Episode 341

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

2026 has been a weird year hasn't it?

It's barely begun.

Man.

When everyone looks at something and half the population sees one thing and the other half sees something completely different,

we're cooked.

We are done.

Stick a fork in it.

This is season 13 episode 341 by the way and it's all about trying to figure out what's right when nothing is.

You know, kind of like 2026.

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It was March 8, 2021 in the small community of Mikkelton, New Jersey.

Police cars swarmed the neighborhood.

Flashes of blue light started across the living room windows.

The quiet street was swallowed by chaos.

I looked out the window and had a bunch of police officers were out here

and we had to come out and see what the commotion was about,

and it wasn't good.

It wasn't good.

In a community with crime rates well below the national average,

no one expected a violent crime,

let alone the murder of a senior citizen.

This rare crime would go down as the only murder in the community for years.

Never issues like this, never seeing anything like this.

Everybody keeps themselves the neighborhood's really nice people.

Everybody, it's a shock when something like this happens.

66-year-old Mikkel Deb Kowski was found murdered in his laundry room.

He was bludgeoned in the head.

His face masked in a sweatshirt.

The only thing missing from the home was his car.

I was really shocked.

I was really upset to find out who it was.

Mike was a real good guy.

He was a type of guy that would help you out if you need a hand,

if you see you out in the yard working.

Always we, when he go by, always had a kind thing to say to you.

Never see them, you know, mad.

It's just a total shock that it happened to him.

Mike never married.

Instead, he spent his time away from work as an engineering consultant,

volunteering in the community.

He was active in his church, top religious education,

and was a member of the Catholic fraternal organization,

Knights of Columbus.

He was even a big brother of America, mentoring youth.

It's a terrible way for anybody to go, you know,

you're going home and, you know, to be cut down like that by yourself alone.

I just hope it doesn't happen again around here.

That was horrible to see.

It all started with a call from a woman named Carol.

She spoke with Mike multiple times a day, every day.

That afternoon, at about 1 p.m., she was talking to Mike

when his demeanor suddenly changed.

He ended the call, saying he would call her back.

She was left on the other end of the phone,

wondering what was going on.

When she never heard back from him, and was only getting to his voicemail,

she called police.

The police conducted a welfare check at his residence,

85 Myrtle Avenue.

There was no response when they knocked on the door.

They walked around the house looking through the windows for any sign of Mike.

Finally, they managed to lift the garage door a few inches.

That's when they noticed his car was gone.

They ran the plates through the system,

and they found out that the license plate was scanned

by an automated plate reader in Camden, New Jersey.

Carol told police that Mike would only ever visit his brother,

but that he would take a train.

As far as she knew, he didn't have any trips planned.

The police decided to go into the home.

They lifted the garage door just enough for an officer to crawl underneath.

Once in the garage, he immediately noticed the interior door had signs of forced entry.

On the other side of the door was the laundry room,

and on the floor was Mike, in a pool of blood.

Mike put up a fight, though.

The struggle that ended in his death had started in the kitchen,

went through the living room, and ended up in the laundry room.

When police told Carol about Mike's death,

her first question was whether Sean Lennon had murdered him.

Breaking news, the search for a person of interest in a South Jersey murder.

We have a scary situation here in Gloucester County.

Well, could this guy be anywhere at this point?

Police are looking for Sean Lennon is wanted in connection with yesterday's homicide,

and he's green witch township.

Investigators say he's considered absolutely armed and dangerous.

Yeah, this is a national man hunt right now.

There's a stolen car from South Jersey that he may be using.

A blue Honda CRV with Jersey plates.

Also, they think he was spotted at the Water Ranch Transportation Center,

which will likely send off alarm bells all over the Philly area,

because that is the bus station.

Right next to the Ben Frank, where you could take a bus in the Philly in five minutes,

you could take the river line up and down the river,

or you could take the Pat Gly speed line to Locust Street if you wanted.

The man hunt for Sean Lennon was nationwide,

but he was from New Jersey.

He grew up there.

He went to high school and ran track.

Nobody thought his name would be in the news for anything like this, though.

But the reason Carol suspected Sean was that my kid bin in Sean's life since he was a child.

Sean didn't have a father growing up,

so his mother Lennon enrolled him in the Big Brother program.

Mike became his Big Brother and father figure.

His father was a career criminal.

I married him in 1970.

I was a couple years in.

I knew I didn't wish to be married to him anymore.

She explained life was so hard when Sean was young.

And over time, she came to rely on Mike too.

Because I was a single parent.

And I worked too.

So I counted on Mike to kind of pick up the slack.

We were just, oh, the single women are just poor.

It's just part of that.

So I know Mike was good to him in terms of, you know, possession.

Because I couldn't.

I couldn't.

And it was hard.

And I was grateful for Mike that the kids could have clothes that, you know,

otherwise we would be shocked and goodwill.

Mike became a lifelong fixture in Sean's life,

following him into adulthood and even marriage.

His in-laws even knew the man everyone called Uncle Mike.

We knew Uncle Mike.

