Du Pont relative pleads not guilty

Kim Smith

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 1999 | 10:15 a.m.

One day after backing out of a plea agreement, a member of the Du Pont family was indicted on a second charge in a murder-for-hire case.

According to the indictment returned Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Christopher Moseley, 59, now faces two counts of use of interstate commerce facilities with intent to commit murder-for-hire.

Moseley pleaded not guilty during his arraignment this morning before U.S. District Judge Philip Pro.

Moseley, a Delaware resident, was one of four people indicted in connection with the Aug. 2, 1998, death of Patricia Margello, 45.

Margello was dating Dean MacGuigan, who was Moseley's stepson and the son of Lisa Dean Moseley, whose great-great grandfather founded the DuPont Co. Moseley and his wife did not approve of Margello's relationship with MacGuigan, according to court records.

MacGuigan had come to Nevada to establish residency in order to get a divorce and possibly marry Margello, court documents say.

However, Margello's body was found stuffed inside the air-conditioning vent of a downtown motel room that rents rooms by the hour and features pornographic movies. An autopsy revealed she had been strangled.

Police were able to track down the woman who rented the room, Diana Hironaga, in part because motel employees recalled that the room's bed sheets had disappeared on the same day she rented the room. Margello's body had been wrapped in bedsheets and tied off with the coaxial cable from the room's television.

Hironaga told police Moseley hired her to kill Margello and that she enlisted the aid of her former boyfriend, Ricardo Murillo, and Joseph Balignasa.

Hironaga said she convinced Margello, a drug addict and sometime prostitute, to go out with her that night, telling her that she could make some money escorting two "high rollers."

The three of them then allegedly killed Margello in the motel room.

On Aug. 4 Hironaga said she and Murillo flew to Philadelphia and were given a bag containing $15,000 by Moseley's limousine driver.

That trip and the long-distance telephone calls made to Moseley before and after the murder lead to the federal charges against Hironaga, Murillo and Moseley. Balignasa was charged with murder in state court.

Murillo was also reindicted Tuesday on the additional murder-for-hire related count. He, too, pleaded not guilty during today's arraignment. His trial was set for Nov. 8.

Hironaga is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 10, and Balignasa's trial is set for January.