News From The Past: Religion was key to slain Lessard family, relatives say

Armstrongism like many cults, always has had people pushed over the edge.  When your entire belief system continually makes you out to be a worthless, sinful and doomed human being; what hope is there?

Just take a look at a typical COG 'Passover' service.  You are made to feel like human excrement because you dared walk in the room.  You are unworthy to even be there.  They read those scriptures over and over.
And then the ministry rise up in all their pompous glory and pull the microphone down low over the tray of matzo's.  Then they start breaking the matzo's.  Making sure to go as slow and deliberate as possible.  They want to make sure you re-crucify Jesus over and over , year after year, decade after decade.  When you walk out of the room that evening you don't know Jesus any more than you did when you walked in the room. 

When you have no hope all joy has been taken from you because you are exhausted trying to measure up. You try to attend all services, Bible Study's, choir practices, spokesmen clubs, helping people move, painting the minsters home and cleaning his house then what fun is left? You don't have time to do anything away from church members.  And if you do, you feel guilty.

Here is story about a man in the WCG who killed his family and himself.  The relatives blame Armstrongism



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 Religion was key to slain Lessard family, relatives say

By DIANA COSTELLO
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 24, 2007)

Steven and Kathy Lessard of Lake Peekskill were quiet people who met at a church event as young adults and deepened their devotion to God as they traveled to religious festivals around the country.

Polite. Generous. Personable.

These are the qualities people who knew them -whether intimately or just in passing -attributed to the couple and their only child, Linda.

"If you're standing in line and somebody looks in your basket and sees you've got fewer things and lets you go by -that's the kind of kindness I'm talking about," said the Rev. Jeffrey Broadnax of the Worldwide Church of God, an evangelical Christian denomination. "They were always just really pleasant people, and you just enjoyed being around them."

But the family's final chapter ended in tragedy last week, authorities said, when Steven Lessard strangled his wife and 14-year-old daughter before thrusting a steak knife into his groin to kill himself.

The gruesome event has since taken a toll on family and friends, who say they are struggling to make sense of a fate they never imagined would befall what had seemed to be a lovely family.

Autopsies have led police to think that 51-year-old Steven Lessard strangled his 48-year-old wife with his bare hands the night of Feb. 15 or early Feb. 16. He then used a ligature to strangle his daughter when she returned from school the afternoon of Feb. 16, police told the wife's family.

He tucked them both into their beds once they were dead.

Lessard took his own life by cutting the femoral artery on the right side of his groin sometime after 3 p.m. Saturday, police said.

He had been receiving psychiatric treatment for emotional problems and was worried about losing his job at the Indian Point nuclear power station in Buchanan, where he had been put on leave this month for overreacting to a flat tire on his car.

In conversations, one aspect of the Lessards' lifestyle that has emerged as a sore spot with relatives was their involvement with the Worldwide Church of God.

The church was founded in Oregon in 1933 by Herbert W. Armstrong, who viewed himself as an apostle chosen by God.

Under his leadership, the church followed a strict interpretation of the Old Covenant. As such, members were forbidden to celebrate such traditional Christian holidays as Christmas and Easter.

Armstrong's death in 1986, however, was the beginning of the end for the church's restrictive philosophy.

His successor initiated a series of doctrinal changes and set forth a new proclamation in 1995 that transformed the movement into a mainstream evangelical denomination. The National Association of Evangelicals voted to accept the Worldwide Church of God into its membership in May 1997.

Steven and Kathy Lessard apparently met at a Church of God event in the Baltimore area, according to Kathy's family.

They had belonged to the Mount Kisco branch since at least 1993, according to Broadnax, who became pastor that year.

He described the family as active participants, frequently attending services and church events throughout the country.

But the family left the church about the same time it joined the evangelical association.

It was also around the time the Mount Kisco church relocated to Armonk and the family bought a home in Lake Peekskill after moving from Cortlandt.

Helen Beach, Steven Lessards' mother, said the family was upset about the church's new direction.

"I know they were very unhappy. I don't remember the specifics," Beach, 78, said by telephone from her Florida home.

After leaving, the family members apparently did not belong to any formal religious organization, but nevertheless continued to follow the same customs they had been living by, Beach said.

They read the Bible. They loved God. And they still shunned traditional Christian holidays.

That infuriated Lessard's mother, who had raised her son Methodist and said his family must have been brainwashed. She said her son had returned to a Methodist church within the past few months.

Kathy Lessard's family also was troubled by the couple's approach to the holidays. Kathy was raised in a Catholic tradition, attending church in South Baltimore, her family said.

"We were told very clearly that we could never send a Christmas gift or even a card at Easter time. They did not have a Christmas tree or house ornaments," said her nephew, Michael Aro, 38, of Glen Burnie, Md.

It particularly bothered Rosella Aro, who was married to Kathy Lessard's brother.

"I'd see something in a store and think of Linda, the same age as my granddaughter, and would want to get it for her, but then I remembered that they would not want me to," she said this week.

"I did send a holiday card for the New Year and was told that was all right. We never got one back."

Since the local church turned more mainstream, it has seen membership drop to about 70 families from about 250, mirroring declines and splits in the Worldwide Church. The church overall says it has 67,000 members in more than 100 countries.

Seeing Steven Lessard labeled as a "killer" and "family annihilator" in the newspapers has hurt Broadnax, who said he doesn't view him that way and trusts God will deal judgment appropriately.

