The Unexplained Death of Shawn O'Brien, Part One
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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Sevey. You can connect with the show at murdershetold.com or on Instagram at murdershetoldpodcast. This episode contains medical descriptions that are graphic in nature. Please listen with care.

I'm waiting for the miracle to happen now. For you to open your eyes and be okay. For all of us to snap awake and say, oh, it was only a bad dream. But the doctors are telling us otherwise. It's hard, Dad. Jen keeps telling me they need a roofer in heaven. But why does God have to take my roofer?

There's too much that you haven't seen yet. It's just not fair. I'm not ready to say goodbye. But I know you wouldn't want to live like this, through tubes. 13-year-old Natalia wrote that under the hum of fluorescent lights at Rhode Island Hospital. Just one day prior, she was sharing a sandwich with her father. But today, she was sitting next to his gurney, where he lay brain-dead and in a coma. Her life had changed forever.

She also wrote a promise, I swear to you, Daddy, that I will find out what happened to you.

The party started when he showed up and like everyone was really loud and boisterous and like in your face and they always have been, they always will be. But he was like the life of the party. He walked in, he brought the energy. He just brought everything to anything he walked into. He lit a room up in a way that I don't think many people are able to. He loves being a part of all of that. He loved being in the mix.

Sean O'Brien only knew his daughter Natalia for four years, but her memories are still so visceral and personal. She met him for the first time when she was nine years old and lost him when she was 13. Sean was 21 years old when he and his girlfriend Amy had their daughter in 1992.

Amy later wrote,

He was the one person everybody came to when you needed something. He would literally give you the shirt off his back and was generous to a fault with friends and family. He called me every day before work at 6 a.m., except the day he didn't.

Sean's life wasn't without struggle, but he loved his family. He grew up in the Providence, Rhode Island area, going to public schools, but dropped out in eighth grade to join the workforce. He was close with his mother, Ellen, who Natalia calls a saint of a woman. From what I gather, Sean and his siblings were quite the handful growing up. He was quick-witted, sharp, and a bit of a jokester, and he loved to see people crack a smile.

Natalia said he would do things like ask a restaurant waiter, "Do you care who pays for the bill?" And when they said no, tell them to pick up the tab.

She remembers being a part of his pranks at Oakland Beach, ducked in the backseat of the car with her friend Becky. He would roll down the window and just yell, like, hey, at people just to see who would turn. And inevitably, like, all these people would turn and look at him like he is a nut. And Becky and I would be crying, like, hysterical in the backseat. And that was, like, our Oakland Beach routine. Like, we would go get the doughboys, get the pancakes, the chowder, and then yell at people.

Sean went dance in the car to the radio and, well, pretty much dance any chance he got. He liked the attention, and it probably earned him a few phone numbers here and there, too.

He was partial to Italian food. So when we would go out as a family, like the three of us, we would always go to an Italian restaurant. And, you know, they give you like the spoon on the side with your pasta. And he would always use it. And the joke was like, he's not even Italian, but here he is like using the spoon and the fork like he's like in a mafia movie. So he was a foodie when it came to Italian food. He liked a good meal in general, but definitely Italian was his favorite.

Sean loved a good family get-together because he knew it meant a big, hearty meal would accompany it. Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter were days he couldn't miss. If you are somebody who likes to grab your stretchy pants on Thanksgiving, you were in good company with Sean.

He was known to grab a big plate of food and go watch a movie in the quiet of his room. After he was done with the first plate, of course. If the meal really rocked his socks, he would sometimes write thank you notes. He would write my mom thank you cards sometimes. More so just like, hey, thank you for being here. But he wrote my grandmother a thank you card once or twice about the food. It was just kind of like a cute thing. It was just like a thing that he did.

Natalia is transparent about Sean's struggles. They're a part of his story, and they're what makes him human along with the fun stories and memories she has. Sean liked to live in the moment, partying and having a good time. And unfortunately, that would sometimes get him in trouble.

He had a few run-ins. He had some DUIs. He got in trouble a few times for fighting. He was kind of a fighter, especially when he was younger. And he had some run-ins about drugs, not selling or anything, just kind of having possession of cocaine at one point. But I don't know. He had like the luck of the Irish. He made out pretty easy on most of those charges. Sean's good fortune got him out of some pretty sticky situations.

So he was at like a convenience store and for whatever reason, something took over. He made one of his great choices and he got in the running car of somebody else, stole it, went kind of like here, there, wherever. Somehow my mom found out and we were like trying to find him. And it was this whole to-do, like a whole bunch of different cities and towns were kind of like

looking out for this car. And so then we ended up just going back to his apartment. We were like, okay, he's got to come back here at some point because, you know, this is home base. And as we're all sitting there waiting, he walks around the corner, like big smile on his face, nothing's wrong. Like, hey, I was just

out for a couple hours and we're like where's the car he's like what car like what's the big deal and we're like you stole a car um like the police like i don't know how somehow like my mom found out like everybody knew like everybody knew what they were looking for you and he was like oh they pulled me over a couple streets over but they just let me go like no big deal and he's like yeah the guy doesn't want to press any charges so the police were like yeah just you know walk home from here

And we're all like, there's no way. Like, there's no way. There's no possible way the police find somebody in a stolen car and are like, you know what? We're going to let this one slide. But they did. And he just walked home like nothing had happened. It also worked out in his favor while he was, quote, away at college when Natalia was young, culminating in a Christmas miracle.

