shown a handgun and bullets earlier that night, and at least one witness identified the murder weapon as the same gun Griffin had displayed or used to threaten someone before the shooting. The weapon was later found outside the dormitory building and was tied to the killing.
The motive described in court was far darker than a sudden dispute at a party. Ellen had been involved in a bank fraud investigation with Russell Wesley Moss, and after her arrest she had agreed to cooperate with investigators and testify against him. Moss had been confronted by federal investigators in October 1983, and prosecutors later argued that Ellen's cooperation made her a target. Moss and Griffin were described as close friends and members of Groove Phi Groove, and testimony indicated that Moss wanted Ellen silenced before she could help authorities build a case against him.
A key witness, Tyrone Trehern, testified that Griffin told him weeks before the shooting that Moss was in trouble and wanted Ellen “eliminated” so she could not testify. Trehern also said Griffin expected to receive drugs, possibly cocaine, a gun, and money totaling about $10,000 for carrying out the killing. According to Trehern, Griffin later admitted while in custody that he had been dancing near Ellen at the party, pulled out a gun, and shot her in the head. Griffin denied responsibility at trial, but the jury heard evidence tying him to the weapon, placing him near Ellen at the critical moment, and connecting the killing to the alleged plan to prevent her testimony.
Griffin was arrested on April 17, 1984, and charged with Ellen's murder, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, and weapons offenses. In October 1984, he was convicted of first-degree murder and criminal conspiracy. He was sentenced to death for the murder and received an additional prison sentence for conspiracy. His conviction was later upheld on appeal, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finding that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's verdict.
Russell Wesley Moss was suspected early, but prosecutors did not initially have enough evidence to charge him. For years, he remained the shadow figure behind the case. That changed after later proceedings in Griffin's case, when Griffin implicated Moss and said Moss had planned the murder and hired or selected him to carry it out. Moss was arrested in 2002, nearly two decades after Ellen was killed, and accused of arranging the contract killing to stop her from testifying in the bank fraud investigation.
In July 2003, Moss entered open guilty pleas to third-degree murder and solicitation to commit murder in connection with Ellen's death. He admitted that he had hired Griffin to kill her while she was cooperating with police. In exchange for Griffin's testimony against Moss, Griffin was removed from death row and allowed to serve a life sentence. On September 23, 2003, Moss was sentenced to eight to twenty years in prison for third-degree murder, with a concurrent five-to-ten-year sentence for solicitation. Later appeals and post-conviction petitions by Moss were rejected, leaving the case resolved as a murder-for-hire plot born out of fear that Ellen's testimony would expose a bank fraud scheme.
