Heiress’ Husband Sentenced in Murder of Ex-Prostitute

The husband of a DuPont family heiress was sentenced Thursday to more than 16 years in prison for his role in the contract killing of a former prostitute who became a family nemesis.

“To this day, I don’t know why I did what I did,” Christopher Moseley told U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush. “But I do know Patricia Margello is dead, and I’m responsible for that.”

Moseley and three others were charged in the Aug. 2, 1998 death of Margello in a seedy motel near the Las Vegas Strip.

Margello, 45, was described in court testimony as a former prostitute who had been involved in a drug-riddled relationship with Dean MacGuigan, a great-great-grandson of a DuPont Chemical Co. founder.

Moseley sent MacGuigan, his stepson, to Las Vegas in July 1998 to end the relationship with Margello. When that failed, Moseley ordered her murder.

“I am a broken man,” Moseley told Quackenbush before sentencing. “I have badly hurt the woman I love with all of my life. I am a shame to my children.”

Moseley, the husband of DuPont heiress Lisa Dean Moseley, was arrested at his Delaware home a month after the murder.

He later confessed to recruiting Diana Hironaga, a 41-year-old drug user, former prostitute and porn actress, to watch over MacGuigan, 42. Moseley instructed Hironaga to carry out “Step 5” of the plan: Margello’s death.

Moseley and Hironaga pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder for hire, implicating Richard Murillo and Joseph Balignasa as the killers.

Murillo was convicted in November of murder-for-hire and conspiracy and was sentenced Thursday to two life terms.

Balignasa pleaded guilty in December to a charge of second-degree murder and was sentenced on Thursday to more than 15 years in prison.

Hironaga has been sentenced to almost 16 years.