Uncle Mike was at any of birthday parties and dinners at the house.

He was the Big Brother that stayed in his life.

He was his father.

He was.

He was a family friend.

That was like a father figure to him.

I couldn't remember his name when I was just like, oh, Uncle Mike.

Uncle Mike.

Everyone who knew Uncle Mike knew him as an upstanding citizen

and a great man who devoted himself to others rather than selfish pursuits.

But years after his Big Brother mentorship when Sean grew up,

he started sharing his childhood trauma with his wife.

I knew Jen had said that he was molested when he was a kid.

They never said Uncle Mike.

He never showed any dislike about Uncle Mike.

Uncle Mike was always wonderful.

I just heard from him at one point.

I didn't notice him that Sean had been molested as a kid.

He had rough childhood.

But I did not notice him.

I didn't connect the dots there.

But everything seemed normal when we met.

I knew they were close friends.

It was a father figure.

I didn't see anything out of the ordinary there.

While everyone seemed to know about Sean's childhood trauma,

no one put two and two together.

It was too hard to imagine that Mike,

the man who gave so much to the land and family,

and asked for nothing in return,

could be the one who had molested Sean.

But there was one person Sean shared more with.

The long time nanny to his kids remember Sean mentioning

an old score that needed settling.

And Mike, I've known for years about me.

He would never leave his kid alone with Mike.

So he had mentioned sexual assault that occurred when he was a young boy

right before his teens.

I mean, he went off to go around.

He had said that was an old score that he needed to settle.

The anger he must have felt,

the shame that must have lingered with him for years.

Two days after the murder on March 10th,

the man Hunt was over.

He was arrested and questioned about his reasons for killing

a retired old man.

The man that molested me as a child, my big brother.

Big brother's big sister's whenever they get molested too.

At 47 years old, something snapped in Sean Lannan.

He had three young kids.

People who knew him say they were his whole world.

But somewhere along the line, something in Sean's world shifted.

He could no longer live with what he claimed Mike Debkowski

did to him as a child.

He had to take control back.

One of the pictures from Mr. Michael.

One of the pictures back.

One of the pictures has taken me in.

On March 8th, when Mike saw Sean Lannan walking up to his driveway,

he ended the call with Carol because he knew it couldn't be good.

Mike had been lending Sean money for years.

But he never seemed to get back on his feet.

This time Sean didn't want money.

He wanted the sexually explicit photos he claimed Mike took of him as a kid.

Sean said Mike denied having those photos.

So he punched him in the face a few times.

Sean said after a few stiff punches, Mike gave him the pictures.

But Sean wasn't done.

He escalated the situation and the two started to scuffle.

At 66 years old, Mike wasn't as strong as he used to be

and quickly tried to retreat through the living room.

But Sean pursued.

The laundry room connects the rest of the house to the garage.

Mike was trying to escape.

But Sean found a hammer.

He struck Mike on the head and he collapsed to the floor.

With his mission complete, Sean locked the house and left,

planning to steal Mike's car.

But when he got outside, he realized he didn't have the keys.

He had to force his way back into the home to get the keys off of Mike's dead body.

Problem was, Mike wasn't dead.

He lay on the floor, barely breathing.

Sean grabbed a nearby sweatshirt and placed it over his head so he wouldn't get covered in blood

and swung the hammer a few more times.

He expired at the moment, but I realized I had time to finish it.

It looks like I'm proud.

It's horrible too.

No one gave a fuck about me when I was being already put to an amuse.

It doesn't justify.

I feel bad.

Sean took Mike's life.

He called this man Uncle since childhood.

He expressed remorse, but there was no emotion behind the words.

What happened to Sean?

That after all of these years, he suddenly let all this harbored aggression out.

He was a nice young man.

He ran across the country.

He was fun loving.

I didn't know that he had potential sexual molestation in front of his big brother.

I didn't know that.

After his arrest, Sean's mother Lynn said she never knew.

She claimed naivety for not seeing it.

But there was a lot about Sean she didn't know.

Didn't see until it was too late.

Two days earlier on March 8th before he was arrested, it wasn't just a national manhunt.

It was a national concern.

Police standing guard tonight at the scene of yesterday's homicide on East Greenwich Township Gloucester County.

And at this hour, the search continues for Sean Lanet.

Not only for this crime, but also in connection with a multiple killing.

Turns out that Lanet is also a person of interest in a quadruple murder in New Mexico.

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Alright, let's continue.

By the time the sun set on March 8th, Michael Debkowski was dead, and the search for Sean Lannon had crossed state lines.

News reports painted a picture of a violent attack, a desperate escape, and a suspect now tied to four more murders in New Mexico.

But the headlines didn't explain how Sean got there.

And when he graduated high school, he went into the army for five years.

He went to Coastal Bill, which if you know the history of Coastal Bill, it was a violent, mass grave, the most village ethnic cleansing,

and it was just like at night.

But he didn't sit back the same young man he went over with.

I'm sure a lot of soldiers are the same man.

You may see atrocities in New Mexico.

And I said, Sean, you need some of the PTSD help.

You need some help with this.

