Sunday, March 20, 2011

Holy Murder

Our local ward is reeling from the arrest of ward member 28-year-old John Thomas. On Friday, March 18th, 2011, Thomas confessed to stoning to death ward member Murray Seidman (age 70 years) for "homosexual advances" on Jan. 12 of this year.

Thomas claims Old Testament law as justification for the murder, and that he received personal revelation from God to murder Seidman.

Thomas, who is a convert to the LDS church of about 5 years, was instrumental in Seidman's baptism into the church last year. The two were claimed to be "inseparable," and just recently Thomas was made beneficiary of Seidman's will.

The local news station posted the following video of the story:
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news%2Fcrime&id=8020716

News about the Mormon connection and an interview with Len Seidman can be found here:
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2011/03/19/news/doc4d842bb1d89e1888746326.txt?viewmode=fullstory

My husband posted a link on his blog, which can be found here:
http://curie-us.blogspot.com/2011/03/lgbt-related-modern-mormon-murder-in-my.html

After the arrest, it was revealed that Thomas has schizophrenia, but is high-functioning with medication. He claims to have been off his medications when he committed the murder. The victim Seidman was also mentally handicapped.

1 comment:

Donna Banta said...

What a horrible think to have happened. Thanks to you and your husband for sharing this. As I said to him, it is such a shock when something like this happens so close to home.