Homicide chief: 'Arrest imminent' in killing of Beau Zabel

It was a murder that jolted the city – an aspiring young teacher from a small town in Minnesota killed for his iPod just steps from his apartment in the Italian Market.

Beau Zabel, 23, had been in the Philadelphia only 42 days when he was shot dead while walking home from his summer job at Starbucks in June 2008.

Now, five years later, Philadelphia police and prosecutors say they finally have enough evidence to charge his alleged killer.

"An arrest is imminent," Capt. James Clark, commander of the Police Homicide Unit, said Thursday night.

Clark said he could not comment further on the case until a formal arrest is made, but law enforcement sources said a warrant was being prepared for Marcellus Anthony Jones, 35, of North Philadelphia.

Jones is currently serving a life sentence for killing Tyrek Taylor, 20. In that trial, held in June 2012, prosecutors said Taylor was Jones' getaway driver in the Zabel killing.

Zabel was listening to his iPod, while walking home from in the early hours of June 15. His killer stalked him in the shadows of a side street near 9th and Ellsworth and shot him once in the back of the neck.

Zabel was eight houses from home when he was killed.

His backpack was still on his shoulder, but the pocket where he kept his iPod had been turned out and the device was missing.

At his trial, prosecutors said Jones shot Taylor once in the neck outside his mother's home in South Philadelphia, three months after Zabel's murder.

Jones killed him, they said, to keep him quiet about the Zabel's murder.

Read a five-part series about the killing of Beau Zabel and the search for his killer at www.inquirer.com/almostjusticeEndText