Cops: Teens used sex to draw pal into deadly trap, all for $500

THEY CROUCHED in the woods with a brick, a hammer and a hatchet.

Waiting for their friend.

It was Friday evening. Jason Sweeney, 16, had just cashed his paycheck from the construction job he worked with his father.

And Justina Morley, an attractive, 15-year-old student at Holy Name of Jesus School whom Jason liked, was the bait.

Her job, according to police sources, was to promise Sweeney sex - and lead him into a death trap.

It was a plan, detectives said, that Morley had hatched the week before with Sweeney's other Fishtown pals: Nicholas Coia, 16, his brother Dominic, 17, and Edward Batzig Jr., 16, Sweeney's best friend since the fourth grade.

Sources said the boys prepared for the ambush at another home by listening to the Beatles song made famous by killer Charles Manson, "Helter Skelter."

Morley, meanwhile, met Sweeney and started walking him to "the trails" - an overgrown and desolate industrial wasteland off Beach Street - a popular spot for local teens to hang out and party.

For some unknown reason, sources said the couple failed to rendezvous with the killers, prompting an angry call from the boys to Morley's cell phone.

Morley, according to law enforcement sources, shot right back at her co-conspirators.

"What did you do, bitch out?" she allegedly asked.

The parties agreed to return to the trails. This time, police said, Morley delivered her suitor to the slaughter.

They walked down a black gravel road toward a junction of trees. Morley began to undress. Then Sweeney took off his shoes. That's as far as he got.

A blow came from a small-handled hatchet. It struck Sweeney on the head and knocked him to the ground.

Sources said it was followed by blows from a hammer and more blows from the hatchet as he tried to get up.

Another assailant used a brick. Later, one of the boys used what one detective described as a "boulder" type of rock to crush Sweeney's head.

Nearly all of the blows struck Sweeney on the head and face, according to a source familiar with the injuries.

As the grisly slaying unfolded, Morley stood off to the side and did not take part, according to sources.

When it was over, though, she allegedly shared in the blood money - $500 - divided four ways.

A total of $125 apiece, for murder.

"The motive was robbery," said Sgt. Kathleen McGowan of the homicide division. "They planned to rob him and use the money to get high."

Sweeney's head and face were so badly beaten that his body was nearly unidentifiable.

"He's going to have a closed casket for what they did to my son," the boy's distraught father, Paul Sweeney, said yesterday.

Even veteran homicide investigators, who deal with death on a daily basis, said they've rarely encountered a slaying of such callousness and brutality.

"It's as bad as you could ever imagine," said one detective.

The detective said the alleged perpetrators, the three who were arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, appeared to express little remorse during their interrogation at police headquarters, asking indifferently, "When are we going home?"

Another investigator called the case "one of the most disturbing jobs I've ever seen. That kid is lying on a slab in a morgue still screaming in pain."

By last night, Jason Sweeney's body was in a closed casket at the McElvarr Funeral home on Susquehanna near Belgrade, a block from the house where he lived.

Pain was now etched on the faces of scores of anguished friends and family members who lined up to pay respects.

At the scene of the crime, a makeshift memorial sprang up in the wasteland featuring an American flag on a cross, a teddy bear, and a poem titled "Beautiful Dreamer."

Sweeney's funeral will be held this morning in Fishtown. But the investigation into his murder is far from over.

On the surface, police officials are saying Sweeney was a victim of murder for money, perhaps to fuel drug habits of some of his friends. At it's core, perhaps, are more complex breakdowns of friendship that opened a path to violence, contributing to what two investigators say may also have the elements of a "thrill" killing.

"If they just wanted to rob him, they could have gotten the money after the first blow," said another investigator, who is not completely satisfied with robbery as a full explanation for the crime.

"It appeared as though some anger was involved," acknowledged McGowan.

The teens all lived blocks from each other in the cramped section of Fishtown, a crosshatch of narrow streets lined with rowhouses where most families have lived for years.

Jason Sweeney and Ed Batzig Jr. had been friends for a long time. Both boys had even vacationed with each other's families.

"I just can't believe that my son would be party to this," Batzig's mother, Jeanette, told WCAU-TV (Channel 10) outside her Hewson Street home yesterday morning. "He knew Jason so well."

But recently Batzig became friends with the Coia brothers.

Many in the neighborhood said Dominic and Nicholas Coia, who had moved into the area only a couple of years ago, were known as bad news.

According to Keith Hunter, 29, "They robbed cars, broke windows."

Batzig had only started hanging out with the Coia brothers a couple of months ago, some friends said. They were all pretty quiet. Most of the time they just sat around on the stoop in front of the Coias' house on Columbia Avenue near Memphis Street.

Sweeney, on the other hand, had dropped out of high school, but began working for his father, who owns a small construction company.

"He was working, the other kids were not," said one law enforcement source familiar with the case. "They hung out during the day. They wanted to be in a band. They spent their nights partying and getting high."

By contrast, friends of Morley - a pretty, dark-haired girl who liked punk music - said they were shocked to hear of her alleged involvement in the crime.

Sources said detectives were investigating whether Morley had been romantically involved with one or more of her alleged co-conspirators.

Before her arrest Wednesday on murder charges, she had been scheduled to graduate the eighth grade at Holy Name of Jesus School. Yesterday, the school officially expelled her.

Her graduation date was next Wednesday. Now it is the date of her preliminary hearing in the murder of Jason Sweeney, along with Nicholas and Dominic Coia, and Ed Batzig Jr.

"He'll get what he deserves," Batzig's father said the other day.

Morley's lawyer, William J. Brennan, said his client "seemed like a good kid, a nice kid, who comes from a good family."

He said he has yet to see any documents offered by the commonwealth to demonstrate that Morley "played any role in this - as a lure or as a part" of the alleged planning of Sweeney's murder.

"At this point I haven't seen or been told or heard anything to substantiate that my client was in any way involved in this terrible crime," he said.

Prosecutors and police are expected to present their evidence, including statements taken from two of the alleged killers at the preliminary hearing.

Jason Sweeney gets buried today. His circle of friends is in jail, charged with killing him.

"You have four families ruined," said one investigator.