This isn't too much.

Sean was never the same after his tour in Kosovo.

Lingering mental scars added to his already damaged mental health.

It seemed his whole perspective on life had shifted.

He divorced his first wife when he came home.

He told me there could be no God because of what he saw.

What he saw in combat took a toll on Sean.

But it wasn't long before the old Sean started to shine through.

It was in McDonald's one day and he met a girl named Liz.

They were all mother of seven years together.

For a short time, Sean seemed content.

But it wouldn't last.

It was while he was with Liz that he met Jennifer Whitman.

I mean, he met probably about nine years ago.

She had been married at that point and from her first husband.

She was in her own nurse.

That's how they met.

She was in there working and that's how they met.

It wasn't long after Jen started working as an in-home nurse for Sean and Liz

at a relationship developed.

And they were having a secret affair at that point.

But she eventually came out.

She was married to somebody else.

They had an affair.

And then they just, they were just like, you know, star-crossed lovers.

And everything was like wonderful.

And everything took that.

At that point, she lost her first husband.

They got the other.

Both Sean and Jen were already married.

But that didn't seem to matter.

Their affair turned into a full-fledged relationship.

And then, they got married.

She went off for Sean.

They got married in March of 2013.

None of us were there.

We found out through Facebook.

Their relationship blossomed.

And it wasn't long before they welcomed their first child into the world.

A little girl.

About a year later, they had a second little girl.

Not long after that, Jen was pregnant again, this time with a boy.

From the outside, everything was perfect.

We had to take some job.

You know, we were good at his job.

He enjoyed his job.

He enjoyed being able to provide.

He liked that.

Sean was a hard worker.

He was an ex like that.

Yeah.

He loved Jen and he did anything for Jen.

Yeah.

I mean, through the years, they seemed to be okay.

But behind the scenes, the couple was struggling.

On some level, she wanted that picture of the, because we grew up in church.

And, you know, everybody wants to be married.

And, you know, have that happy little house with the white big sands and kids running around.

She wanted to put on a facade that she was all together.

And she could maintain that for a while until the need for, you know, drugs to deliver.

Jen started to slip into drug addiction.

Jen was having some troubles with prescription drugs.

If she heard her back before she left her first husband,

then she was on some pain pills for her back.

It started slowly at first, but then escalated quickly.

She lost her nursing license because of her addiction and sank deeper into it.

Soon, there were issues that couldn't be missed even through the facade of the perfect life.

And the first time that this was called in New Jersey was because she was violent.

She was on the drug. She was violent.

And she threw, like, dark chairs at him.

And the babysitter got bad babysitter all of them.

Difus, as it's referred to, or D-Y-F-S,

stands for the Division of Youth and Family Services in New Jersey.

Then we had to have protection plans in place.

So it was managed on the protection plan.

And she couldn't be left alone with the kids unsupervised.

Jen's addiction only got worse.

In 2016, she had a heroin overdose.

Difus took the kids in 2017.

I got the call that night.

Trump says, come home. They're taking the kids.

They got home. They was Difus in Monmouth.

And so we had the kids for the next 49 days,

so she was supposed to be getting herself together.

She was getting therapy.

And that was their life.

A cycle of Jen strung out on opiates,

going to rehab, getting out, and eventually relapsing again.

All the while, they were trying to convince D-Y-F-S

that the kids were in danger.

Shawn worked at an oil refinery,

putting in a lot of hours.

Sometimes he would be gone for weeks at a time,

leaving the kids with Jen.

This led to a lot of calls to D-Y-F-S.

Needless to say, they weren't convinced.

But in late 2017, Shawn got an opportunity within his company.

He was offered another job in New Mexico.

Did we get ready to move into Mexico about three, four years ago to think it was?

I'm sure they both looked at it as a fresh start in a new state.

Shawn moved to New Mexico with the kids and Jen returned to rehab.

You know, she got out of rehab.

She came back.

He divorces her.

He takes her to, you know, dices and gets her parental rights.

They didn't really deserve any parental rights.

They were divorced just by paper.

They were still together as a husband and wife.

They never left each other only the time that Jen was in rehab for once,

three years ago or once.

So I knew about it.

I didn't know why.

I think from what I understood,

it was that they were going to lose custody of the kids

if they stayed married.

So they got more so Shawn could hold custody of the kids

and the kids would be safe,

because Jen was going through her job problem.

Of course, Jen was still there.

She lived in the house with Shawn and the kids.

She had no rights on paper,

but in reality, when Shawn wasn't home,

she had full responsibility for their three small children.

Taking care of her kids was difficult for Jen.

She often chose her addiction over her children.

Then Shawn got sick.

I wasn't really living nanny these past couple of years,

but when Shawn got diagnosed with cancer, I was there a lot.

Today it's his lungs.

I think it's mesophiliaoma.

I'm not sure.

I know he's been saying he was saying a doctor

used to take him to treatments every day up until October.

When he was real bad, when he first started getting female,

he used to have to be like just walked to the bathroom

and everything like he could barely stand up.

So I would stay there a lot of time so I wouldn't stay there.