"We do believe that in the afterlife all people will stand before God and will have to give account for themselves," said Broadnax, who lives in Peekskill. "We believe that God is a merciful God who judges what we can't see as human beings. He judges the heart, not always just the actions."

Staff writer Barbara Livingston Nackman contributed to this report.
Reach Diana Costello at dcostell@lohud.com or 845-228-2278.
Religion Key To Murder
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Family of murder victims shocked at the brutality of their deaths

By BARBARA LIVINGSTON NACKMAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
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(Original publication: February 23, 2007)

PUTNAM VALLEY - After Steven Lessard, a nuclear engineer battling emotional problems, strangled his wife and daughter, he tucked them neatly back into their beds. Much later -after shoveling snow off the end of his driveway - Lessard took a steak knife and killed himself, leaving behind two inches of blood in the bathtub.

The grim details and grisly remains of the drawn-out murder-suicide at the house on Maple Road are what the family of Kathy Aro Lessard has had to confront over the last several days as they prepare to take her and 14-year-old Linda back to Baltimore, Md. for burial.

The horror of what happened to the Lessards seemed beyond comprehension as Kathy Lessard's side of the family sat yesterday in her pink-and-beige living room surrounded by her needlecrafts. Above the front door a plaque read: "Home Sweet Home."

"Seeing the house tells you he provided for them and she took care of things," said Edward Aro, 69, a 30-year veteran of the Baltimore city police department who's seen more than his share of gruesome crime scenes. "It makes you think what was wrong that this happened?"

Although there was nothing to hint at the violence Steven Lessard visited on his own wife and child, there were other signs, family members said, that the marriage was unhappy.

"He controlled everything that went on in the house and to them," said Michael Aro, Kathy's 38-year-old nephew. "I did not really think about it, but looking back, it was bad. She smiled, but you can see in these photos it was a sort of plastic, fake smile."

The family described Steven Lessard, a 1977 Naval Academy graduate, as a manipulative man who kept Kathy and Linda Lessard away from the Aros. The Lessards visited Baltimore many summers, but always stayed in a hotel rather than relatives' homes.

Kathy never was in a room without Steven present, her nephew recalled. His mother, Rosella Aro, said when she called her niece, Kathy often gave clipped answers and it was clear that Steven was in the room too.

"I just can't believe, can't imagine, my husband or kids getting that mad to do something like this. Why didn't he pack up and get out, or tell her to get out?" Rosella Aro said.

The bodies of the Lessard family were discovered Monday after police received a call from Steven Lessard's mother concerned that she was unable to reach them.

Lessard was placed on leave Feb. 8 from his job at the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan for bizarre behavior. He had been seeing Sleepy Hollow psychiatrist Mark Russakoff and, according to his mother, had an appointment with Russakoff Thursday but the doctor was not there.

Sometime that night or the next morning, autopsies led police to conclude that Lessard strangled his wife with his bare hands. The next day, after his daughter came home from school, he strangled her with some kind of rope, police told the Aro family. Lessard did not take his own life until sometime after 3 p.m. Saturday. A neighbor said she nearly ran over Lessard with her car as he shoveled snow from the end of his driveway late that afternoon. He later bled to death on the staircase after stabbing himself in the groin.

The Aros arrived Tuesday night, finding what otherwise appeared to be an orderly house where the bills were paid on time and Kathy Lessard had recently redone the kitchen. It was their first visit to the house in Lake Peekskill although the Lessards had lived there for 10 years.

The Aros said there were more than 100 messages of support and condolence left on the answering machine. They unplugged the machine and said they would listen to every message and return the ones with phone numbers when they got back to Baltimore.

It was there at Martin's West, a popular Baltimore caterer, that Kathy Aro married Steven Lessard 18 years ago. Their wedding photo shows Kathy in a sweeping white dress embraced in the arms of her blond-haired, dark-suited groom.

Raised a Catholic, the youngest of five, Kathy grew up in South Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood and later worked as a clerk for the state of Maryland. She became involved in the Worldwide Church of God, an evangelical denomination with 67,000 members in more than 100 countries. She met Steven Lessard at a church event for young adults.

Family members said the Lessards often traveled on what they thought were church-sponsored trips. They did not celebrate holidays and while they could receive cards, as far as the Aros knew, there was never a Christmas tree in their house.

There will be a funeral Mass for Kathy and Linda Lessard on Tuesday and a wake sometime before that.

Yesterday, some 50 of Linda Lessard's classmates at Putnam Valley Middle School gathered for two counseling sessions.

"If only one person showed up it would have been worth all of our planning," said Principal Edward Hallisey, who opened the school during the winter break to help the community cope with the tragedy.

Linda Lessard was a talented artist, her cousin Michael recalled, sharing two sketches she drew in January showing emotionless faces of a boy and girl with careful details of spikey hair and proportional features. Linda often sang the 1970s tunes of Barry Manilow and the BeeGees that her mother loved.

The Aros said they did not want to pry when they heard less frequently from Kathy - the Lessards did not make the trip to Baltimore last summer - but figured that she knew her family was there if she needed them.

They had no inkling that she and her daughter were in danger from Steven Lessard.

"He wasn't a favorite character in the family," said Edward Aro, his clear blue eyes growing wet with tears. "Now we are just sad, very sad."

Staff writer Diana Costello contributed to this report.
Reach Barbara Livingston Nackman at bnackman@lohud.com or 845-228-2272.
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