One of two people implicated in the murder of a local gay man will spend several decades in prison.
Thomas Brennan, 27, pleaded guilty May 19 in the 2015 murder of Scott Stephen Bernheisel. The victim’s body was found inside a suitcase near the Tinicum Township Industrial Park, just outside Philadelphia International Airport. Investigators say he had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
Brennan’s plea deal included a prison sentence of 27-and-a-half to 55 years in prison. Brennan’s girlfriend, Crystal Leibhart, was arrested as an accomplice; she also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
Investigators say Bernheisel, 40, was Brennan’s drug dealer. According to a cellmate of Brennan who testified at a 2015 hearing, Brennan killed Bernheisel after the latter made an unwanted sexual advance toward him. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that at last week’s sentencing hearing, Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman described that two cellmates of Brennan’s said he confessed to striking Bernheisel in the head with a dumbbell after Bernheisel allegedly hit him in the chest with the weight. He then stabbed Bernheisel in the throat in an attempt to make the incident look like a mob hit, according to the cellmates.
The cellmates also said that Brennan implicated Leibhart as an accomplice in attempting to hide the body.