Shawn was so sick that he was physically wrecked.

Jen wasn't any help.

So they had to hire a nanny to help take care of the kids.

Then Shawn lost his job because of all the time off.

The little money they had started to dwindle fast

and the problems with Jen got worse.

Jen had run off with somebody after he had an argument

that she hit him with a frying pan

and he was bruised up and marked up from that

and that she ran off with some guy

that went to Arizona.

That they had a big fight.

And Jen left with a guy.

According to Shawn, Jen abandoned her family

at their lowest point.

It's unlike my daughter.

It can go two weeks without calling us.

Then it went up three weeks.

It's unlike my daughter not calling us or texting us three weeks.

January 3rd moved forward talking to my parents about

finding a missing pressure report

because Shawn wasn't really communicating to my parents

as much.

He gave us a little information.

And all of a sudden, once we started pushing the police,

it seemed like that's where he started talking.

I saw her two weeks ago,

or she only comes around for money.

I'll see her soon.

He even said that he saw her in town.

And I just kept saying this guy

doesn't seem right.

On March 5th, 2021,

three days before the murder of Mike Dubkowski

and the National Manhunt,

in the concrete shadows of an Albuquerque airport parking garage,

a worn-down pickup truck waited for someone

to find what was inside.

Albuquerque International Airport, this is James.

James, this is our police defense officer Martinez with SCIS.

I'm on patrol in the garage.

I have a vehicle here on the fourth floor.

And within five feet of the vehicle,

you could smell some sort of rotten,

clungent odor.

On the fourth floor of the airport parking garage

was a maroon Ford Ranger,

backed into a spot far from all the other cars.

While the truck was suspicious

with all the storage bins loaded inside and out,

it was the wafts of rot

that got the security guards attention.

The vehicle is filled with multiple tubs,

storage containers,

plastic storage containers,

throughout the bed of the vehicle,

as well as the cab.

All right, we'll just keep an eye on it

and if anything changes, let us know.

If anything changes,

okay, are you going to...

No, I'm not sending an officer

because of vehicle stings.

Okay.

All right, well, thank you very much.

The truck didn't have any signs of a break-in,

and no one was inside.

It was just very smelly.

But the guard couldn't let it go.

He finished checking the rest of the garage

and then took his suspicion to his boss.

His boss couldn't let it go either.

Come through this, Josh.

Josh, this is Mark 911 down at Longside.

How are you?

Good, how you doing?

Good, good.

Hey, I went up to level four.

It just looks weird, man.

It is packed full of stuff,

like, tarp down in the back,

and every seat in the cab

is fully loaded,

including the driver seat

with, like, rubber-made toads and stuff.

And there is an order there,

and he said he talked to you guys,

and I understand that the truck is registered,

and there's really not a whole lot to go on,

but I mean, it might not be a bad idea

to have an officer look at it.

It just looks weird, dude.

Unfortunately, patrol officers were dispatched

to the fourth level of the Sunport parking garage.

The bed of the little pickup truck

was filled with storage totes,

covered with a deflated air mattress.

A broken headboard from a twin bed waited all down.

The cab of the truck was filled

with miscellaneous items.

Every surface, even the driver seat,

was packed with stuff.

Boxes of loose clothing were scattered in the back seat.

Atomas the tank engine-themed toy box

was ran behind the driver's seat.

The passenger seat was piled with stuff

and covered by a tarp.

It was more than just a little strange

that someone would park a truck

loaded with personal items at the airport

and leave it there.

It's not like people usually need to catch a flight

in the middle of moving,

and I'm pretty sure that people

that live out of their car

aren't world travelers.

Yeah, and they began to see right there

with the clothes blood on their shirt.

Like, those loppers right there.

Yeah, I can't tell there's rust on it

or, I don't know,

like around the blade part.

It kind of looks red.

It's reddish.

It could be rust,

but based on what we're looking at,

that means.

The patrol officers immediately understood

what the security guards were talking about.

This truck reaked of decay.

They called a forensic investigator to determine

if they were justified in their concerns.

I don't even know.

I have a suspicious situation here.

There's a bunch of patrols.

These couple were covering the back.

It smells off their beds.

I think so.

No, we kind of pulled one over

and it looked like there might be

a major body part.

I don't know.

I don't know.

You know that I'm out of your good city.

It was such an outlandish idea

that the officer giggled.

Body parts, you say.

Don't be silly.

The body looks like there's a shoulder.

There's a shoulder.

When officers peeled back one of the tote's lids,

they were smacked in the face

with the thick stench of decomposition.

Patrol officers led the forensic investigator

around the truck,

pointing out what looked like blood,

hair, and human skin.

The police weren't sure what was going on

with that little red truck,

but they were going to find out.

The truck was registered to 60-year-old

Randall, a postalon,

an albacurky local.

He had no criminal record.

How his truck ended up at the airport

was a mystery.

The major crime scene team

and the office of the medical investigator

methodically documented the contents of each tote.

The first tote contained a bloody,

deflated swimming pool,

but underneath was a male torso.

