Fourth Gosnell defendant pleads guilty

STEVEN "Dr. Steve" Massof, a medical-school graduate who never obtained a license to practice medicine, yesterday 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 in the deaths of two babies that had been born viable and alive at the now-closed Women's Medical Society clinic in West Philadelphia.

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 spared that fate because prosecutors from the city District Attorney's Office "demandatorized" one of his murder convictions, a prosecutorial approach that allows Lerner to give a lesser sentence.

Lerner told Massof that the maximum sentence he faced was 160 years in prison and a $200,000 fine, though he assured him 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 clinic owned by co-defendant Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 70, at 38th and Lancaster.

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" killed at the clinic.

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.

Another defendant, unlicensed clinic employee Lynda Williams, 43, of Wilmington, may also plead guilty next week. If Williams does plead guilty, that would leave five defendants to be tried.