He admits killing gun collector in '08, faces life

David Jeffery told homicide detectives that he went to Karl Papendick's North Philadelphia home, in an old warehouse near the Kensington and Fishtown borders, to unload some wood the day after Christmas 2008.

As Papendick, 37, showed him some guns he legally owned and collected, Jeffery said he pulled the slide of a semiautomatic back and forth and the gun went off, hitting a kneeling Papendick in the back of the head as the victim was retrieving more guns from a safe.

Jeffery told police he then "took another Xanax, I chugged a beer, then I left."

He said he took two guns, including the weapon that killed Papendick, and threw them into a sewer, but he told detectives he didn't mean to kill him.

Yesterday, Jeffery, 32, of Wenonah, Gloucester County, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Dressed in an oversize brown shirt, he told Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner in a firm voice that he understands the charge carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.

Assistant District Attorney Eileen Hurley said after the hearing that "the evidence totally refutes" Jeffery's contention that he accidentally shot the gun. She contended that the defendant, because of financial woes, shot the victim to rob him of his guns so he could sell them.

Papendick, a painter, sculptor and photographer, graduated in 1996 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he majored in painting. He made his living repairing computers from his home, on Howard Street near Palmer.

Jeffery told homicide detectives he met Papendick in a park, where their dogs played.

On the night of the murder, friends who were to go to Papendick's house for dinner found him on the floor and called 9-1-1. He was pronounced dead in his home shortly afterward.

As Hurley read the details of the case in court, a friend of Papendick's sobbed in the gallery as she sat next to the victim's stepmother. The two women declined to comment after the hearing.

After the shooting, Jeffery and his girlfriend went to Florida. In March 2009, the girlfriend called Philadelphia homicide detectives, telling them that Jeffery had confided to her that he murdered Papendick.

Later that year, Jeffery was stopped in Gloucester County on a DUI charge. Authorities then put together that he was wanted in Philadelphia for the murder.