Delco man charged in slaying of his Abington tenant
Larry Reese, a SEPTA electrician who volunteered with the Abington Township police, didn't intend to kill his tenant during a predawn visit last month, authorities believe.
It wasn't until Reese realized what he'd done that he started to think like a murderer, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.
Reese, 44, of Tinicum Township, Delaware County, was charged yesterday with second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and related offenses. Ferman said Reese has admitted bludgeoning Louis Malachowsky, 54, inside Malachowsky's Abington apartment April 30 - and later stuffing his corpse into a trash can and dumping it in a trash-strewn vacant lot in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.
"The landlord and tenant had a bad relationship that was getting worse," Ferman said. "It was getting very contentious, and it appeared that the victim was trying to get money for some unspecified reason from the landlord."
The two were friends once, authorities said, but the relationship had soured, and Reese apparently wanted to intimidate Malachowsky into leaving when he entered the Hamilton Avenue apartment with a heavy insulator, a cylindrical tool from his SEPTA job.
Ferman said it's unclear whether Malachowsky was trying to extort money from his landlord, but Reese told police that Malachowsky had sent him a "nasty e-mail" threatening legal action, according to the criminal complaint.
Reese allegedly entered the apartment with a key, awakened Malachowsky and killed him with a blow to the head.
When detectives asked him if he'd hit Malachowsky, he responded, "I don't remember. I'm sure I must have," the complaint states. When he left, he said, Malachowsky was "on the couch and mumbling."
Investigators later found traces of suspected blood on Malachowsky's carpet and walls.
Reese initially explained the presence of body fluids by saying that his tenant had stage-IV cancer and could not control his bowels, but Ferman said that now appears to be a "ruse designed to hide from the detectives how the blood might have gotten there."
She said Reese was charged with second-degree murder, as opposed to first-degree, because the evidence shows that "he clearly did not intend to kill" Malachowsky.
He was arraigned yesterday and was being held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Lower Providence Township.
Reese had served as an Abington Township special police officer, a volunteer position in which he helped to direct traffic at community events.
No one answered the door yesterday at his Tinicum home, but a neighbor who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation described Reese and his wife as "strange birds." They moved into the duplex around Halloween and "don't fit in" on the quiet block of Pontiac Street, the neighbor said.
"They both have tempers," the neighbor said.
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