A former Philadelphia homicide detective convicted of sexually assaulting witnesses and informants throughout his 20-year career possibly will spend the rest of his life behind bars as a penalty for his crimes.
The court claimed the officer “groomed” his male victims to engage in sexual acts while extracting information from them as investigated various cases.
On Dec. 15, a Philadelphia judge sentenced Philip Nordo, 56, to 24.5 to 49 years in prison after he was found guilty of rape, sexual assault, stalking, official oppression, theft by deception, and related charges earlier this year, NBC 10 reported.
A jury found in addition to having inappropriate sexual relations with and lying on the victims. He also stole $20,000 in crime reward money that was being offered in a case about the 2015 murder of an off-duty officer named Moses Walker.
Evidence revealed he spent the stolen loot on one of his victims.
A 2019 grand jury report alleged the former detective “groomed” the victims while working on cases and created a climate that made those men “more susceptible to his sexually assaultive and/ or coercive behavior,” which lasted over a decade.
The ex-officer’s defense attorney Michael van der Veen said Nordo’s accusers could not be trusted because they are “criminals, liars, and thieves” whose accounts were inconsistent and lacked corroborating evidence.
One of those people was Milique Wagner.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Wagner, then 21, was arrested and interrogated by Nordo regarding the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Braheem King on Feb. 10, 2010. The then-detective was determined to associate Wagner with Reafeal Fields and Kelvin Bryant, who were co-defendants in the case of King’s killing.
Nordo used a man named Amine Payne to give a statement that linked Wagner to the other men.
The North Philly native was vulnerable. In addition to experiencing the loss of his mother when he was 9 and witnessing his best friend get shot in front of him when he was 19, he started to self-medicate with drugs (marijuana, opioids, and cough syrup) to deal with his mental trauma. The legal stacks were against him.
It also made him an easy mark for his sexual escapades. After the initial questioning about the King case, Nordo introduced another topic, according to Wagner. He probed the “suspect” about his desire to shoot porn.
“He says … he has a porn ring from out in New Jersey,” Wagner recalled, describing the detective as slick and sneaky as he testified that Nordo asked him, “Would [I] ever consider doing guy-on-guy porn?”
