Darby man, 19, gets house arrest for agreeing to Facebook posting seeking a killer

Timothy Bynum tried to get his last job through Facebook.

For the next eight years, the 19-year-old Darby Borough man will have to rely on newspaper classified ads.

A ban on using the Internet was part of Bynum's sentence after he pleaded guilty Friday to taking up a Facebook solicitation to kill a Southwest Philadelphia woman's boyfriend.

Bynum never got the chance to fulfill the contract he made with London Eley, the 19-year-old woman who had issues with her ex-friend and father of her child.

That fact, and Bynum's lack of prior arrests, were why Common Pleas Court Judge James Murray Lynn agreed to accept the plea deal that puts Bynum under house arrest for 111/2 to 23 months followed by eight years' probation.

"What you did was amazingly serious," Lynn told Bynum. "You tried to play God and went to whisper in someone's ear, 'I'm going to smoke somebody.' Well, only God can do that."

For someone considering a career as a contract killer, the lanky Bynum was pretty timid in court and told Lynn he was "scared."

"You got off light," Lynn told him.

But Lynn warned Bynum that if he violates the terms of his house arrest or probation in any way, "I will violate you and put you in prison and I will have 20 years to play with. Understand that?"

"Yes," Bynum quietly replied.

Bynum, who told Lynn "I've never even been in a fight," pleaded guilty to a count of criminal solicitation to commit murder.

According to Assistant District Attorney John O'Neill, Bynum responded last June to Eley's Facebook post that read, "I will pay somebody a stack [slang for $1,000] to kill my baby father."

O'Neill said Eley spoke with Bynum and gave him the address and description of her ex-beau Corey White.

But White's relatives also saw the Facebook solicitation and called police, and Eley and Bynum were arrested before she could pay the money or he could carry out the hit.

Eley pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy and was sentenced to five years' probation.

White, 22, survived until August when he was gunned down on a Southwest Philadelphia street in what authorities say was a drug dispute.

Defense attorney Lopez T. Thompson urged Lynn to accept the plea agreement, citing the 11th grader's lack of a criminal record, his age, and that he lives with his parents.

Lynn told Bynum that he had to finish high school and then pursue higher education or get a job.

"The streets of our city are covered in blood every day by people who think that they are God," Lynn added.