American homicide accomplice with 15-year-older Al Trenkler whom he had met at the train depot in 1990. Trenkler devised a plot in which Tommy’s hated dad would be killed. His dad had won a $400,000 civil suit and the two thought that Tom would get a sizable inheritance.
His dad was so severely abusive a husband and father that his wife had spent time in the hospital from his beatings, administered in front of the terrified kids. Young Tom was a patient in mental health institutions ten times and much of his youth was spent as a state ward in foster homes. The neighbors said he seemed so withdrawn that he was in a fog. At age five, he was first sent to a special school for troubled kids when he tried to set the house on fire. He said he’d been sexually abused from the time he was nine and when he was ten, his last defense left; his mom escaped on 10/30/1981. At 16, when he stole from his dad and dad’s girlfriend, his dad banished him from the house. At 17, he threatened suicide. That year he was convicted of stealing a car, and charged with prostitution. He was sentenced to AA meetings four times a week and was subject to random drug testing. The boy was overwhelmed with his aloneness.
Trenkler became his friend and lover and he was glad to help Trenkler build the bomb that was to get rid of his dad. They put the bomb under Shay’s car in the driveway of his Roslindale home on 10/27/1991 but Shay noticed the device the next morning and called the cops. When the officers were investigating, the bomb exploded and killed Officer Jeremiah Hurley and wounded Officer Foley, who lost an eye.
Tommy ran away to the San Francisco tenderloin district but was arrested there and returned to Massachusetts. At the trial, Trenkler was convicted of murder on 11/29/1993 and Tommy was convicted of being an accomplice to attempted murder and given 16 years prison.