Fourth Gosnell defendant pleads guilty

Steven "Dr. Steve" Massof, a medical school graduate who never obtained a license to practice medicine, Thursday morning became the fourth defendant in the city's abortion-horror case to plead guilty.

Massof, 49, of Pittsburgh, pleaded guilty to a handful of crimes, the most serious being two counts of third-degree murder for the deaths of two babies that had been born viable and alive at the now-closed Women's Medical Society clinic.

Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, who accepted guilty pleas last month from three of the case's 10 defendants, accepted Massof's guilty plea and set a tentative sentencing date for next month.

Under state law, a defendant convicted twice for third-degree murder is subjected to a sentence of life in prison.

Massof, however, will be sparred that fate because prosecutors from the city District Attorney's Office demandatorized one of his murder convictions, which allows Lerner to give a lesser sentence.

Lerner told Massof the maximum sentence he faced was 160 years in prison and a $200,000 fine, though he assured that such a harsh sentence would not be handed down.

Massof, a 1998 graduate of St. George's University Medical School in Grenada, was employed from 2003 to 2008 at the West Philadelphia clinic owned by co-defendant Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 70.

Despite having no medical license, Massof, according to a January grand jury report: "treated medical patients for conditions including diabetes, asthma, pain and infectious diseases; prescribed drugs; anesthetized abortion patients; performed ultrasounds; delivered babies; removed placentas; cut umbilical cords; and, in accordance with Gosnell's practice, severed the spinal cords of the late second-trimester and the third-trimester babies that precipitated."

Massof, trim with dark, receding hair, worked as a bartender and cook in Pittsburgh before going to work for Gosnell, according to the grand jury report.

Gosnell has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of seven babies and the third-degree murder of a 41-year-old patient who died from a drug overdose while having an abortion.

Another defendant, unlicensed clinic employee Lynda Williams, 43, of Wilmington, may also plead guilty next week. She has a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday before Lerner.

If Williams does plead guilty that would leave five defendants to be tried.