The torso was missing a head,

a left arm, and legs below the knees.

It was covered in tattoos

and clothes from the waist down.

Whoever dismembered his body

was in such a hurry that they cut through the clothes.

In the second tote they found another torso,

covered by a red and white blanket.

It was missing the head, both legs,

and a right hand.

The blade from a reciprocating saw

was lodged into the rib cage.

It had a tattoo on the right shoulder

and was clothed from the waist up.

In the third tote they found a single human thigh.

In the fourth tote they found a fully clothed

and fully intact body of a female under a blanket.

Her hair was dyed blonde with streaks of red.

She was curled in a fetal position

and crammed into a 50 gallon bin.

Each tote added a piece to the story.

They found human remains,

but also the tools used to dismember them.

They found black gloves

and multiple knives covered in blood.

In the Thomas the Tank Engine themed toy box,

they found a head, two legs,

and strands of hair clinging to a bloody hacksaw.

I don't think I have to stress

how unsettling it is to find this gruesome scene

inside a children's toy chest.

It's downright nightmare-inducing.

It was already one of the most disturbing crime scenes

in Albuquerque's history,

and then they pulled back the tarp in the front seat.

Underneath was the complete body of a man.

He was curled in a fetal position

with his knees on the floorboard.

His arms were pinned under his body

and his head was forced into the seat back.

There was evidence of severe trauma to the head and face.

When they pulled the crumpled body out of the truck,

they understood why.

Underneath the body was a blood-covered,

short-handled sledgehammer.

It was clear that the body in the passenger seat

was the owner of the truck, Randall.

From what officers could tell,

he looked like his license photo.

Detectives now had to find out why Randall was dead

in his own truck,

with the dismembered bodies of three others.

They also needed to identify the man

caught on airport surveillance cameras,

parking the truck.

But they started their investigation

with the address associated with Randall's license.

I'm going to help you Jonathan with.

He's my brother.

You're looking for him?

Yeah, really don't know where he is,

to be honest with you.

All he does is receive his mail here.

Okay.

Where do you think he's living?

I truly think he's living out of his vehicle.

Tell me why you think that.

He's tested.

He's broke.

Okay.

He's scraping for gas to put it in the truck.

Randall's brother Mark didn't seem surprised

when police showed up asking about him.

Randall was homeless, living out of his truck.

He did random tree trimming to make money.

But Mark was adamant that Randall

couldn't be responsible for anything

that required a police investigation.

What I want to do, gentlemen,

is I will give...

Can I get your name too?

I'm sorry.

I'm going to write it down.

Is that what I want to put your number to?

I'll tell you all these guys.

You're a person of interest in a murder.

No, I'm kidding about that.

You know, being a police officer is hard.

Can you imagine having a conversation with someone

all the while knowing that their brother is dead?

But you can't tell them

because they haven't been positively identified yet.

Just imagine how painful that would be.

But I'll just tell them your personal interest

and to talk to them.

So I don't know what's going on.

And even if you don't hear from him,

but hear from somebody else that might know where he is,

please call us.

Yeah.

The police still couldn't divulge that information,

not until they knew the connection to the other murders.

Thankfully, they didn't have to wait long.

The Sheriff's Office from Cebola County, New Mexico,

called to explain that the descriptions

of the dismembered body parts

matched the descriptions of three missing persons

in their jurisdiction.

Police have identified four bodies

that were found in a vehicle at the Sunport on Friday.

Three of the victims, 21-year-old Matthew Miller,

40-year-old Justin Matta,

and 39-year-old Jennifer Lannon,

had been reported missing out of grants back in January.

Officials are investigating how the fourth victim,

61-year-old Randall Apostolone,

is connected to the other.

The heavily tattooed torso was identified

as 40-year-old Justin Matta,

last seen by his girlfriend on January 17th.

The torso, with a single shoulder tattoo,

was identified as 21-year-old Matthew Miller,

last seen by his grandmother on January 24th.

The intact female body was identified

as none other than 39-year-old Jennifer Lannon.

Sean's ex-wife.

The Cebola Sheriff's Office

also told Albuquerque detectives

that all three were tied to drugs

and that their main suspect, Sean Lannon,

had already likely fled to New Jersey.

We're just in that the multi-state manhunt is now over

for a man wanting the connection with five murders.

Minutes ago, we learned that federal marshals

captured Sean Lannon in St. Louis, Missouri.

Sean fled New Mexico with his kids on March 4th.

The bodies in the truck weren't found

until the following day, March 5th.

By March 7th, the local police in New Jersey

were already taking the kids from Sean's family.

Sean was on the run in Virginia.

He spoke with police that night.

They told him they wanted to talk to him

and that they had already found the body of his wife.

He agreed to return home, but never did.

Instead, he made a beeline for Mike's house.

He arrived on March 8th.

By the time Sean was arrested on March 10th,

he had already made it all the way to St. Louis in Mike's car.

He was caught sleeping inside.

He had some questions to answer.

One day, I took a walk of Walmart,

a percent dollar stronger, empty,

to get groceries.

