Two teenage brothers have been brutally beaten at an upstate NY church, one fatally, at the hands of their parents, Deborah and Bruce Leonard, aged, 59 and 65 respectively.
Cops say the spiritual ‘counseling’ at the World of Life church turned into an hours-long attack Sunday night in which Lucas Leonard, 19, and his 17-year-old brother, Christopher, were pummeled with fists and kicked. They suffered injuries to the abdomen, genitals, back and thighs according to a report via the Utica Observer-Dispatch.
Why did Bruce and Deborah Leonard beat their teen son to death inside church?
Eventually, Lucas stopped breathing and relatives took him early Monday to a hospital, where he died, police said. Authorities went to the church and found his younger brother, who was hospitalized in serious condition.
Offered Police Chief Michael Inserra: ‘Both brothers were subjected to physical punishment over the course of several hours, in hopes that each would confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness.’
He said investigators have not determined what the supposed sins were.
The brothers’ parents, Bruce and Deborah Leonard, were charged with manslaughter in Lucas’ death. Four other adults were charged with assault in the younger brother’s beating, including Sarah Ferguson, 33, the victims’ sister.
Charged with second degree assault were church members, Joseph Irwin, 26, of Chadwicks, David Morey, 26, of Utica, Linda Morey, 54, of Utica, and Sarah Ferguson, 33, of Clayville.
Turned over to child welfare authorities were seven children, four of them Ferguson’s found living in church quarters.
The beatings took place at a red-brick former elementary school that serves as both a church and a home for several members of the congregation, including one of the suspects. The church has existed for as many as 30 years in New Hartford, a once-thriving mill town of 22,000 people about 50 miles from Syracuse.
Nearby, in the village where the Leonard brothers lived with their parents, neighbors recalled a deeply religious family that kept mostly to itself. They described a family where Bruce and Deborah Leonard had been married for 20 years and have been members of the Word of Life Christian Church for eight years
‘I’m really afraid. In my heart I don’t think this is the first incident,’ said Eva Monaghan, who lives around the corner. ‘Over all the years, I can’t imagine this is the first thing. Maybe nothing as bad. Around town, it’s considered a cult.’
Offered neighbor, Julie Howard: ‘There’s always been weird things going on,’
‘You always hear dogs, they’re breeding dogs. The cops have been called there before, they’re not allowed in the building, they can’t get in the building.’
‘The cult thing over here has been going on for a while, I guess around 30 years. It’s their own religion everybody stays in their own religion. It’s like one big happy family of about 30 of them.’
The police chief, however, said he had no indication Word of Life was anything but a church and a home.
Tara Litz, who used to live next door to the church, said: ‘I never really had any ill problems with them, but I did see a lot of sketchy things regarding stuff in my backyard, weird hours of the night, weird chanting, humming.’
Nancy Kneller, who used to work at a Catholic church next door, said residents had long been suspicious of the place.
“Why are they so secretive? Why are there no kids out playing?’
‘We’re not alleging that they intended to kill their son,’ Inserra said of the parents, but ‘they were attempting to seriously hurt their son, and he died as a result.’
After Lucas was brought to the hospital, police suspected Christopher had been hurt, too, but his relatives wouldn’t tell officers where he was. After searching for hours, police found him on the church’s second floor.
The Leonards live in Clayville, a village of 350 people, in a two-story, wood-frame duplex. The sister lives in the attic with her own children, a neighbor said.
Lucas and Christopher read the Bible two hours a day at their parents’ insistence and ‘weren’t really allowed to go out of their house’ for sleepovers, told neighbor, Nicole Howard. The brothers ‘weren’t allowed to do normal things, but they tried to be as normal as they could be.’
The Leonards home-schooled their children, eschewed TV and did not take part in Halloween, either leaving home or turning off all the lights, neighbor Jim Constantine said. Some Christians do not observe Halloween because of its pagan origins and macabre themes.
The children weren’t entirely isolated from everyday life, though: Lucas Leonard was routinely hired to watch Constantine’s dog when he was away, including this past weekend.
‘Pleasant kid. No bad talk,’ Constantine said. ‘No nothing.’
Speaking to the Washington Post, Bruce Leonard’s lawyer, Don Gerace, told Leonard is a farmer from upstate New York who has also worked as a high school teaching assistant. The lawyer told his client had no criminal record.
All the suspects pleaded not guilty, with the parents and sister of the victim arraigned on $100K bond while the four other church members were arraigned on $50K bond.
Police said more arrests are expected as the investigation continues.
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