A 36-year-old musician and tattoo artist from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, vanished in February 2020 after answering a phone call from his lifelong best friend. Two months later, investigators found Keith Palumbo's remains stuffed inside a crumbling crypt at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia, a sprawling, abandoned graveyard that had become a dumping ground for stolen cars and worse.
The man who called him that night, Warlocks Motorcycle Club member Michael DeLuca, eventually pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. He is now serving 15 to 35 years in prison. But the case did not end there. When investigators pried open the family vault of Capt. A.H. Cain, a man who died in 1884, they found a second set of remains: 33-year-old David Rossillo Jr., a prospective Warlocks recruit whose killing dated back even further.
The full story of how two men ended up in the same forgotten crypt, and how Philadelphia investigators tracked their killers through witness interviews, cellphone data, and DNA, is the subject of a new Oxygen true-crime episode. Fox News Digital reported that "Philly Homicide" host and retired detective Chris McMullin sat down to discuss the case ahead of the episode "Metal and Mayhem," set to air May 2, 2026, at 8 p.m.
Palumbo was driving his mother's car with two other men when DeLuca phoned him and told him to come to his Southwest Philadelphia home. What happened next, as described by witnesses to investigators, was swift and brutal. DeLuca pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Palumbo. A witness told investigators DeLuca shot Palumbo in the face.
That same witness told police DeLuca said he had killed Palumbo and needed help disposing of the body. The suspected motive, according to authorities: DeLuca believed Palumbo was cooperating with law enforcement. No evidence was ever presented to support that claim.
Retired ATF Special Agent in Charge Bernard Zapor explained to Fox News Digital how suspicion alone can prove fatal inside outlaw motorcycle gangs. He described the Warlocks as a smaller, deliberately low-profile organization compared to nationally known clubs.
"[But] they all have a similarity in that betrayal of the organization is a death sentence. You have allegiance to the club first, and then your family comes after that. It's club before family, club before self. And the suspicion of being an informant is dangerous and unfortunate."
Zapor added bluntly: "But if you're suspected of being a police informant, the only outcome is death. It's a death sentence if they can get to you."
The case recalls other grim discoveries in which human remains were eventually identified far from where victims were last seen, a reminder that behind every missing-person statistic is a family waiting for answers.
Mount Moriah Cemetery had been closed for years by the time investigators arrived. McMullin, who once worked part-time in the funeral business, described what he saw there in stark terms.
"I've been there. There was a time when I worked part-time in the funeral business and I was there. It's something like out of a post-apocalyptic film when you go there. There are headstones that are knocked over and vines growing all over mausoleums. It's very sad because this was a cemetery where people were laid to rest. Typically, you expect it to be cared for perpetually."
McMullin said the cemetery's neglect made it an obvious place to hide evidence, or a body. "I even say in the episode, if you wanted to hide a body, that's probably a good place to do it," he told Fox News Digital. He called it "a cemetery that nobody was really taking care of."
The break came when investigators, acting on a tip, walked the sprawling grounds and noticed that one crypt appeared to have been recently disturbed. McMullin credited their persistence and a measure of luck.
"[The investigators] got lucky because, as they were walking around, they noticed that one of the crypts seemed to have been recently disturbed."
Inside that vault, they found not one body but two. DNA testing conducted over the following months confirmed the identities of both Palumbo and Rossillo Jr. by August 2020.
Rossillo's death predated Palumbo's. The New York Post reported that prosecutors said fellow Warlocks member Michael DiMauro shot Rossillo at the cemetery itself, then tied a rope around his neck, dragged the body with a vehicle, pried open the crypt, and dropped the remains inside. Rossillo, just 33, had been a prospective member of the club.
DiMauro was arrested alongside DeLuca in September 2020. In 2023, a jury found DiMauro guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and abuse of a corpse. He received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
DeLuca pleaded guilty that same year to third-degree murder in Palumbo's death and drew 15 to 35 years. Three other individuals also pleaded guilty to helping dispose of the victims' bodies, though their names have not been publicly detailed in the available reporting.
Advances in forensic science, particularly DNA analysis in cold cases, have increasingly allowed investigators to close files that once seemed hopeless. In this case, the DNA work was essential: without it, the remains in that crumbling vault might never have been formally identified.
Assistant District Attorney Robert Wainwright issued a statement praising the detective work behind the resolution.
"I want to thank now-retired Philadelphia Police Detective Joe Bambersky for his diligent and tireless work on this case. I'm very pleased that we are able to bring some measure of justice and peace to the loved ones of these two victims."
McMullin, who has spent a career around Philadelphia homicides, said this one stayed with him. He told Fox News Digital the relationship between killer and victim, best friends since childhood, made it especially hard to process.
"All the cases we explore in this series are tragic, but this was such a case of betrayal."
He speculated that DeLuca may have killed Palumbo partly to send a message to other club members. "It was speculated that he may have done it to set an example not to cross him," McMullin said. "This victim was his lifelong best friend. Was he trying to make an example for the other members? It certainly seemed like they were afraid of him."
Fear of DeLuca, McMullin suggested, only went so far. When investigators pressed witnesses, cooperation followed. "They were all afraid of [DeLuca]," he said. "But I also think that when push came to shove, they didn't want to lie and possibly risk taking a prosecution to protect him."
McMullin offered a blunt assessment of loyalty inside outlaw organizations: "I just think there's no honor among thieves. Loyalty is something made very clear that's expected. But I also think that people are also out for themselves, especially people who are committing a lot of crimes, heinous crimes at that."
The case shares a grim thread with other investigations in which DNA breakthroughs and dogged detective work cracked cases that might otherwise have gone cold forever.
Mount Moriah Cemetery's descent into ruin is a story in itself. McMullin described it as a place where stolen cars were dumped routinely, a detail that underscores how far the site had fallen from its original purpose. That a gang could pry open a 19th-century family vault, deposit two murder victims inside, and go undetected for months speaks to a failure of basic civic maintenance.
The Fox News report noted the cemetery's condition was so poor that headstones were knocked over and vines had consumed entire mausoleums. For the families of those buried there lawfully, and for the families of Palumbo and Rossillo, the neglect compounded the tragedy.
Palumbo's loved ones, including friend Michael Davvocato, Lierin Buckley, and Matthew Sondermann, came forward to speak about his life and death in the upcoming Oxygen episode. Retired detectives Joe Bamberski and John Taggart also appear to walk through how the investigation unfolded.
Cases like this one, and like the Long Island murders attributed to Rex Heuermann, remind us that concealed bodies do not stay hidden forever when investigators refuse to quit.
McMullin summed up what made the Palumbo case linger in his memory: "There's the relationship between the killer and the victim. Although sadly, more people are killed by people they know than people they don't know. And outlaw biker gangs are notoriously violent. Michael DeLuca, in my opinion, did an evil act."
Two men are dead. Their killer called one of them his best friend. And the place chosen to hide them, a cemetery no one bothered to maintain, tells you everything about what happens when a city stops paying attention.
