By Steve Huff
June 2, 2006
UPPER MOUNT BETHEL TWP, Pa. (Crime Library) — It was an incredibly gruesome crime. Stephen Austin, age 26, a paramedic from Berks County, Pennsylvania (PA), told investigators that he murdered his brother Jonathan, age 22, at their ailing mother's home in Northampton County, PA. As reported here in a story written for the Crime Library yesterday by Seamus McGraw, Stephen Austin attacked his brother with a crowbar during a heated argument, bludgeoning Jonathan to death. Then Austin is alleged to have dragged his brother's body into a stand of trees near the scene of the murder and dismembered the younger man's body with a bow saw and a hatchet.
Stephen Austin has been charged with homicide, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.
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| Stephen Austin |
The brothers had a history of violence, and many believe that the Austin family truly began to unravel after Charles Austin, the father of Stephen and Jonathan, was killed in a helicopter accident in 1998. WFMZ-TV out of Allentown, PA reported on Wednesday, May 31st that the grief from the elder Austin's death affected each family member in different ways. Friends told WFMZ that mother Cathy grew depressed, and Stephen Austin became consumed with anger. Anger Stephen often "took out" on Jonathan Austin.
The way Jonathan Austin was murdered was so incredibly shocking and brutal that it was perhaps easy for the media covering Stephen's arrest and the discovery of Jon's body parts scattered across a number of Pennsylvania counties to focus more on the crime itself, and the inevitable questions arising from it; for instance, just how could it possibly come to pass that such a hideous act was committed between brothers? The impact of a story about a brother killing and dismembering his own sibling could potentially eclipse everything that had come before. Stephen Austin's alleged act of violence would also overshadow the memory of his brother.
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