They don't release people on holidays. Like it's bare bones staff in these places. And he was scheduled to get out and then something got delayed like, you know, the week before Christmas or whatever. And, you know, I had my hopes up that he would be home for Christmas, but you know, it is what it is. They got a call Christmas morning that he was possibly going to be able to come home, but didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. And like three or four o'clock right before Christmas dinner and come Sean walking up the stairs, like clean cut,

Despite having the tendency of sounding like a sailor, getting into fistfights, and being a guy's guy, Sean had a big heart and a soft spot for his baby girl.

One night when he was drunk, he called up Amy and asked her how to spell their daughter's name. Sean went to bed that night sporting a brand new colorful tattoo of flowers with a banner positioned in front of them that read Natalia. When she was two, Sean and Amy split and Natalia lived with her mother and grandmother.

It wasn't until Natalia was nine that she recalled meeting him for the first time. It felt a little awkward at first. To me, it was like a stranger coming in and I had to kind of get to know him fresh. I

I feel like doing these little things, like just the two of us here and there, like he would work on some projects around the house and he would take me to Home Depot and like we would, you know, get the things that we needed for that. And like through all of that kind of stuff, he turned more almost like a friend. Like we started developing like a like this little friendship bond. It was tough because he had his own set of struggles that as I got older, like each year, I saw a little bit

more and more of. So, you know, as much as I loved him and it turned into like a father-daughter relationship, there was also like some resentment there around like, okay, our relationship can only be so good because you have your own stuff that you're dealing with. So it evolved over time, you know, really quickly because, you know, he passed away not too many years later, but the father-daughter relationship could only be so strong or so great before his own stuff got in the way.

Natalia remembered her dad showing her how to play baseball and what a good teacher he was. He was also a big Red Sox fan, and they would watch the games together on TV. They went to the haunted Halloween corn maze for her birthday in the fall, where Sean made sure to keep a 10-foot distance between young Natalia and her boyfriend. One time they went to the water park as a family.

He might have worked like a half day or something that day because my mom, my friend Becky and I, we picked up pizza strips from a bakery and then we somehow picked him up. So he must have been working a little bit. And I remember we stayed at a Holiday Inn and it was like the classiest place. Like we were like obsessed with Holiday Inn because they had free cookies out, which was the best thing ever.

We just had a lot of fun. Like, I remember him doing the rides and stuff with us. And then he came out of the water. And I remember jokingly chasing him, like, with a magazine. Like, come on, touch it. Like, there's nothing wrong with it. Just touch the magazine. And he couldn't do it. He ran like a little girl. It was just one of his things that he couldn't touch paper if his hands were wet.

the next day when we woke up, he was like, all right, we're going to the outlets. We're going to go shopping and like, we're going to get you guys school clothes. And like, that was kind of like the next leg of the adventure. I remember having a really good time. Like, I remember being a really positive trip, a positive experience. Sean had a clever way of diffusing tense situations. So,

So it was a Sunday night. My mom and I were getting into like this mom daughter back and forth about, I don't know, like what outfit I was going to wear the next day or like getting my homework done or something silly. And my dad stepped in and was like, okay, I'm taking her out. Like, we're just going to go for a ride. So he gets me in a car and he takes me to Dave and Buster's. I'm like, there's no way. Like my mom's going to be so mad that like I just got into this little argument with her. And he's like, well, worry me with Dave and Buster's. But he was like, listen, don't tell your mom. We're just going to go get out of the house for a little bit.

And so then we called it code D and B, like anyone couldn't figure that out. And every Sunday night he would take me, like he would take me for, I don't know, like an hour or whatever, just to get me out of the house. He'd be like, all right, Natalia, it's time for code D and B. And I'd be like, all right.

Let's go to Code D&B. It was like our thing. No one else came with us. And we maintained that my mom didn't know where we were going. And it was just like sneaky little like father-daughter outing. We pretended like she had no idea. She knew the whole time, but she just, she played along with us too.

Natalia grew up from much of her childhood without a dad. Despite getting a late start to their relationship, their love grew, and they were always in one another's thoughts. This memory was particularly poignant to Natalia. It was the first time she was able to bring her dad, not her uncle or grandpa or another relative, but her dad.

to what was then called the Daddy Daughter Dance. When I was in fifth grade, we still had father-daughter dances at the time. They weren't family dances yet. And every year when my dad wasn't around, I would take a different uncle or my grandpa or whatever. And finally, by fifth grade, my dad was there and he took me to the father-daughter dance. And we just had like such a good time. And he had this

In another story, Natalia remembered her father saving the day. She felt protected and safe.

