Police in Lansdowne last week charged a man with first-degree murder whom they say allegedly stoned a 70-year-old developmentally disabled man to death, saying the victim made unwanted sexual advances toward him.
Police filed charges against John Joe Thomas, 28, March 18 in connection to the January killing of Murray Seidman. Thomas was already incarcerated on unrelated charges.
Thomas confessed to the murder last week, saying he beat Seidman in the head with stones and batteries inside of a sock after the older man allegedly came onto him over a period of time. Police say Thomas told them he prayed about how to handle the advances and committed the murder after reading of stoning as a punishment for homosexuality in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Seidman’s brother, Lenny, however, called the Biblical defense a sham, contending the defendant, a former psychiatric patient, repeatedly took advantage of his brother’s generosity. Within the past year, Seidman drew up a will and had Thomas listed as executor and sole beneficiary.
Although Thomas indicated Seidman was gay, Lenny said that he never knew his brother to have sexual impulses one way or the other, save for a time about 25 years ago when he told his brother that he kissed a female friend.
Lenny, a Philadelphia musician, said he has plenty of gay friends and would have happily accepted his brother if he were gay, but that was not the case.
“My brother wasn’t gay,” he said. “I don’t think he was necessarily anything — he wasn’t heterosexual, gay — I just think he liked people. If I thought he may have been gay, I’d say so.”
Seidman was born with brain damage and lived until his late 20s in Elwyn Institute, a home for the developmentally disabled before he moved out on his own. Two years ago, he retired from a 40-year career as a laundry worker at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital.
Seidman befriended Thomas when the latter was in the psychiatric ward of the hospital.
Thomas called police to Seidman’s apartment Jan. 12, saying he found the older man dead on the floor when he went to check on him. The medical examiner, however, determined Seidman was killed up to 10 days before police were called. The cause of death was determined to be blunt-force trauma to the head.
Thomas told police last week he struck Seidman at least 10 times.
Lansdowne chief of police Daniel Kortan cautioned that Thomas’ allegations of advances should be put into perspective.
“No one has ever stated that either Seidman or Thomas was gay,” Kortan said. “Thomas only stated that Seidman made sexual advances toward him, but keep in mind Mr. Seidman was a 20-year product of the Elwyn system and is developmentally challenged.”
Lenny said his brother had the mental capacity on par with a second- or third-grade education.
“He was really bad with math but, fortunately, only about .1 percent of the people he encountered took advantage of that. If he was at a grocery store and he gave the cashier a $20 and the order was $1.50 and they gave him $3 back, he wouldn’t really know — but thankfully most people were honest with him,” Lenny said, noting, however, that his brother was strong in other areas. “He definitely was very conversant and could write very slowly and read very slowly. But he had an uncanny ability to learn the public transportation system throughout the whole Philly, Jersey and Delaware areas. He’d take the busses and trains to malls and other places, and everyone at the hospital where he worked, if they ever had a question about a bus route, would go right to him. And he had an uncanny memory: If we’d talk about things from 45 years ago, he’d know the year and the date of when something happened.”
Seidman retired from Mercy Fitzgerald at the end of last year, and his brother said he became acquainted with Thomas sometime in the past year after delivering linens to his room.
“When I first met him, I thought I saw something in him that he did have a big heart,” Lenny said. “He thought of my brother as this gramps he never had, and I know Murray was probably the first person in years to really give him uplifting advice — he would tell all the patients at the hospital that things were going to be alright.”
Thomas and Seidman would visit several times a week and dine out, play miniature golf or bowl. While Lenny said he was at first happy with the companionship Thomas provided, the friendship began to worry him, especially after he learned his brother added Thomas to his bank accounts.
“We went to breakfast and I was getting ready to pay and [Thomas] pulled out a debit card and said he’d pay for it, and I said, ‘Oh, you’re going to put it on your debit card?’ and he said, ‘Well, Murray added me to his account,’” Lenny said.
Seidman lived on about $1,600 a month from a small pension and Social Security, his brother said.
Kortan said that the financial motivation may have been a “contributing factor but we will not discuss it further until trial.”
Lenny said his brother was always adamant about his independence and, while he cautioned his brother to be careful, he knew his advice would only go so far.
“He was always determined to make his own decisions, whether or not it was right or wrong in my mind,” Lenny said. “I was hoping I was being a little paranoid [about Thomas] but I knew that there was little I could do because he was going to do what he was going to do.”
Lenny did, however, ask Thomas to send him monthly bank statements so he could ensure proper spending. After seeing expenditures for $80 dinners, gas for Thomas’ car and $400 withdrawals, Lenny said he confronted Thomas on the telephone late last year and got into a verbal spar with him.
“I said to him, ‘Look, a good friend does not take money from your friend. If you’re really friends, you can’t take someone’s money, especially when that person cannot afford it,’” Lenny said. “He asked me to go to church with him, and I just lost my temper. That was the last time I spoke to Johnny before the murder.”
Thomas is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Lenny said he was a “religious fanatic.” He brought Seidman into the Mormon Church, which Lenny said was beneficial because of the community support it provided, although he said he didn’t think his brother would have joined the church on his own.
Lenny speculated that the murder could have been solely financially motivated or that the Biblical defense could stem from Thomas’ confusion over his own sexuality.
“I think he’s framing his defense already. I think he had his eye on my brother’s savings. He got him to sign over power of attorney, he had him make him the sole executor of his will — these aren’t things that Murray would have done on his own. He owed Murray a lot of money and told me that Murray told him the loans were now gifts. When Murray made friends with someone, he would literally take the shirt off his back if they needed it. He was generous to his own detriment.”
A judge denied Thomas bail in a March 18 hearing.
In addition to first-degree murder, Thomas is also charged with third-degree murder, criminal homicide, aggravated assault, possession of an instrument of crime and reckless endangerment.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].