[heavy stone scraping]
This case is "Dracula" meets the "Sons of Anarchy."
I've never seen anybody go to this length to dispose of
and conceal the body.
They told us that there was no body to look for.
The most offensive thing I can think of to do that to another
human being, alive or dead.
It was a genius plan that they concocted.
They thought they were smart.
They were completely outmatched.
[heavy stone scraping]
[Christopher] In early February 2020, a person by the name of
Dottie Palumbo came into the Upper Darby Police Department to
report her son, Keith Palumbo, missing.
I went up the steps, and the man said,
"Can I help you?"
And I said, "Yes, I want to report my son missing."
And the first thing he asked me was,
"How old is your son?" And I said, "He's 36."
Muah. Love you.
And I said, "Something's wrong,
it's not like him to not call me."
[Matthew] Keith and I became best friends in nursery school.
When I first found out he disappeared, yeah, I was
like instantly sick to my stomach.
Because I knew deep down, like, that's not Keith.
He would never let his mother worry like that.
We learned that Keith was a very beloved person
within the community.
Keith was a lifelong resident of
Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
He was an accomplished musician.
[Dottie] He had a toy guitar when he was maybe like four,
and keyboard, little keyboard, any kind of instrument, really.
He just loved music.
He started two different bands with two different groups
of friends.
Thank you everyone for coming out!
We are The Return! [punk music commences]
[Matthew] Keith was a prodigy.
It was unbelievable how fast he could move his fingers.
I mean, he was gifted.
[electric guitar wailing]
[Joseph] His mother, Dottie, told me that one of the pieces of
jewelry that Keith wore all the time was
a gold-plated guitar pick.
It says, "Keith, never let the music stop.
Love, Mom." And he always wore it.
He always had it on.
[Matthew] He was just cool, man.
Without even trying, he was just cool.
Keith was fearless. Keith, he was tough.
He was a badass.
You know, he's not one to tuck tail and run away.
[dark, brooding tones]
[Dottie] It was the night Keith went missing.
[wood creaking]
Keith came in.
He went upstairs and got changed.
[creaking footsteps]
And when he came down, he grabbed a couple
pieces of pizza,
and he said, "I'll see you later."
[Christopher] Dottie stated that he left in her silver vehicle.
From that night, he was never seen or heard from again.
This case is at the forefront of our minds.
So Keith was entered into the national database as
a missing person.
And then from there, we have a checklist
that we follow.
We'd call all the local hospitals,
the morgues, the prisons, homeless shelters,
um, any other places that we believe that we would be
able to find Keith.
But without any success.
We also put in a request to the cell phone provider to
obtain his cellular phone records.
And we did prepare an alert for Keith as well as
Dottie's silver vehicle.
As part of my research into Keith, I located a report from
January 28, 2020,
in which he was a gunshot victim.
That is approximately two weeks to his reported going missing.
Police officers went to the hospital, and attempted to
interview him.
[distant machine beeping]
He would not identify the person who shot him.
I reasonably believe that Keith was in fear for
his life at that time.
We were all thinking, did this have something to do
with his disappearance?
I believe that Keith was, uh --
had some skeletons in his closet.
He had some secrets.
It is my job to sort through all the information that we're
getting and kind of do a deep dive into his life.
[ambling pensive music playing]
[Joseph] In interviewing Keith's family, they indicated to us that Keith
and someone by the name of Michael DeLuca had been
lifelong friends since childhood.
Michael and Keith, they were very good friends.
I mean, they were always over my house.
They were at my house for birthday parties.
[Matthew] He looked out for me and Keith and all.
And we never had anything to worry about or fear, like when
we were with Mike.
Mike DeLuca was one of our core best friends,
like, he was our brother.
[Christopher] I began looking into Michael DeLuca.
He has a very distinctive appearance to him.
Shaved head, tattoos all over his head and neck.
You can't miss him from a mile away.
Michael DeLuca also had a lengthy criminal history,
a violent criminal history.
He had only recently gotten out of jail for
shooting his girlfriend.
[Joseph] We learned that when he came home from prison,
he thought he was going to step into the role as the leader of
the local chapter of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club.
[engine revving]
[Christopher] The Warlocks organization,
specifically the Harpy Warlocks, are a 1% organization within
Philadelphia and the surrounding counties.
For most of these biker groups, violence is a calling card.
A lot of guys in these biker groups are hardened criminals.
