{"id":258736,"date":"2025-09-27T12:42:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/258736\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T12:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:42:14","slug":"man-sentenced-for-conspiring-to-murder-government-officials-nbc10-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/258736\/","title":{"rendered":"Man sentenced for conspiring to murder government officials \u2013 NBC10 Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 95 years in prison for planning to murder multiple government officials.<\/p>\n

Steven Smink, 62, was convicted on August 15, 2025, of one count of conspiracy to commit murder and five counts of attempted murder \u2014 all 1st degree \u2014 and conspiracy to transport weapons and transporting weapons \u2014 both 4th degree \u2014 following a trial in Atlantic County, Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Division of Criminal Justice announced. <\/p>\n

Officials said Smink was convicted of conspiring with others from January 2018 to December of 2020 to cause the death of Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae, First Assistant Prosecutor Harold Shapiro, two superior court judges and an assistant prosecutor who were all involved in his 2014 conviction for arson charges.<\/p>\n

Smink, a former owner of a southern New Jersey bowling alley, was previously sentenced to serve 15 years in state prison for orchestrating a plan to burn down a rival bowling alley<\/a>, officials said. Two Philadelphia residents accused of starting the fire also pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n

In April 2019, officials said that while Smink was serving his sentence in Northern State Prison in Newark, the New Jersey State Police Central Security Unit received information from the Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness that Smink had hired a cooperating witness in late 2017 and early 2018 to help him carry out a murder-for-hire plot.<\/p>\n

An investigation revealed that Smirk had initially hired a member of the Latin Kings gang, who was also imprisoned, to carry out and execute the murders, according to officials. The Latin Kings member died before carrying out the murder-for-hire plot. <\/p>\n

Officials said Smink then got in contact with the cooperating witness to find a hitman as he oversaw the transfer of sports memorabilia to pay for the hits and directed his mother, Esther Smink \u2014 who has now passed away \u2014 to write correspondence in furtherance of the conspiracy on his behalf.<\/p>\n

According to officials, in a meeting with an undercover officer, Smink stated: \u201cIf everybody was together, wipe the whole place out and kill everybody it just looks like somebody making an assault, a gangs meeting.\u201d He also said: \u201cIf somebody shot up the place it looks like the gang getting retribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sentence handed down today is appropriate for this defendant, who planned to kill public servants for doing their jobs when they convicted him for previously committed crimes,\u201d\u00a0said Platkin.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThanks to the excellent investigative work by State Police and prison officials, his murder-for-hire plot was discovered before anyone was harmed. I want to recognize the skill and dedication of the prosecutors with the Division of Criminal Justice, who helped secure justice today.\u201d<\/p>\n

During a setencing hearing, Prosecutor Webb-McRae addressed the court: <\/p>\n

\u201cI signed up for my job,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Webb-McRae.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cAnd as the front facing symbol of my office, it could be argued that I knew the risks when I did. But Judge, my family didn\u2019t. My neighbors didn\u2019t. My church family didn\u2019t. And when they read that someone was arrested in a plot to kill me, they feel a little less safe spending time in spaces where I am present.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials said Smink must serve 85 percent of the sentence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 95 years in prison for planning to murder multiple…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":258737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,401,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-258736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-jersey","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115276319896142358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}