THE DARK SIDE OF IOWA
Thomas Seehan, Sr.
#0400801
photo courtesy Des Moines Register
Full Name: Thomas Earl Seehan, Sr.
DOB: December 11, 1949
Charge: 1st degree murder
County: Story
City: Ames
Current Status: Clarinda Correctional Facility
Date of Crime: December 3, 1975
Tentative Discharge Date: Life
Victim: Thomas Earl "Tommy, Jr." Seehan, Jr.
DOB: December 11, 1949
Charge: 1st degree murder
County: Story
City: Ames
Current Status: Clarinda Correctional Facility
Date of Crime: December 3, 1975
Tentative Discharge Date: Life
Victim: Thomas Earl "Tommy, Jr." Seehan, Jr.
Thomas Earl Seehan and his wife, Linda Seehan, were married in January 1972 and were the parents of one son, Thomas Earl Seehan, Jr. (Tommy). Tommy, who was two years old at the time, died as a result of suffocation at the hands of his father on December 3, 1975. By all accounts, Thomas was a loving father and he killed his son to avoid losing custody of the child as part of a marital breakup. Thomas made several attempts at suicide which failed. For this act against his son, he was found “guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Thomas talked about his actions in a telephone interview from The Bankers Life office in Ames, where he sat aiming a 16-gauge shotgun at his wife, Linda. “A divorce is in the works,” he said, and his wife was demanding custody of Tommy. “If you look up my records,” Thomas said in a shaky voice, “the same thing happened to me when I was a little baby – my parents were divorce. I know how I turned out and I wasn’t going to let that happen to my boy.”
Thomas talked about his actions in a telephone interview from The Bankers Life office in Ames, where he sat aiming a 16-gauge shotgun at his wife, Linda. “A divorce is in the works,” he said, and his wife was demanding custody of Tommy. “If you look up my records,” Thomas said in a shaky voice, “the same thing happened to me when I was a little baby – my parents were divorce. I know how I turned out and I wasn’t going to let that happen to my boy.”
What happened to Thomas as a baby, according to records on file at the Polk County Clerk’s office, was that he was bounced around between divorced parents for a time, winding up in a Des Moines orphanage. His paternal grandmother once testified in court that she found the baby boy, on one visit to his parents’ house, “filthy… There wasn’t one speck on that baby that was clean and his crib smelled worse than a barn and I told her (the boy’s mother), ‘Your father’s pig pen smells better than that.’”
From that kind of start, Thomas grew up to quit school in the 10th grade and to serve two hitches in the Iowa’s Men Reformatory in Anamosa. The first on a larceny charge, the second because his first parole was revoked. Officials said the reason for the parole revocation could not be found until they searched Thomas’ prison records.
But back to the beginning. Thomas was born on December 11, 1949, the second child f Leo T. and Ruby J. Seehan, who married March 6, 1946. Thomas was six months old, his sister, Leann Louise, was two years old, when their father filed for divorce in April 1950. Leo sited the as grounds for the divorce extreme mental cruelty and his wife’s admitted adulterous acts, among other grounds, according to the divorce petition. Leo testified during the divorce proceedings that, “It can be proven the baby (Thomas) has had very bad care; meals was never ready on time. The little girl didn’t get properly fed. Well, if a mother’s got her mind on something else, she surely can’t take care of the children.” The divorce was granted in May 1950, with the father being awarded custody of both children.
In December of that year, Ruby went back to court, asking that she be awarded custody of Thomas, though she stipulated she would agree to her former husband retaining custody of the daughter. Ruby’s petition alleged that “within three weeks after the divorce was entered,” her former husband placed Thomas in the Christ Child Home in Des Moines, and that he placed their daughter with her paternal grandmother.
She argued in that petition that custody arrangements should be revised because the children had remained outside their father’s home, even after his remarriage earlier in December of that year. Ruby’s petition argued that her former husband “is emotionally unstable and has told Ruby he already regrets his present marriage, that he still loves Ruby, and always will.”
Ruby proposed moving with Thomas to the home of her parents, the Earl Kiners, on a tenant farm near Rippey. Custody of Thomas was granted to her on December 23, 1950. Leo lived in Des Moines. He was employed by the Rock Island Lines as an engineer.
Ruby married Robert Blackburn a year later, according to a source close to the Blackburns. They had a daughter, Carol. Ruby worked at an electronics plant in Ames. Robert had a painting business in Ames. “The family was never very rich,” the source, asking not to be named, said. “But the kids (Thomas and Carol) got everything they needed.” But Thomas was a difficult child. He was “in and out of school all the time,” the source said. He ultimately quit school when he was in his sophomore year at Ames High.
Thomas worked at a variety of jobs around Ames, mostly in trucking, before and after receiving a sentence of 10 years on the larceny charge. He served from May 1967 until February 13, 1969. His parole was revoked a month after his release and his second hitch there was from April 1, 1969 to June 18, 1970. He was paroled then finally discharged from parole on December 17, 1971.