[engines revving] [suspenseful music playing]
[Christopher] Keith was not a member of the club, but he was absolutely
surrounding himself with some pretty dangerous people that
could turn on him in the blink of an eye.
Anybody could have been responsible for
Keith's disappearance.
But one of the interesting things that we found was that
Michael DeLuca was also missing.
He was nowhere to be found.
We thought that perhaps this could possibly be connected to
Keith's disappearance.
We were frustrated because we are getting numerous pieces
of, or tidbits of, information from various sources.
Whoever is responsible for Keith's disappearance made
our investigation difficult.
But we got a break in the case
when a patrolman found Dottie's car in Kensington.
[Dave] So this is a missing persons investigation.
Now you have a car turn up in Kensington,
a feared neighborhood in Philadelphia.
I think that was the real surprise for investigators.
But they had never covered a case like this,
and they're dealing with an outlaw motorcycle gang,
this has the potential now to really open a can of worms.
Keith Palumbo was last seen on February 6, 2020, in
Upper Darby Township.
He was in his mother's vehicle, which was a silver vehicle.
Investigators put out an alert looking for this car.
Days later, they found it in Kensington.
Normally, when we find people or vehicles in the Kensington
section of Philadelphia, my initial thought is
they're involved in the drug trade.
It is a supermarket for heroin and drugs.
People come from all over the country to go to Kensington
to use heroin.
It is not unusual to see dozens of people bent over at
the waist, staring at the ground.
It's a cesspool up there.
[Bob] The detectives were left wondering why was
Mrs. Palumbo's car in Kensington, and where was
Keith Palumbo?
[Dottie] Keith, number one, would never leave my car anywhere.
And number two, he wouldn't be in Kensington.
Keith had a problem with drugs when he was younger, but he had
been sober for over 10 years.
[Joseph] We thought maybe someone left the car up in Kensington to
make it seem like Keith may have relapsed.
They thought they had the perfect plan to
get rid of Keith.
So the car was processed for any latent prints or any
physical evidence.
But it was wiped clean.
We believe that there was an effort to try to stay ahead
of the police.
[Christopher] It was very difficult.
Whoever did this obviously went to extreme lengths to
conceal their crimes.
It's very evil and very calculating.
I was thinking, what could have happened Keith, is this
a potential homicide case? Where is this body?
When I found out the car was found in Kensington,
I'm talking to Dottie, Keith's mom, and we're trying
to work this out.
We're trying to figure this out.
I was every night wondering, where is Keith?
Where's my best friend? Like, is he alive?
Is he dead?
[Dottie] We posted on Facebook.
I mean, we were almost 24 hours a day trying to get leads from
people that might know something.
[Joseph] At the same time, Keith's best friend and member of
the Warlocks, Michael DeLuca, was still missing, which was
out of the ordinary.
We were trying to put all the pieces of
the puzzle together.
And we needed to delve into how Michael DeLuca fit
into the investigation.
But while we were investigating Keith's disappearance,
rumors were flying that Keith could would be an informant
for the police.
A lot of the Warlocks club members thought
he was a snitch.
We learned that there was an incident between Keith
and a patched-in member of the Warlocks motorcycle group
by the name of Buck Evans.
Keith was in a house that belonged to Buck Evans' son.
Buck Evans' son was allegedly dealing drugs
out of that house.
Shortly after Keith left that house, the police raided that
house and arrested Buck Evans' son.
So Buck thought Keith had snitched on his son.
We've dealt with Buck Evans before in different capacities
as the Upper Darby Police Department.
He was in and out of prison for an array of crimes,
but I've talked to the jurisdictions involved
and the police departments and the detectives involved.
100% Keith was not a police informant or a snitch.
That's pretty much the worst thing you could do from where,
you know, where we come from is to rat on someone,
be a, you know, a snitch.
Keith lived by a code, he was loyal, but he was riding
with some pretty dangerous guys.
[Dave] These guys, they can turn on anybody.
Everything is on the table.
And now you really have to wonder what happened.
We're all, like, trying to stay hopeful and positive.
But it's harder and harder to remain positive
and optimistic as the weeks went by.
[Dottie] As time went on, I knew that he was already gone
because it was too long of a time for him to
stay away from us.
[Joseph] We thought that perhaps Keith was probably the victim
of homicide.
But at this point, he's still listed as a missing person.
So, without Keith's body, without locating him,
there's really nothing unless someone could lead us to Keith.
