Girl, 14, others also charged in slayings

Five additional people, including a 14-year-old girl and two other juveniles, have been charged in the slayings of a couple found buried behind a Camden rowhouse, and for the first time, authorities are describing the murders as gang-related.

Authorities believe that on the afternoon of Feb. 22, the suspects were among a group of at least 10 people who gagged, beat, strangled, and eventually stabbed and shot Michael Hawkins, 23, and his girlfriend, Muriah Ashley Huff, 18. The suspects then buried the bodies in a shallow, snowy grave in the backyard of the redbrick house on the 500 block of Berkley Street, authorities said.

The new arrests come after last week's arraignment of Dennis Welch, 19, of Camden, who was charged with Hawkins' murder.

Officials said Welch took part in an effort to hide the killings by scrubbing the walls of the home with bleach and ripping up the bloodstained carpets.

Investigators are searching for at least four more people in the killings.

And, said Jason Laughlin, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office: "If there are people who did not participate in the killings, but might have covered up the crime in any way, that would be part of our ongoing investigation."

Hawkins, of Mount Holly, and, Huff, of Cinnaminson, were killed in a dispute between factions of the Bloods and Crips street gangs, law enforcement sources involved in the investigation said yesterday. The sources asked not to be named since the investigations were active.

One of the suspects had been involved in a shooting with a Crips gang member two weeks before the murders, the sources said. Hawkins, a Crips member friendly with one of the suspects, was killed in retaliation, the sources said.

Huff, a cosmetology student at Burlington County Institute of Technology, who had been dating Hawkins for about a year, was not a gang member, the sources said.

Michal Ramos, a classmate of Huff's, said Hawkins was a known Crip.

"Everybody that knew she was dating him knew that he was in the gang," she said yesterday.

Hawkins was beaten in the upstairs of the house until almost all the bones of his face were broken, authorities said. He was stuffed in a closet before he was shot in the head, and Huff was beaten and stabbed in the basement, sources said. Both had been tortured for hours.

"This was evil," said Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson. "It's impossible for any sane person to wrap their mind around what took place in that house."

After a joint investigation by the Prosecutor's Office and Camden police, U.S. marshals tracked Lance Fulton, 19, of Camden, to Whiteville, N.C., where he was arrested Saturday. He has been charged in the murder of Hawkins and is awaiting extradition to New Jersey.

The Camden High graduate sometimes stayed with his grandmother, who also lives on Berkley Street, said his mother, Latonya McGorder of Philadelphia, but he had recently rented a room in the house where the killings occurred.

McGorder and neighbors said the house was a hangout for teenagers in the neighborhood.

No one answered a knock at the door yesterday.

McGorder said she did not like that her son was living there because of all the late-night parties. She said she did not know if her son "was fully a member of the Bloods."

She said her son was out looking for a job at the time of the slayings.

There has been a proliferation of gangs in Camden over the last few years, Thomson said, and a rise in networking with members in other cities.

The suspects were members of the Piru Bloods, originally a West Coast sect, sources said.

Yesterday, U.S. marshals and Camden police arrested Darrel Pierre, 19, of Merchantville, at Fox Meadow Apartments in Maple Shade. He has been charged with both killings.

Two 17-year-old males and the 14-year-old girl were arrested last week. The girl was charged with Huff's murder, and the 17-year-olds with both killings. They are being held at the Camden County Youth Detention Center while prosecutors consider a petition to have them tried in adult court, said Laughlin.

Any juvenile at least 16 years old may automatically be transferred to adult court if petitioned by the prosecutor, said Laughlin. In the 14-year-old's case, prosecutors would need to argue that it was unlikely the girl could be rehabilitated by the age of 19, he said.

Huff was buried yesterday. Family members at her home declined to speak. Meanwhile, friends are struggling to comprehend her violent death.

"We are speechless," Ramos said. "It wasn't meant for her to go - for them to kill her."