“Hurry up and lay him on the table,” said Michael Caesar, son of slain Philadelphia officer Lauretha Vaird at a 2009 post-conviction hearing for Christopher Roney, better known as rapper Cool C.
On Friday, Nov.21, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed the execution warrant for Roney to die by lethal injection on Jan. 8, 2015, for the murder of Vaird.
It was on early on the morning of Jan. 2, 1996, that the now 44-year-old Roney, along with fellow rappers Warren McClone, aka Steady B; and Mark Canty attempted to rob a PNC bank in Philadelphia. Vaird was the first officer to respond to the call and was fatally wounded in the abdomen as she walked into the bank. She was the first female police officer killed in the line of duty in the history of the city.
Rooney has consistently appealed his conviction and maintained his innocence. He and his mother both testified at his trial that he was home making breakfast the morning of the botched robbery. However, numerous eyewitness accounts and statements place Roney at the scene of the crime and he was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to die. McClone and Canty were both convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Cool C’s best known hit was the late ’80s ode to money and riches titled “The Glamorous Life.”