And that stymied us a little bit.
There were a lot of scenarios.
Keith disappears, they don't know where he is.
DeLuca disappears, they don't know where he is.
They're close friends.
Coincidence that they're both disappearing at the same time?
We knew that Warlocks member, Buck Evans, has
a dislike for Keith.
We learned that he has a warrant out for
a parole violation.
We went after Buck Evans, uh, specifically to see if
we can get him to talk about what happened.
[Dave] The come-to-Jesus moment is when they bring Buck Evans in,
and now the investigation really heats up.
Heading into the interview with Warlocks member, Buck Evans,
we know that we had to play our cards right.
[Joseph] We knew that Buck Evans did not like Keith Palumbo.
We brought him to Philadelphia Police Headquarters.
[Christopher] All of a sudden, Buck Evans admits that he was the one
who had shot Keith previously on January 28th.
[Joseph] If Buck was admitting that he shot Keith prior to
his disappearance because he believed that Keith had
snitched on his own son, it certainly raises
the question of, could he have shot and killed Keith Palumbo?
Buck Evans was low-hanging fruit and was our only lead,
so we decided to continue with the information that
he was providing us.
It's then Buck Evans told us that before Keith went missing,
something went down between Keith and Michael DeLuca in
the Warlocks' clubhouse in Southwest Philly.
It was tough for me to wrap my mind around what
possibly occurred between Mike DeLuca and Keith Palumbo,
because for the simple fact that they were childhood
friends, Keith trusted Mike.
Is it possible that Michael murdered his best friend?
The information that was provided by Buck Evans needed
to be verified.
I obtained a search warrant for the Warlock clubhouse.
So it's a two-story building.
The clubhouse was on the first floor.
The table in the kitchen was engraved with "Warlocks"
on both sides of it.
There was signage for the club, motorcycle parts, things that
would go hand in hand with it being the clubhouse of
a motorcycle group.
We were looking for physical evidence of a crime.
All of the carpeting was removed.
We took carpet fibers,
and the walls were all painted black, which was weird.
But as you just looked harder and closer through
the black paint,
you could see the blood spatter.
I've been doing this a long time.
It's very difficult to clean up a bloody crime scene.
Finally, after some deviations with people trying to throw us
off, we have key pieces of evidence that
something happened there.
[Joseph] If Keith was killed at the clubhouse,
the people who were involved think they're smarter than
the police, because we didn't know where Keith was
and we didn't have his body.
Shortly after we searched the clubhouse, we had left
a police officer on the property because we were
still processing it.
And a woman by the name of Donna Morelli,
who was allegedly the leader of the Warlocks, came around
and indicated that she was the owner of the property
and wanted to know what was going on.
We learned Donna Morelli was married to the leader of
the Warlocks, but that person died, and Donna Morelli more
or less inherited the club.
We were wondering, could Michael DeLuca have shot
Keith inside that property?
So I asked her where DeLuca was staying.
Donna told us he was living in the clubhouse, but she had not
seen him for several days and may be somewhere on
the West Coast.
So she was giving information, bits and pieces, to make it seem
like she was being cooperative, when in reality,
I think she felt that we would never locate him,
if he was on the run from the police.
[dark, brooding music playing]
[Christopher] Right around this time,
Keith's cell phone records came back.
We discovered that before Keith went missing,
this cell phone was last pinging in the area of
Mount Moriah Cemetery,
the largest cemetery in Pennsylvania, over 200 acres.
[Dave] Mount Moriah Cemetery is huge.
It's probably three or four city blocks, long,
deep, and wide.
And it's got folks in there from before the Civil War.
It's got Medal of Honor winners in there,
dignitaries, celebrities.
Now investigators have to wonder, could Keith Palumbo
also be in the cemetery?
And then we learn that Donna Morelli's residence backs up
to the cemetery.
It was also brought to our attention that she is
a board member for the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery.
So it wasn't lost on us the fact that Donna had access
to the entire cemetery, and we were wondering if
Donna could be involved.
Hiding a body in a cemetery is ingenious.
And when you see the number of headstones,
crypts, and mausoleums in there, probably like finding
a needle in a haystack.
[Joseph] The task before us was to find a body in a cemetery.
What better way to hide a body than in a cemetery that's
supposed to have bodies in it?
It was April 3rd of 2020.
We went looking for evidence of Keith, and I saw how large
the cemetery was.
It just appeared to me to be a daunting task.
