Tag: Timothy McEnany

Inside His Innocence Website
(“A Case of the Flue,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post detailed chimney sweep Tim McEnany’s conviction for the murder and robbery of Kathryn Bishop, an 82-year-old who kept a lot of cash in her house.

He received life in jail without parole and is serving his sentence at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution in Somerset.

But there are two sides to every post-conviction story, and McEnany offers up his via the Pennsylvania Justice Project, which is the subject of this week’s post.

Site to see. I really didn’t want to find anything that seemed worthy of consideration on McEnany’s website. Forensic Files laid out the case so neatly in “A Case of the Flue,” and who can resist a little righteous disdain for anyone who would hurt an elderly widow?

While I still suspect that justice was already served in this case, McEnany and his supporters do offer some intriguing counterpoints, including one rather explosive theory, via the Pennsylvania Justice Project.

A review of  McEnany’s website follows, but first here’s a superquick recap of the crime as portrayed in Forensic Files:

Tim McEnany and his cousin Andrew Reischman cleaned the chimney in Kathryn Bishop’s house in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, on March 3, 1993.

Saltwater and slots. Over a beer at Shane’s Flight Deck that evening, the duo allegedly decided to return to Bishop’s house, quickly burglarize it, then establish an alibi by going back to the watering hole before anyone noticed they had left.

The part that didn’t go as planned was finding Bishop at home and awake. She was beaten to death, and her $6,000 in cash was stolen.

Afterward, McEnany — a married 26-year-old with two small children — and Reischman returned to the bar and then headed to Atlantic City for some recreation, according to prosecutors.

McEnany doesn’t have a lot of supporters on YouTube, judging from reader comments posted to “A Case of the Flue”:

Zeather Ababa
“He should have been given a sign to march in the street which says ‘I kill a old lady.'”

Joseph T.
“Murder just to take the money and piss it away, and give it to the Casino. Hope it was worth it, dumbass.”

With the Pennsylvania Justice Project, Father Francis-Maria Salvato — a priest who has taken up McEnany’s cause — hopes to disabuse the public of such unkind sentiments.

The innocence website includes nine long-form blog posts, a couple of them written by McEnany himself and the rest by Salvato. It also features audio interviews with McEnany’s mother.

Janet Callahan McEnany and Father Salvato’s most provocative contention is that the police should have investigated Kathryn Bishop’s grandson, Greg Seitz, in connection with the murder-robbery.

Treated like soot. According to the Pennsylvania Justice Project, Janet Seitz — who is Bishop’s daughter and Greg Seitz’s mother —and her husband visited Bishop while the chimney sweeps were at work. McEnany recalled the husband as pleasant and trusting, but he got some dubious vibes from Janet Seitz.

In her Forensic Files interview, Janet Seitz said she felt McEnany’s bill, between $300 and $400, seemed high.

I have to disagree. Even by 1993 standards, that sounds like a reasonable fee to have two people do work of that nature. (In addition to the cleaning, they did at least one repair to the chimney.)

Burned by media. It’s possible that some bias on Janet Seitz’s part influenced the investigation.

In one of the radio interviews, Tim’s mother said that concern about a bias toward her son spurred the McEnany family to decline media requests — including one from Peter Shellem, an investigative journalist known for helping wrongly convicted people win exoneration.

Without the benefit of having talked to the McEnany family, Shellem, who worked as a reporter for Harrisburg’s Patriot News, got the facts wrong when he appeared on Forensic Files, Janet McEnany alleges.

Charting it out. A couple of other theories the website brings up are less scintillating: that the police botched the crime scene investigation and that various law-enforcement parties used the case to win themselves promotions.

Not that those allegations are any less worthwhile to explore — it’s just that they’re pretty much standard among convicted people.

The following table boils down major points of contention detailed on the website:

AUTHORITIES SAY THAT McENANY...	McENANY SUPPORTERS SAY	McENANY'S REASONING
Called victim's house twice to ensure coast was clear	Police seized his cell phone and fabricated call evidence	Authorities were anxious to solve case
Left bar for long enough to commit crime and return	He and Reischman never left the bar (Shane's Flight Deck)	Bar employees were guilty of serving a minor (Reischman), so they told police what they wanted to hear
Failed polygraph	Results can be manipulated	Mother worked for prison system, has seen corruption
Admitted guilt by saying beer gets him in trouble	He only meant he should have gone home instead of to a bar	Wife would be an honest alibi, unlike bar employees
Had paint chip in jacket, from basement window	Paint chip planted by police	Window never opened until police opened it
Was guilty because of forensic evidence	Police did "Forensic Files" to bolster their credibility	Police desperate to cover up injustice to McEnany
Got a fair trial	Trooper Jack Lotwick drove jurors to and from court, thus had a chance to influence them	Lotwick used case to win the job of sheriff
Kicked Bishop to death, causing Reischman to flee her house in horror	Witness says fleeing man had long hair	He & cousin have short hair. Victim's grandson's is long
Beat Bishop severely in a rage killing	Rage killings are personal; he had no rage toward Bishop	More likely that someone close to victim (like a relative) did it
Left fiber evidence from his T-shirt on victim's body	Lab scientist had doubts about fiber evidence	Even if fibers are from T-shirt, doesn't prove murder
Went to Atlantic City to spend stolen cash	Nothing — no mention of an Atlantic City trip on site
Got a fair portrayal on "Forensic Files"	"FF" hyped up evidence to win viewers	Shows like "FF" are tools of system