If I were into the walker relays and how my food cart turned around,

came back in the front door,

went in the hallway to get my food cart on my dresser.

I noticed it was quiet.

I knew here are kids,

hoping the door would jump,

and just turned on their fucking hand.

I knew they were divorced whenever I was like,

it gets the fuck of the kids grabbing a car.

Then fucking another man didn't really phase Sean.

He was just worried about the kids.

He didn't see them or hear them.

So call the kids, nothing, pick them up on the door, cross your mind.

Some pile of blankets,

mind of blankets of the kids.

Sean runs to his kids and picks up one of his daughters.

Don't see my hidden reasons of food now.

I put it against her, I could feel it.

She has shallow breaths.

His daughter is non-responsive, barely breathing.

He looks at the other two kids,

neither one, seem to have a pulse.

I'm stepping out with what you do.

Justin's putting my clothes,

comes in like,

I'm done 100 times,

they're fine, they're fine.

I'm fine, they're fine, they're not breathing.

What the fuck you do?

Doesn't they drug them, something they're medicine?

Justin assured Sean that he and Jen had done this 100 times.

They drugged the kids so they would go to sleep

so they could fuck.

Sean was living.

Justin ran out the room,

got the house immediately.

Jen picked up their son, the youngest.

He showed no signs of pulse or breathing.

Their baby was dead.

She kissed the kids on the forehead,

all three of them.

I'll see him in a minute.

She goes to do all of her shit.

Jen, believing she was responsible

for the death of her kids,

didn't call for help.

She went to the bedroom and prepared her heroine.

Sean, with his medic training from the military,

didn't give up so easily.

They said they also blew a heroine's move in their faces

so they don't have a narcan in the work.

We looked around the garage and found them.

In case you don't know,

Narcan is a brand name for a drug called Naloxone.

It reverses the effects of opioids.

A person overdosing on opiates

and near death can be brought back in seconds with this drug.

But Sean only found a single dose.

So, in a matter of moments,

he grabs some straws and some duct tape

and rigged a dual applicator.

He placed it under the noses of the two kids

without a heartbeat.

Normally, people who overdosed snap a wake.

But with Sean's kids, nothing happened.

He was convinced they were beyond saving.

He placed the barely breathing daughter on the couch

so the nanny would see her when she arrived.

With the other two kids dead,

Sean felt like a failure.

He no longer had a reason to live.

I told him I'd seen him in a minute.

That's the bedroom.

I was already out with the heroine.

It was enough to take her life.

So, I really should have breathing.

He wasn't going to be.

Sean had shot up the rest of her heroine

in an attempt to end her life,

but it wasn't enough.

She was breathing and she wasn't going to die.

Sean psyched himself up for what he was about to do.

He blamed her over and over for their children's deaths.

And then...

My head all up.

That's the best one.

T's I am.

A son cried out.

I was like...

How the fuck would you know?

Right before he pulled the trigger

and blew his own brains out,

his son woke up and cried out.

The kids weren't dead.

Sean immediately abandoned his suicide attempt.

Now, the only problem was that he had already shot his wife.

And you guys were living on borrowed time at that point,

so I needed to get my kids so I were safe.

Did I come?

Sean knew he would eventually get caught,

but he wanted to get his kids to his family,

so they wouldn't be taken away.

He starts preparing for their trip

but can't shake his anger for Justin.

He blames him for the whole situation.

He decides to kill him.

He used Jen's phone to text him

that everything was fine and to come over.

All the while, still being Justin Malta.

He just found some of the drugs he had been doing into my kids.

It took like a week.

I came to the house.

I went to the laundry room,

and connected to the garage.

And so I killed him.

Before I killed him,

he offered up a trade.

His phone had pictures of Sean Michael.

I was going to make it in my living room.

I don't know what fuckers name was.

William or Matthew?

Miller, whatever the fuck his name is.

I just fucking get on my son's shoulders.

In an attempt to save his life,

Justin offered pictures to Sean.

The pictures were of his naked son.

On one side of his son was Matthew Miller.

On the other was a man named Daniel Limus.

Both had their exposed penises,

resting on the little boy's shoulders.

Sean's childhood trauma

must have flooded back at that moment.

He was tempted to let Justin go

until he confessed he was the one who took the picture.

Flashbacks of Uncle Mike probably flooded his brain,

along with all the unresolved feelings of anger and shame.

Then he realized why Justin had the pictures.

He was selling them.

He wanted to know if he could do a shot of heroin for it.

It was like,

so I said, well, if you find any in the vent,

so he loved it.

He was looking down at the vent.

He didn't see it coming.

I mentioned on the back of the head.

It disgusted me.

And that's gross.

Sean now had two murders to clean up.

But he wasn't done yet.

Sean wanted to kill the two men in the picture,

abusing his son.

He tried to lure them to the house one at a time.

Eventually, Matthew Miller showed up alone.

I had some about the thing with something.

He said that it wasn't his idea

and it was like,

he had an erection in the picture.

Like, he had forced someone to have an erection in your childhood.

Shot him in the garage,

put him to the back of his head,

and put him to the trigger.

