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Sean Lannon Arrested in St. Louis, Charged With New Jersey Murder as Four Are Found Dead in New Mexico

Marshals caught Lannon in the car of Michael Dabkowski, 66, found dead in East Greenwich. He was a person of interest in four deaths at the Albuquerque airport.

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Sean Lannon, bald with a graying goatee, in a booking photograph against a gray wall

On the morning of Wednesday, March 10, 2021, members of the U.S. Marshals' St. Louis Metro Fugitive Task Force arrested Sean Lannon, 47, in St. Louis, ending a cross-country manhunt. Officials said he was driving a car that belonged to Michael Dabkowski, a 66-year-old man found dead in his New Jersey home two days earlier. That same day, prosecutors in Gloucester County announced that Lannon was charged with Dabkowski's murder.

Dabkowski was found inside his house in East Greenwich Township, just south of Philadelphia, on Monday, March 8. The charges against Lannon included murder, murder during the commission of a robbery, burglary, weapons possession and motor vehicle theft. Lannon had grown up in Gloucester County, the prosecutor's office said, and had come back to visit, though he had lately been living in New Mexico. On Tuesday night, while the hunt went on, police searched a home on Myrtle Avenue in East Greenwich, and neighbors on the street spoke of their shock at Dabkowski's death. "This would not appear to us to be a random act between strangers," said Tom Gilbert, the office's acting chief of detectives. Investigators had warned that Lannon might be driving a blue 2018 Honda CR-V and that he had possibly been seen around 3 p.m. on Monday near the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden. Authorities considered him armed and dangerous, and the Marshals Service had offered a $5,000 reward.

By then New Mexico had its own reason to look for him. On Friday, March 5, the bodies of four people had been found in a vehicle in a parking garage at Albuquerque International Sunport, the state's largest airport. One of them was Jennifer Lannon, 39, his ex-wife. The others were identified as Matthew Miller, 21, Jesten Mata, 40, and Randal Apostalon, 60. New Mexico officials called Lannon a person of interest. He was not charged there when he was arrested.

Acting Gloucester County Prosecutor Christine Hoffman, who announced the arrest jointly with the U.S. Marshal for New Jersey, Juan Mattos, credited the Marshals' New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force in Camden and its partners in Missouri, calling Lannon "clearly a direct threat to the public." Officials did not immediately say what led them to him, and nearly two weeks later they were still trying to determine why he was in St. Louis.

In the days that followed, the case widened. An affidavit accused Lannon of breaking into Dabkowski's home and beating him to death with a hammer. Lannon told investigators that Dabkowski had sexually abused him as a child, and that he had gone to the house to retrieve sexually explicit photographs. Dabkowski had mentored Lannon and his twin brother through a Big Brothers program in the 1980s, NJ.com reported. Police Lt. David Chavez said the first sign of trouble in New Mexico had come in late January, when Miller's girlfriend reported him missing. According to Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos Jr., one of the four appeared to have been killed in Albuquerque and the other three in the Grants area, about 80 miles to the west, where Lannon, his ex-wife and their children were believed to have lived. In court documents, authorities said Lannon had admitted in a phone call to a relative that he had killed 11 more people in New Mexico. Chavez said that was possible but not probable, since there were no records of missing people from the area or other police reports pointing to more victims.

What was established on the day of the arrest. On March 10, 2021, Lannon was charged only in New Jersey, with the killing of Michael Dabkowski. In the four Albuquerque deaths he was a person of interest, not a defendant, and by March 22 it was still not clear how or when those four victims had been killed. His claim of 11 further killings came from his own call to a relative, and police said they had found nothing in missing-person or other records to support it. His account of childhood abuse by Dabkowski was his own statement to investigators, not an established fact.

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