Officials promise to find assistant U.S. attorney's killer

BALTIMORE - A federal prosecutor, reported missing by his wife, was found shot and stabbed to death in a Pennsylvania creek Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan P. Luna, 38, was discovered face-down in the water behind a parking lot in Lancaster County, Pa., about 70 miles from Baltimore, Brecknock Township police said. A car was near the body, police said.

"Let there be no doubt that everyone in law enforcement - local police, state police, the United States Marshals Service, ATF, FBI - are united," U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio said. "We will find out who did this and we are dedicated to bringing the person responsible for this tragedy to justice."

Luna was prosecuting Baltimore rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, 32, and Walter Oriley Poindexter, 28, who were accused of dealing heroin and running a violent drug ring from their Stash House Records studio. Smith recorded under the name Papi Jenkinz.

Authorities did not say whether the two men are under suspicion in the slaying. They were in jail at the time.

Luna and the defense attorneys negotiated through the afternoon Wednesday and reached a plea bargain on the drug charges at the end of the day, said U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr., who presided over the case. The men entered their guilty pleas around noon Thursday.

Smith pleaded guilty to distribution of heroin and possession of a weapon for the purposes of drug trafficking. Poindexter pleaded guilty to distribution of heroin to a government witness.

According to the Associated Press, citing a federal law enforcement official it did not identify, Luna got a phone call at his home Wednesday night and left the house about midnight. His wife reported him missing, and the FBI later began looking for him.

His body was found about daybreak near an exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He had been repeatedly stabbed and shot.

The judge described Luna as a "wonderful young man, responsible, charming and highly intelligent. He had genuine trial skills as a lawyer and juries loved him."

Luna had also prosecuted cases against a man who videotaped a neighbor child as she slept in her home and against a man who plotted to burn down a home to force six Mexican men out of a neighborhood. Luna also tried three men involved in a violent crack distribution network in Baltimore. All the defendants entered guilty pleas.

Other federal prosecutors have been the target of violence in the past.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas C. Wales was shot to death in Seattle three years ago in an unsolved murder. The search for the killer has focused on at least one of the cases he had prosecuted.

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