Family Worried About Safety After Parole Board Shake Up
WOBURN (CBS) -- It's a day that has haunted Paula Todisco for more than 20 years. On January 20, 1986 her father, Richard Seymour, went on a violent rampage killing her 17-year-old brother Patrick, stabbing her mother and threatening Paula and a friend at knifepoint in their Billerica home.
Seymour will fight for his freedom for the third time before the state parole board on February 8. Paula says, "He brutally murdered my brother, beating him with a hammer and a propane tank, crushing his ribs and skull then tied him up in the basement like a bag of garbage."
WBZ-TV's Kathy Curran reports.
Paula and her family's safety and peace of mind are in the hands of the Massachusetts Parole Board and the agencies that supervise the violent criminals who are let back out on the street. They're the same agencies responsible for the release of career criminal Dominic Cinelli, the man who killed Woburn police officer Jack Maguire last month.
Paula Todisco is very concerned. She says the parole board has a great deal of responsibility to keep violent people where they belong and to keep people off the streets and from hurting other people. Todisco feels like she's the one in prison, and says it's like there's no justice for her family.
Todisco and her mom, Regina Marsh, pleaded with the parole board to keep Seymour in jail back in 2005 saying they truly feared for the safety of their family. Seymour apologized for the "brutal murder" of his son, but the board voted to deny parole.
Paula Todisco has little faith in the system even though the parole board members who set Dominic Cinelli have resigned. Her biggest fear is "that it's going to happen to me, that he's going to get out and come after my family."
Paula's asking for justice and for her that means keeping her father, a convicted murderer, behind bars.
Right now there are two remaining parole board members conducting the hearings. Decisions on hearings for prisoners serving life sentences have been suspended.
