Joseph Vignola Jr. admits attacking woman he met on Craigslist

Joseph C. Vignola Jr., son of a former Philadelphia city councilman and controller, pleaded guilty Monday to beating an 18-year-old woman he met on a website and slashing her throat in a City Avenue hotel room.

He had been charged with aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, and possession of an instrument of crime in the May 28, 2008, attack, in which he had left the woman for dead.

With his parents in the courtroom, Vignola, 21, repeatedly answered in a subdued voice, "Yes, Your Honor," when Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes asked him if he knowingly was entering guilty pleas.

Sentencing guidelines call for up to 30 years in prison, the judge said, noting that defense lawyer Norris Gelman had recommended 41/2 to 7 years. Hughes set sentencing for Nov. 3.

Vignola's victim did not attend the hearing.

In detailing the case against him, Assistant District Attorney Robert Foster said evidence, including DNA and confessions to police, linked him to the attack.

Vignola met the woman on Craigslist's "erotic services" section in May 2008, Foster said. The two got together at the North American Motor Inn on City Avenue about 9 p.m. that May 28.

The two had consensual sex, then began to argue. Vignola punched the woman in the throat and pinned her to the floor, sitting on her abdomen and placing his knees on her arms until she was unconscious. With a knife, he made a six-inch slash on the right side of her neck.

Vignola then took back the money he had given the woman and left her for dead in the hotel room.

Before confessing to police, Vignola blamed the attack on a "light-skinned black man" who burst into the room as he and the woman were having sex.

On Monday, the judge sternly told him, "You need to own up to what you did." She said he could also have been charged with robbery.

"You told a heinous lie about a black man," Hughes said, adding that the victim "didn't make any decision to justify getting her throat slit."

She warned him: "What you say on Nov. 3 is going to have a great deal to do" with the sentence she hands down.