'Death, deceit and deals': Contract killing embroils du Pont heirs

It's stuff for the plot of the best pulp fiction.

An heir of the du Pont family kindles an affair with a former prostitute, their relationship tied together by a fondness for drugs. They go to Las Vegas so that he can divorce his estranged wife who is draining his share of the family fortune. The family patriarch learns of their plans and seeks out a "small, two-bit ex-porn star" to murder the prostitute.

The story goes downhill from there, ending with the prostitute's body stuffed in trash bags and hidden in an air conditioning duct in a seedy motel off the Vegas Strip.

This week, a federal jury in Las Vegas has heard testimony in the trial of one of the men accused in the murder-for-hire scheme. Two others have already pleaded guilty to taking part in the contract killing and agreed to testify for the government.

"This case is all about death, deceit and deals," Arthur Allen, the assistant public defender, said in his opening statement Monday.

At the center of the trial is 42-year-old Dean MacGuigan, the troubled great-great grandson of a DuPont Chemical Co. founder.

His girlfriend, according to Allen, was "a beautiful young woman who lived in South Philadephia," but "who grew up fast and got into drugs and prostitution."

MacGuigan had moved to Las Vegas in 1998, in part to get residency and an easy divorce from his wife who had angered the family by draining "every cent" from his trust fund. The girlfriend, 45-year-old Patricia Margello, came with MacGuigan.

That relationship was unpopular, too, so much so that the stepfather, Christopher Moseley, plotted what he called "Operation Dean," a two-month attempt to get rid of the girlfriend that gradually escalated from persuasion to murder.

"Christopher Moseley was protective of his wife, protective of the assets of the du Pont family," Allen told the court.

Enter Diana Hironaga, a former porn actress and, by Allen's account, "street hustler."

She met the stepfather playing video poker at a Vegas motel. He asked her to head up Operation Dean in July 1998, she said, paying her an initial $5,000 to end the affair.

Persuasion didn't work. The girlfriend refused to return to Philadelphia and MacGuigan resisted ending the affair. By the end of July, the stepfather decided to "take step 5, to kill" the girlfriend, Hironaga testified. In a plea agreement last month, the stepfather acknowledged telling her "to go ahead with the plan to kill Margello."

Her plan, she said, was to set a trap. She lured the girlfriend to the Del Mar Motel in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 2 with the story they would be paid $2,000 to escort two high-rolling gamblers. Hironaga rented Room 6 under her name for $10 an hour.

The girlfriend quickly suspected trouble, according to testimony. She called MacGuigan at the Las Vegas Hilton, where they had been staying, and told him she was afraid. He suggested she take a cab back to the hotel.

MacGuigan said he heard nothing further until a news report on Aug. 5 that her body had been found at the motel. A belt was wrapped around her mouth and neck, and battery jumper cables tied her body in a fetal position.

Hironaga gave this account on what happened before the body was found:

When they arrived at the motel, two men - one of whom, Ricardo Murillo, is on trial - were waiting in the room. The four did methamphetamines, then Murillo and the other man began to choke the girlfriend.

The two men left Hironaga alone with the body while they went to buy trash bags. When they returned, Murillo produced a saw and wanted to cut up the body, but she told him not to, saying the girlfriend had AIDS.

They then put the body in the trash bags and hid it in the air conditioning duct.

Hironaga returned to her room at the Las Vegas Hilton and phoned the stepfather's home in the early morning hours of Aug. 2. She said she left a message on his answering machine: "Step 5 was finished; mission complete."

Hironaga and Murillo then flew to Philadelphia, where the stepfather's limousine driver delivered $5,000 to her, $10,000 to Murillo.

Hironaga, Murillo and Moseley, the stepfather, were indicted in September 1998 in the girlfriend's death. Moseley was arrested on a golf course near Wilmington, Del., last year by FBI agents.

Hironaga and Moseley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and are testifying for the government. She is to be sentenced in December, Moseley in February.

Balignasa went on trial earlier this year, but a mistrial was declared when jurors consulted a dictionary and a telephone book to try and resolve issues in the case. A second trial has been scheduled for January.

Murillo faces a charge of conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce to commit murder-for-hire. He faces life in prison.

archive