He met his wife, Linda, a native of Gilbert, “downtown in Ames,” the source said, and they were married in 1972. Thomas had worked as a truck driver since then, first for already-established companies in Ames, and in the previous fix or six months, as head of his own company, Seehan Trucking. His business was hauling sand, rock, gravel, and topsoil.
Linda was employed by The Bankers Life, where she was working at 9 a.m. that Friday when Thomas entered carrying the 16-gague shotgun. Why? The two had separated about two weeks prior. At the time of the separation, Thomas said, “I gave my wife two weeks to decide what she’s going to do. I told her I would agree to let her go have her divorce, whatever she wanted, but I wanted my son.” He said he loved his son “and loved playing with him. I called him Junior, same as me.”
Thomas kept his son during the separation, he said. Then Thursday night, about dinner time “or somewhere in there,” he said, “my wife called me. She told me she had the divorce papers filed. That she wasn’t going to ask me for anything but him, the boy.” “I said to myself right then, if I can’t have him, then nobody’s going to have him.” “I knew I couldn’t get him in court. The woman always gets the child. That’s the way it is in Iowa law. That’s the way it was for me when I was a baby. I ended up with my mom.” “I just thought and thought about what I was going to do. I was waiting for her to call and tell me she’d changed her mind. I thought about running off somewhere with the boy, but I knew all they had to do was come and get him and that they’d put me in jail for running off.”
During the interview, Thomas first said, it was about eight hours later (after the phone call from his wife), that he “smothered” his son. At another point in the interview, he said he “smothered” the boy at 7 or 8 o’clock last night (Thursday). Thomas was asked to re-think his Thursday night reasoning. “I had two choices,” he said. “Let her have him or to fix it so nobody would have him.”
On Friday afternoon, did he think he’d made the right choice? “I still felt the same,” he said. Thomas, armed with a shotgun, went to The Bankers Life building where his wife was working, and held Linda hostage for six hours before lawmen talked him into given himself up. Linda, 22, was not harmed.
An off-duty Iowa Highway Patrol Trooper and an attorney finally talked Thomas into surrendering about 3:15 p.m. By then, scores of heavily armed local, county and state lawmen had surrounded the building and a crowd of sightseers, estimated at more than 1,000 persons, had gathered.
Before Trooper Jerry Skahill and attorney Rex Gilchrist talked Thomas into giving up, several other persons had tried. One was Earl Tice, owner of Tice Radiator and Welding, where Thomas rents space to house the trucks he uses in his business.
The ordeal began about 9 a.m. when Thomas, dressed in a baseball-type cap and work clothes and carrying a 16-gauge pump shotgun, walked into a claims office of The Bankers Life, across from the Iowa State University campus in Ames. A woman employee said that when she Thomas walked in, she considered shoving Linda under her desk. But, the woman said, Linda told her, “No, you go.”
Another co-worker, Susan Purvis, 22, said Linda is “my best friend.” Susan, who was also held hostage for a short time, gave this account: “He (Thomas) just walked in this morning about 9 o’clock. He wanted everybody out of the office but Linda.” She said he ordered the 15 female workers out of the office. “Then he saw me and told me to stay. He locked all the doors from the inside and had us go to the back of the office. He said he had killed their son, Tommy Jr., and he wanted to find out why she left him.”
Linda had called her husband Thursday night and told him she was filing for the divorce. Susan said Linda told her Thomas responded by threatening to “kill her if he ever saw her in the street.” Other employees who had been ordered from the office called police.
“When the police arrived,” Susan said, “Tom allowed one Ames police officer (Charles Rutter) to come in and talk. He tried to convince Tom he should go to a marriage counselor and work it out that way.” Susan said at one point, Thomas became “quite angry with me and threatened to shoot me.” Linda had been living with Susan during the separation.
Susan said Rutter told Thomas “he had to go talk to his sergeant and suggested I go, too. Tom said okay,” and Susan left with the policeman. “I guess I was only in there for about 15 minutes,” Susan said. After Susan came out and told what Thomas had said, officers were sent to the trailer court and found the body of Tommy, Jr., fully clothed on a bed. From that point on, it was a tense waiting game.
Lawmen, fearing the situation would turn into a shoot-out, deployed sharpshooters and armed officers to locations surrounding the University Towers, a luxury apartment building in which the insurance office is housed on the ground floor. Police set up headquarters in an adjoining business, the University Shop, a clothing store owned by Ames Mayor, William Pelz. Only a thin wall separated the shop from The Bankers Life office. Lawmen were able to communicate with Thomas by shouting through the wall.
At the back of the University shop is a hallway connecting it with the insurance office. Ames police, armed with shotguns and wearing bulletproof vests, hovered around that doorway throughout the day, prepared to charge into the insurance office if necessary. “I guess I just about walked into it,” the Mayor said. “I walked u to open my store and saw a cop out front. I asked him what was going on and he told me there was a guy with a gun next door. I thought he was kidding, but I looked in the front window and saw him, standing there with the gun.”