We probably had
20 to 25 people out there walking around the cemetery,
looking for any signs of things that could have been moved
or were recently disturbed or maybe a freshly dug grave.
When I was walking around, I was overwhelmed.
I didn't think that we would find Keith.
So we were walking around for a very long time.
[Joseph] And then one of the police officers who was with us
happened to notice that there was a very large capstone that
looked like it was a little bit off center, and that there were
what we thought were fresh scratch marks.
So that further aroused our suspicions.
There's cracks in it that just shouldn't be there.
And people started saying, "What do you think of that?"
[Joseph] According to the monument, the last time that anyone had
been buried there was in the year of 1810.
This was obviously something that needed to be explored.
So we come equipped for this specific task.
We brought our endoscopy camera, and we attach
a flashlight to it, and we put it into one of the cracks.
We were all surprised of what was down there.
We were thinking, is it possible?
Is Keith down there?
We needed to figure out what's inside the actual crypt.
We did not have the capability of moving the stone.
It weighed well in excess of 2,000 pounds.
So we enlisted the help of
the Philadelphia Fire Department.
[phone ringing]
Rescue One came, and they pulled that
cover off slowly.
[heavy stone scraping]
I remember me and Detective Bamberski just looking at
each other and like, I can't believe it.
I just can't believe it.
[Christopher] I was shocked that once we pulled that cover back,
that it was that big underneath.
It was just a massive structure underneath that you would never
be able to fathom just standing there looking at it from
ground level, this massive underground crypt.
[Joseph] It looked like something out of a movie.
It was approximately 20 feet down to the bottom
of the crypt.
This is "Dracula" meets "Sons of Anarchy."
[John] At that point, we got a ladder, and I went down.
I had never dealt with anything like this in my career.
It was a brick structure that formed a dome.
And there were a number of coffins down in
the bottom of it.
Then one of the investigators, upon closer look,
realized there wasn't one, but there were two
fresh bodies.
The one was not identifiable.
[Joseph] It was in a very advanced state of decomposition with
a rope wrapped around the neck.
We thought this was the victim of a violent death.
[Christopher] And then we looked at the other body, which we could identify
as Keith.
He was still somewhat recognizable by
his facial features.
And he was still wearing the guitar pick that his mother
had given him around his neck.
We could see that Keith had been shot in the head
two times.
There was a blue tarp. There was all the carpeting.
All the carpet padding, looked like it had been removed from
the Warlocks clubhouse, was also thrown down in
the bottom of the crypt.
We thought there was absolutely more than one person involved.
And they were trying to get away with murder.
But we did not know who killed Keith Palumbo or what happened
to Michael DeLuca.
This is probably one of the more ingenious ways
I've seen of getting rid of a body.
[Christopher] When we found Keith, I got a feeling of relief that
we could finally give Dottie the closure that
she desperately needed.
[Dottie] It was eight weeks we were looking for him.
Two detectives came to the door.
I wasn't expecting good news, and I said, "What happened?"
He said, "He was shot."
As a mom, if you lose a child, you're never gonna get over it.
[Matthew] My best friend, my lifelong best friend, my best man in
my wedding...
[rough exhale]
It's like he's gone.
You know, like he's not coming back.
It just broke my heart. It was like the worst
possible outcome was Keith was gone.
[Joseph] After we found the two bodies in the cemetery,
we were curious as to whether or not members of the Warlocks
were using the cemetery as a dumping ground.
We knew Donna Morelli is the supposed leader
of the Warlocks.
So we then got a search warrant for her house.
We found a lot of handguns, and then a lot of rifles.
We also confiscated Donna Morelli's red pickup truck.
And in the back bed, I found four brown carpet fibers that
had matched the carpet fibers from the crypt,
and the Warlock clubhouse.
The whole case is adding up. It's all coming in together.
When we found Keith's body, we knew that it was a murder.
We knew that Keith had been killed in the clubhouse,
but we did not know who actually
committed the murder.
But I think everybody was shocked when they realized
who was responsible.
Keith Palumbo was missing for two months.
Once we recovered Keith's body, it was classified as a murder.
Now we need to figure out what happened to Keith.
We know that Warlock's leader, Donna Morelli's property,
backs up to the border of Mount Moriah Cemetery.
We thought could she or any members of the Warlocks
Motorcycle Club be responsible for Keith's murder?
We needed to see if we can get somebody to talk about
what happened.
