A murder victim - and a mystery

At times, it could seem as if Rian Thal were two different people.

She attended Hebrew school at Congregation Or Ami in Lafayette Hill, and later worked as an exotic dancer.

She once turned aggressive toward customs officials at Philadelphia International Airport, but lovingly nurtured her cats at home.

She mourned the loss of her father, but his shining memory wasn't enough to steer her away from drugs.

In death, Thal, 34, has proved most of all to be a mystery, a woman who friends insist was a hardworking professional party planner, but who Philadelphia police say was heavily involved in the city's drug trade.

"The Rian I know, I don't believe that," said LaMar Campbell, 32, an Atlanta real estate broker who became friends with Thal in the late 1990s, shortly before she started working at Bluezette, a former Old City restaurant.

But court records show that in 2000, Thal was arrested at the airport as she returned from overseas and was charged with attempting to smuggle methamphetamine into the country. The next month, while working as a bartender at a Delaware County strip club, Thal was charged with possession of cocaine after a police raid.

In the smuggling case, Thal was sentenced to six to 23 months of home confinement, to be supervised by an electronic monitoring device attached to her ankle, records show.

She complained to the court that the device would prevent her from working as a dancer at local clubs, according to a source familiar with the case. The court advised Thal to wear boots - the device would stay on her leg.

Last month, Thal's life came to a violent end. She and a friend, Timothy Gilmore, 40, of Ohio, were shot to death on June 27 by three gunmen who waited in the hall outside Thal's apartment. She lived in the Piazza at Schmidts, a new luxury development in Northern Liberties on the site of the old Schmidt's brewery.

Police found four kilograms of cocaine and more than $100,000 in cash in Thal's seventh-floor apartment.

A law enforcement official familiar with the drug underworld told The Inquirer that Thal worked as a "holder," one who gets paid by dealers for storing their drugs. But that's not all she was, investigators said yesterday. Police believe she was involved at a deeper level, selling and possibly trafficking in narcotics.

Police said yesterday they were still operating on the theory that the shooting started out as an armed robbery, then escalated to murder.

Five days after the killings, Philadelphia police arrested Katoya Jones, 25, who lives in the same building as Thal. Police say she let three armed men and a lookout into the building, subverting the security system.

Police are searching for a high-level drug dealer who they believe set up the shootings, persuading Jones to help the killers get inside.

Thal was president and sole officer of RiGirl Productions, the Philadelphia party-planning firm she founded in 2003. She was known for club events that attracted professional athletes, celebrities, and aspiring rap stars. In April, fliers advertised a dual birthday party for her and James "Kamal" Gray, of the Roots, the Grammy-winning band, at Plush nightclub.

People who met Thal invariably remembered her for her blond hair, her kilowatt smile, her bubbling-over personality. Friends say her raspy voice was instantly recognizable.

Thal had always been popular, at Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School and later at the places where she worked. She stood only 5-feet-4, and in photos she posted on MySpace and other social networking Web sites, she seemed diminutive.

Her event planning in Philadelphia put her in contact with people such as Mayor Nutter and actress Carmen Electra, but her roots were in the Pennsylvania suburbs.

She grew up in what school friends called "the townhouses," a community on Birch Drive off Ridge Pike in Lafayette Hill. It was one of those neighborhoods, friends said, where everyone "used to live" before moving to more affluent areas.

Her family consisted of her mother, Sandy; father, Harry; and sister, Lauren. Her father died in 2001 at 65 and Rian mourned him until the day she died.

On her MySpace account, under the category of "Heroes," Thal named only one person: "My father." On Father's Day, six days before she was shot, she sent out this message on Twitter: "U don't realize things until there gone. I love u daddy."

Efforts to reach her family were unsuccessful yesterday.

In the late 1990s, a friend recalled, Thal worked at Katmandu, the well-known Delaware Avenue club. She also was headed for trouble.

On May 7, 2000, at 3:05 p.m., Thal and three friends landed at Philadelphia International from Paris aboard US Air Flight 27. Their trip home had originated in Amsterdam.

According to two sources familiar with the case, customs officials had become suspicious even before the group left the United States.

Thal and her companions had split up while preparing to board, then regrouped on the plane, which seemed odd. Officials took the foursome off the plane - causing them to miss their flight - searched them, and discovered large quantities of cash.

The four flew out of the country the next day. Officials waited to see what they would bring back.

When the four arrived back in the States, an inspector opened Thal's suitcase and found about 200 diamond-shape pills, which a field test determined were methamphetamine.

At that point, Thal became irate, shouting and cursing at customs officials, a law enforcement source said.

Court records show she was charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver, and conspiracy to possess with intent to deliver.

That wasn't the end of Thal's troubles.

A little more than seven weeks later, on June 27, 2000, state police raided Smiley's Gentlemen's Club in Ridley Township, where Thal was working as a bartender. Undercover officers had made a series of visits to the bar, buying cocaine and ecstasy from dealers inside. During the raid, a trooper said he saw Thal toss a plastic bag containing white powder onto the floor. The substance was determined to be cocaine.

She was charged with possessing a controlled substance, and freed from Delaware County Prison on $50,000 bail. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation, to be served concurrently with her sentence for smuggling.

Friends say the woman they knew had no use for drugs. Thal loved exercising and regularly went to tanning salons, they said.

A close friend, Jennifer George, a fellow event planner in Philadelphia, said the widely published photos of Thal posing with celebrities at crowded nightclubs were misleading.

"People around us live in the fast lane; we don't live in the fast lane," George, 32, said. "She was in these clubs because she was working."

George knew Thal for five years and said she never saw her ingest more than a glass of Grey Goose vodka.

She said she knew about Thal's pleading guilty to drug possession but didn't see it as indicative of her life.

"You don't think she can change?" George asked.

New York City caterer Chubby Smith, who met Thal four years ago and came to Philadelphia to attend her funeral, said Thal was too busy to be involved with drugs. Thal's RiGirl company was eagerly sought out by clients, she said.

If Thal ever thought she was in danger, her Internet posts gave no sign. On Twitter she wrote about getting manicures with friends, playing with her cats, and going to strip clubs.

On April 15: "Oh my god I am having a foodgasm, chocolate chip bread pudding!!!!!"

On May 7: "Just got done working out!!!"

On June 26 she posted two messages asking if actor Patrick Swayze had died. Then, "Patrick Swayze is alive, THANK GOD, just a rumor."

On the morning of June 27, hours before she was killed, Thal, an Aries, posted a link to her horoscope.

Her friend Campbell, originally from Chester, said Thal never mentioned drugs. He was shocked to read about the cocaine in her apartment.

"Even still, I don't think she was really involved in it," he said. "Rian was a phenomenal girl."