Cross-country fugitive’s last alleged victim was his former Big Brother
When Sean Lannon was about 12, he and his twin brother had been paired with Michael Dabkowski as part of the Big Brothers program.
A man killed last week in his New Jersey home was identified as the former Big Brothers mentor of his alleged killer, who is also a suspect in four other murders on the other side of the country.
Michael Dabkowski, 66, was found dead last Monday in the laundry room of his home in East Greenwich, near Philadelphia. He had been hit on the head repeatedly with a blunt object, said a spokesman for the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office.
Police began searching for a man who had been seen driving Dabkowski’s car that day. He was apprehended Wednesday in St. Louis, 900 miles from the murder site.
The suspect was identified as Sean Lannon, 47, of Albuquerque, N.M.
In the initial report on Dabkowski’s death, Tom Gilbert, the acting chief of detectives for the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, said, “This would not appear to us to be a random act between strangers.”
On Saturday, the newspaper website NJ.com reported that in 1985, when Lannon was about 12, he and his twin brother had been paired with Dabkowski as part of the Big Brothers program. The article included a photo of the boys fishing with Dabkowski, and it quoted a statement Sean Lannon had made supporting Dabkowski’s nomination as Big Brother of the Year.
At the time of Dabkowski’s murder, police in New Mexico were seeking Lannon as a “person of interest” in the deaths of four people whose bodies were found March 5 in a car at the Albuquerque airport. One of the four was Lannon’s ex-wife, Jennifer.
Court records indicate that the Lannons had three young children, and that Sean Lannon had gained custody of them in 2019, TV station KRQE reported.
During their marriage, the couple had moved from south New Jersey to Grants, N.M. Two of the other victims were friends of Jennifer Lannon’s from Grants; the three had been missing since January.
The fourth victim was an Albuquerque man who police say was most likely killed after the other three.
Lannon has been extradited to New Jersey. He faces charges of murder, burglary, robbery and theft. Some of the charges arise from his alleged break-in last Monday at a house in Elk Township, New Jersey, about 12 miles from Dabkowski’s home.
Lannon has not been arrested in the Albuquerque deaths.