Monday, April 28, 2008
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Two siblings of the man believed to have killed and dismembered a man before committing suicide told a newspaper that their brother was abused as a child.
“This in no way justifies the terror John imposed on another human being, but throughout his life, he has only known violence,” sister Lisa Helm, 48, of Androscoggin County, Maine, told The Citizens’ Voice of Wilkes-Barre for a story published Sunday.
Police think that John F. Ryan, 38, of Hanover Township near Wilkes-Barre, killed John J. O’Brien, 51, of Wilkes-Barre this year, then cut up the body and put the parts in two bags found on an embankment near his home. Ryan’s body was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after O’Brien’s remains were discovered April 17.
Helm and Bill Scarbrough, 46, of Fort Worth, Texas, said once they learned of the crime, they felt they had to offer a glimpse into their stepbrother’s past.
“What John did was terrible, wrong, bad, horrendous, awful,” Scarbrough said. “We’re not trying to make excuses by no means. Us kids do feel John was a product of his environment and upbringing. We feel his father was the programmer of that.”
Helm and Scarbrough said their mother, Diane M. Hartje-Ryan, had six children with four men within a decade; Ryan, born in San Diego in 1972, was the youngest. She killed herself when he was 2.
They said their stepfather, Thomas F. Ryan, terrorized his wife and her children for years with physical and mental abuse. They said he later told his son that the suicide was his fault.
They said John Ryan became an abuser himself during a 14-year relationship with the mother of his two children, which the siblings say was a result of his father’s abuse.