It's disgusting.

This time Sean planned a head

to line the garage floor with tarps

and whatever you could find,

so there wouldn't be much to clean up.

But Matthew's body missed.

The fact could feel kind of weird.

It's like,

and my hand was, I guess, in part of the brain.

I picked up his head,

his hair,

and kind of went on the back once,

so I had to contain it.

Yeah.

It's disgusting.

Sean was running out of time.

Ever since he lost his job,

he'd been living off of unemployment.

But with Jens,

let's say, spending habits,

they were getting kicked out of the house.

The water and the electricity had already been shut off.

He didn't have time to get to his next target.

And I have been trying to get Daniel I was to the house for over weeks.

He just wasn't that stupid.

His original idea,

when he started dismembering Justin and Matthew,

was that maybe,

you could get away with it?

Maybe he could cut them up small enough

that he could get rid of the pieces discreetly.

But after he started,

he found out how hard it was,

and also,

how utterly disgusting.

He tried using a reciprocating saw

to cut through Matthew's torso,

but rather than cut through the bone,

it got stuck,

and started violently shaking the corpse instead.

Yeah, that's terrifying.

So he resorted to knives,

and hand-sauce,

and settled for just making them small enough to fit in storage totes.

He spent the better part of the month cleaning the home.

He ripped up the carpet and scrubbed the garage floor.

He used so much bleach that he got blisters.

Ben came the time when he needed to dispose of the bodies.

He had a literal truckload of storage bins.

That's when he met Randall Apostalon.

Yeah, I'm going to meet up with Randy.

Says he can move in.

Sean didn't have a car,

so he needed help moving the totes.

He asked around the street until he heard about Randall, or Randy.

Randy was living out of his truck and was always looking to make a quick buck.

Randy told Sean he could not only move his stuff but also store it,

but it would cost $150 bucks.

He took him to one storage unit,

but it was full.

So, after driving around for a while,

Randy changed his mind.

He told Sean it was going to cost him another $150 bucks.

He just leases me for the $150 treasure bag.

He gets your shit out and I'm like,

what?

He's like, yeah, you're like I have to say nothing,

but it's in the boxes.

It's good enough for him.

We're getting a fight.

Of course, Randy knew what was in the boxes.

It had been weeks at this point.

Even in the chilly temperatures of Albuquerque in February,

the smell was starting to point to signs of something,

something sinister.

I think death has a smell that you're not going to forget anytime soon.

Randy knew.

As Sean slowly realized Randy knew,

he was left with only one option.

He had to kill him.

If he ratted him out,

he'd never get his kids to safety.

He had to for his kids.

He was in driver's seat.

I hit him two or a few times in my hands.

I flipped the key to his office position.

Something went my hand got sore,

hit him with a hammer,

a glove of splatter.

It's a pretty good thing.

It's huge.

I don't need to chuck him on the side door.

It's hard to feel.

It's horrible.

It's pretty horrible.

It's taking a pleasure, man.

It's disgusting.

I wanted my kids to be safe.

I could have failed that last year, man.

He claimed he took no joy in what he did,

and that he did it all for the safety of his kids.

But Sean's story didn't end with Jen,

or with Mike.

In custody, he would make a claim so staggering,

so horrifying that investigators

couldn't even believe it at first.

He said there were more,

many more.

Sean's childhood was marked by sexual abuse.

His adult life and marriage

to Jen unraveled under the weight of addiction and violence.

He killed four people in New Mexico,

including Jen,

and tried to hide their bodies

and a truck at the airport.

Days later, he showed up at Uncle Mike's house.

Mike was a mentor, a father figure,

but he had abused Sean as a child.

That night ended with another brutal murder.

When caught, he confessed,

but when police thought he was done,

he had more to say.

The one time I was sitting back with kids,

when I came in,

started beating the fuck out of Jen.

Okay, some doomsday.

She's on the ground.

She's gone from her face.

I don't think he realized I was there.

Sean saw the violence in his home,

against his wife,

near his children,

and he lost it.

He claimed this was the first time he took a life.

He was always,

always something relative to Jen,

while he's near my kids.

He claimed there were 11 others he killed,

connected to Jen through drugs.

When they came looking for the money she owed

and got violent,

Sean would have to step in

to protect his kids.

Your bodies are in the mouth.

I'll put them in the hole.

I'll put them in the mouth.

Sean claimed to have dumped

all 11 others in the mouthies.

Apparently, that part of New Mexico

has old lava tubes traveling deep underground.

If he threw any bodies in there,

they'd never be found.

He admitted that if he hadn't been caught in St. Louis,

he would have returned to New Mexico

to hunt down Daniel Lemus

and kill him.

Sean didn't blame Jen for everything.

He blamed himself a lot too.

But the kids deserved better.

And that was his driving motivation.

Jen's drug associations put the kids in danger,

but so did her neglect.

But yes, she was always heavily involved with drugs.

When I first met her, it was pills.

And then she had lost her nursing license

because of it.

She just got a deeper, deeper deeper with it.