During the early part of the siege, officers debated whether to let Thomas’ mother, Ruby, go into the office to talk to him. They decided against it, learning he might take her hostage as well. Ruby, distraught and nearly hysterical, paced the floor in the University Shop repeating, “I just want to go in. Let me go in.” Ruby said she was at her job at Bourns when police notified her of the situation about 10:15 a.m.
Thomas and wife talked to several reporters by telephone during the siege. Asked in one such call if she was angry about the death of her son, Linda said, “I am numb.” As the morning wore on, the tension mounted. Shortly before noon, Thomas shouted that he no longer would talk through the wall. His mother broke and ran for the front door of the University Shop. She screamed, “I’m tired of standing, standing, standing. I just want to go in.” Rutter caught up to her before she could reach the door and calmed her.
The first real break came about 12:10 p.m. when Thomas agreed to let Skahill come in and talk to him. Skahill had been shouting through the wall before that, trying to get the gunman to give up. Skahill donned a protective vest, stuffed a pistol out of sight into his waistband and walked to the store’s telephone. He called his wife and said, “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll be home.” Then Rutter walked out the front door of the clothing store and into the insurance office.
Skahill, 28, a veteran of five years on the Iowa Highway Patrol, said later he was off duty Friday and was on his way to downtown Ames with his 10-month-old son in his pickup truck. “One of the neighbor ladies stopped me and asked me if I had heard what was going on.” Skahill said, “As soon as she told me, I ran back home with my son and drove down to the Ames Police Department.” “I found out the guy inside the office was [Thomas] Seehan. He’s an acquaintance of mine. I’ve never known him well, but I’ve known who he is and he’s known who I am.” “While I was at the PD, [Thomas] called there. I got on the phone and said, ‘[Thomas] what are you doing out there?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m out here talking to my wife.’ I said , ‘If I come out there, will you talk to me?’ He said he would so I told him, ‘Now don’t do anything stupid until I get there,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’”
Skahill said he had to borrow the revolver that he carried into the office. “I was a little apprehensive,” he said, “but I knew this man trusted me as much as any cop in town. And I figured that if anyone could talk to him, I could.” When Skahill entered, the police chief alerted the other officers standing by that if there was any shooting, that they were to go through. Pointing at the hallway door to the insurance office, he ordered, “Get around the door so we can charge it if anything happens.”
Ten tense lawmen crowded around the doorway, straining to hear the conversation through the wall. After a nervous 15 minutes, Skahill returned. “He’s bound and determined. He wants to talk to Earl Tice. If she (Linda) didn’t makes a move, she’s dead. They’re both sitting there drinking coffee right now.” Someone asked, “Any chance she could make a run for it?” Skahill replied, “If she knew it was coming, maybe. She’s being as cool as she can be about it.”
About 12:45 p.m., Earl donned a flack vest and went into the office with Skahill. A quarter hour later, the pair returned and huddled with police in a back room. Earl commented that Thomas “is starting to talk about it now. He wants to know what will happen to him. “ But, Earl added, “He wants someone to shoot him. He asked me to do it. I said, ‘No way.’”
About 2 p.m. a woman identified as Thomas’ sister, Carol, 21, walked into the clothing store. She sat down and spoke to her mother. Moments later, Ruby shrieked and began sobbing. She had not known until later that Tommy, Jr. was dead. Lawmen and reporters had kept that fact quiet, hoping the news could somehow be broken gently to Ruby.
Meanwhile, Skahill had gone back into the office and returned with word that the gunman wanted to see Ames attorney, Rex Gilchrist. Gilchrist arrived and accompanied Skahill back into the office about 2:30. Gilchrist could be heard telling Thomas not to despair. “Don’t give up hope, Tom. Don’t ever give up.” The trooper and the attorney left Thomas alone for about 15 minutes to discuss Thomas’ next move. Then they re-entered the office. Over the monitor, Skahill and Gilchrist could be heard pleading with Thomas to “Let Linda go. Let her leave, Tom.” He did at 2:45 p.m. Linda walked out the front door of the office unhurt.
Gilchrist and Skahill talked soothingly to Thomas, cajoling him and urging him to give up. Gilchrist told Thomas, “You haven’t given us a chance to help you. Let me help you, Tom.” Skahill repeatedly told Thomas, “Give me the gun. Thommy, and we’ll walk out the front door.”
Finally, at 3:15 p.m, Thomas handed his shotgun to Skahill. The trooper carried it to the front door of the insurance office and handed it out to an Ames policeman. Skahill could be heard promising Thomas, “I won’t put the cuffs on too tight. I promise.” Seconds later, the three emerged. No bullets were fired, words had worked.
Source: Des Moines Register