[Joseph] I brought Donna Morelli into the homicide unit
for questioning.
She admitted that Michael DeLuca and another
prospect of the Warlocks, Billy Gibson,
removed Keith's body from the clubhouse,
[tarp rustling]
put him in the back of her pickup truck,
and brought it back to her house.
She indicated that she's the one who opened the grave
for DeLuca and Billy Gibson.
[Joseph] I asked her, "How did she open up a 2,000 pound stone?"
And she said "Detective, I could move
a jersey barrier with a 2x4."
[heavy stone scraping]
[suspenseful music playing]
[tarp rustling] [muffled thud]
[stone scraping]
[Joseph] When we questioned Donna Morelli, she gave us a video
on her phone.
It clearly shows Michael DeLuca and Billy Gibson pulling up in
the back of Donna Morelli's property in her pickup truck,
and although you can't see Keith's body, you can clearly
see the carpet and the padding from the clubhouse
of the Warlocks.
We needed to speak with DeLuca and Billy Gibson,
but Michael DeLuca was nowhere to be found.
So we got an arrest warrant for Billy Gibson.
[sirens wailing]
When we got back to headquarters, he told us in
detail what happened to Keith Palumbo.
Michael DeLuca was known as Kaos, and that was
a pretty accurate nickname.
[Joseph] As a reward for participating in the murder,
Billy Gibson said he was then patched in as an official
member of the Warlocks.
We knew Buck Evans,
he was still incarcerated on the parole issue.
He also pointed the finger at Michael DeLuca, and was probably
also involved in the murder.
We now had to go back to Buck Evans.
Each one of those witnesses was telling the story in a way that
minimized their own involvement, which is not
something unusual at all.
Mike DeLuca was not around to be able to defend himself.
We were unable to locate him at that time.
[Joseph] We immediately, uh, set wheels in motion
to locate and arrest Michael DeLuca.
Coincidentally, we learned Michael DeLuca was pulled over
by the police in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The police found a loaded firearm in Michael DeLuca's
vehicle, and he was subsequently arrested.
Buck Evans, Billy Gibson, and Donna Morelli, they're all
pointing the finger at Michael DeLuca.
The consistencies amongst their, each one of
their stories of what happened, showed that they were telling
the truth about Keith's murder.
[floorboards creaking]
[echoing footsteps]
[Joseph] We believe on the night that Keith was killed,
he had his mother's car.
Some point, he meets up with club members, Buck Evans
and Billy Gibson, they go to the clubhouse.
[door creaking]
DeLuca came out with the firearm
[gun clicks]
and with no provocation,
shot Keith in the face two times.
[gunshot blasts twice]
[high-pitched ringing]
After Keith was dumped in the crypt, DeLuca instructed
Evans and Gibson to go up to
the Kensington area,
and dumped Keith's mother's car.
And then they all returned as if nothing had ever happened.
Michael murdered his best friend for selfish reasons.
He believed that Keith Palumbo was a snitch.
He is a twisted individual.
[Bob] Michael DeLuca pled guilty to third-degree murder.
Consecutive to that ten-year sentence for the Wyoming case
was a 15- to 35-year sentence in Pennsylvania.
Buck Evans and Billy Gibson each pled guilty to obstruction
of justice, hindering, and related charges
to the disposal of Keith's body.
We learned the other body found inside that crypt
was David Rossillo.
He was a prospect to the Warlocks.
He was shot and killed by a Warlock named Michael DiMauro,
either late December of 2017 or very early in 2018.
For the David Rossillo case, we relied heavily on
the testimony of Donna Morelli.
And she was given immunity for her role in that murder.
With regards to Keith's murder, she was sentenced to
11 and a half to 23 months, followed by a period
of probation.
I've never seen anybody go to this length to dispose of
a body and conceal the body.
And quite frankly, it worked.
I don't think that anybody would have ever
found Keith had it not been for the fact that
a police officer saw the way that
the capstone had been moved.
We were able to lay Keith to rest, which we were so happy
that we were able to do that.
When I think of what Keith thought that night,
when he saw what he was going to do,
I can't imagine what --
I can't imagine what he was thinking,
because it was his best friend pointing the gun in his face.
♪♪
The case was a true whodunnit mystery.
An individual was burned in two barrels.
He was just very cold... very calculated.
Whoever did this, they had a plan.
It was one of those cases where I thought
"Maybe we met our match."
[creaking]