On the evening of November 17, 2016, Brian Keith Jones was found with a fatal contact gunshot wound to his left shoulder outside a Philadelphia apartment complex. The injury was so severe that a medical examiner later testified it would have caused death within one to two minutes.
Investigations into the death of the male victim revealed a sinister plot connected to a motorcycle gang. Charles L.
Kulow, a member of the Breed Motorcycle Gang who went by the nickname 'Ruthless,' had been at the apartment earlier that day. He had instructed another individual to invite Jones over, stating he wanted to 'talk to him.' What began as a supposed conversation escalated into a fatal encounter.
Multiple eyewitnesses at the scene testified that they heard Kulow admit to shooting Jones. They also witnessed Kulow standing near Jones's body after the gunshot. In a brazen attempt to conceal the crime, Kulow, along with another unidentified male, was seen removing Jones's body from the apartment. The two men dragged him down a set of stairs and left him outside. Surveillance footage from the area corroborated the witness accounts, showing Kulow and the unknown male arriving together and later moving the victim's body behind a trashcan before walking away.
During the subsequent investigation and trial, it was established that Charles L. Kulow did not have a license to carry a firearm in Philadelphia. A jury convicted Kulow of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and two violations of the Uniform Firearms Act. For his role in the death of Brian Keith Jones, he was sentenced to an aggregate of 17 to 34 years in prison. Kulow later appealed the conviction, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and the inclusion of an accomplice-liability jury instruction, but the verdict was affirmed.