I know that he talked all the time about her having boyfriends.

Then at some point, he got she was prostituting herself for drugs.

She would be like a drug mule.

Like if she came to New Jersey,

I didn't even know they did stuff.

They hide things in their bodies.

I didn't even know about that.

Jennifer, I mean, I've seen her get caught in from the kids.

These are her kids for hours.

She never used to check their diapers.

Like they'd sit for days.

They wouldn't eat nothing.

Jen's addiction affected their kids before they were even born.

Their second daughter was born with a heart defect.

What a mom.

And yes, I am victim blaming Susan.

Victim blaming the drug addict horrible mother.

That's probably better off in the ground.

But tell your friends.

Becca and Savannah both have life problems.

Becca's way worse off as a man.

She and I started and she first was born.

Like she's got more than just born apart.

She requires a lot of medical attention than the other children.

She makes it to 15.

20 would be unless they come out with something new medical technique.

Savannah's hard as she's also, yes.

Savannah's not expected to have a full life.

She's going to need a pacemaker sooner than later.

The short lives of those three children sound like utter turmoil.

Before Sean's arrest, the kids were taken by the state.

After his arrest, the children went to Jen's brother Chris.

He noticed the neglect immediately.

I mean, when he came in here, you could tell they were not malnourished.

I mean, you could see in their face.

And like you said, you could see their colors.

Their eyes were like sunken and almost like all around here.

They go like they were not fed.

You could tell there's some definitely neglect there.

Some malnourishment.

They had trouble eating.

We've sat down for dinner or anything like that.

They're getting better.

You could see in their face.

They got better color.

They're eating better.

They're growing.

It seems like God knows what they've been through.

I mean, if they were left alone, defend for themselves.

It's heartbreaking to think of what those kids must have experienced.

But now, they're safe.

The way Sean Lannon was arrested was about as peaceful away as a national manhunt could end.

And when he was caught, he confessed.

And he didn't just confess once.

He confessed in every jurisdiction in which he committed a crime.

He pleaded guilty in New Jersey to the murder of Michael Dubkowski.

He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

He pleaded guilty in New Mexico for the murders of Justin Mata, Matthew Miller, Jennifer Lannon, and Randall Apostelon.

He was given 15 years each for 60 years total.

He'll serve the 35 years in New Jersey first, then be transferred to New Mexico.

Murderer, may you live your life miserably?

Feel the pain which you deserve to feel daily about taking the lives of innocent people.

I can only wish it be hell on earth for your actions you committed.

I don't know what evil poisoned your heart and mind that caused you to murder my brother, Randall Apostelon.

What the ranged state of mind consumes you to murder your ex-wife, Jennifer Lannon, or Justin Mata, or Matthew Miller, or Michael Dubkowski.

I do wish that New Mexico had the death penalty. The murderer deserves the death penalty.

Sean committed horrible, deplorable acts.

He said he did it for the sake of his children, but was he right?

I don't know. This is a tough one.

What I do know is this. If someone had harmed my kids, I would be pretty relentless in protecting them.

Not sure if I'd murder someone, but you could probably push me there with enough trauma.

I think a lot of parents would feel the same way.

Sean loved his children. That much is undeniable.

But the love became twisted into enabling Jen into endangering the very kids he wanted to protect.

And finally into violence he couldn't take back.

He saw horror. He carried trauma. And he became a monster and trying to fight monsters.

I guess it's a good lesson for us all.

I don't excuse what he did, but I also don't mourn every life he took.

I can't feel sympathy for people who pray on children or people who put their own children in danger.

That's the tension in Sean's story.

Love twisted into vengeance, protection warped into destruction.

And maybe the scariest part is this.

Sean Lannon believed he was doing the right thing. Isn't that something?

How often does that happen in society when people who think they're doing the right thing

are just misinformed or tricked by those with ulterior motives?

You could do a lot of harm trying to do the quote unquote right thing.

I think what happens there is, and what's embarrassing, I think seeing those pictures of that situation might have triggered something to do with Mike.

Just one of those pictures out of Mike's possession.

I don't know what there's truth to that, but I mean I just heard that he's had pain in his life.

And that probably makes sense.

If this happened to him as a kid, maybe that's why he stayed in the office.

I guess it just makes sense if that really did happen.

I mean, I've never been through that, but I mean I could have had that with really a poor man.

And that's why he felt like he needed to control certain situations.

In the end, authorities searched, but never found evidence of the 11 bodies Sean claimed were hidden in the lava tubes.

Whether it was truth, exaggeration, or manipulation.

No bodies were ever recovered, and those questions remain unanswered.

They never found any proof of any of the pictures either.

Sean said he destroyed Justin's phone and burned the photos Mike gave him.

His three children were placed in the care of family far from the chaos their parents left behind.

And Sean Lannon, a man who said he killed to protect his kids,

will spend the rest of his life behind bars, unable to protect anyone from anything ever again.

After 13 years of doing this, I'm still trying to figure things out.

Still trying to figure out what's moral and just, and what isn't.

So, I just wanted to say that I appreciate all of you.

We stick around for it.