Becky and I loved going to Warwick Mall. We were probably like 11 or 12, which was at the time, like the age that everyone would go to the mall and just walk laps around the mall. And my parents would drop us off, but wouldn't go far. They would either stay in the mall and we didn't know it then, or they would like stay in the parking lot or get something to eat and then sit in the parking lot and eat.

Until the one time that a fight broke out, there was like a swarm of people, probably like 40 different teenage kids. And I called my mom and years later, she told me like it was the one time that they left the parking lot and they went out to dinner, like at a restaurant for like the first time ever. Because they were like, all right, the girls are getting older. They have their cell phones on them. Like they're fine. Nothing's ever happened. And I called and I was like, I don't know what's going on. But like I was literally in the middle of this swarm of people. I said, I'm not safe. Like you need to come get me. And my dad left.

Like, minutes later, I don't know how they got there and the time they got there. I don't know how they found me in that quick time. My mom was running behind him, but he was barreling down the food court. Like, just completely ready to just swing at anybody. And he, like, comes right through this middle of this swarm of kids and grabs me, like, gets Becky and is like, we're getting out of here. Like, this is done. We're not doing this anymore. But I remember this look on his face, just like he was so angry.

I knew in that moment he was not angry with me at all. There was not an ounce of disappointment or anger or like, you shouldn't have been here. It was literally like, my daughter's not safe. I need to take care of this. And I remember that vividly. And for a while after, we didn't get to go to work more for a little bit.

In the back of her mind, she knew her dad was fighting against demons, fighting an uphill battle to not fall into old habits and trying to be a better father for her. It wasn't easy, but she saw the efforts he was making, and it gave her hope for the future. The week that he died or the week before he died, one of the last things that came out was like, we

We were going to that same kind of like freshwater lake that we had gone to so many other times. He would usually take beer with him. He would stop at the liquor store, get a six pack and we would pack our lunch. And that was just kind of like his routine. And a week before he was like, nope, I don't, I'm not doing that. Like I'm, I'm, I'm serious this time. Like I'm getting clean. So it was just such a blow when he passed that we thought he was going to kind of like straighten out a little bit. And then, you know, this all happened.

It was a typical New England summer day. Mid-80s, overcast, humid with the occasional light shower to release some moisture from the air. For Sean, the rain was a welcome respite from the heat radiating from the dark asphalt shingles at his feet. The roofing crew got an early start, knocking out most of the work in the cool morning air.

But things were heating up when he clocked out around 3 p.m. It was Friday, July 21st, 2006, and it was a payday. He hung up his hammer, picked up a check, and went to the bank. After getting some cash, he headed home, where he called Amy at about 3.30 p.m. He was hungry, so she offered to pick him up a sandwich, and she and Natalia went to one of his favorite spots, Carmine's Sub Shop on Atwood Avenue, about a 10-minute drive away.

He met them outside in the parking lot of his duplex, and they dropped off his sandwich. Sean gave Amy $160 to help support her and their daughter. They talked about making some plans for that evening, but first Sean wanted to clean up.

After eating his sub, he hopped in the shower and got changed. There was a big summer festival going on, put on by a religious organization called St. Mary's Feast, and everyone wanted to go. Meanwhile, Amy and Natalia picked up Sean's three-year-old niece, Gianna. The three of them made it back over to Sean's around 6.45 p.m., and when they arrived, they noticed that his roommate and his girlfriend's cars were both in the driveway. Sean, again, met them outside and

and Amy told them that they wouldn't be able to go to the festival because Natalia's head had been hurting and they were going to go home. Sean didn't want to be home because of the ongoing conflict with his roommate Armand and Lynn, so he asked Amy if she could drop him off at a local bar called Billy's Frosted Mug. He had recently quit drinking, so he promised not to, and explained that he just wanted to play some keno.

The pub was only a half mile away, and on the way over, Sean gave Amy another $200 to hold onto, leaving about $180 on his person. Amy said, "'Be good, and call for a ride if you need one.'" Before going, he tried his sister Erin on Amy's cell phone, but he couldn't get her, so he waved goodbye and walked in the back door of the bar at 7 p.m. He had to work early the next morning, so he said he wouldn't be out late.

Amy and Natalia ended up going to bed early that night, around 9 p.m. Amy had work in the morning too, and she was a very early riser. While they were resting, Sean was partying. He had succumbed to the temptations that had haunted him throughout his adult life and took a few different kinds of recreational drugs.

We don't know if he made it to work the next day, but we do know that Amy was a little concerned in the morning. She was accustomed to getting his early morning calls and would often talk on the phone with him around 6.30 a.m. before she headed off to work. Amy worked that Saturday from 7 a.m. until noon.

Sean would often get picked up from his home by his crew, but it's not clear if they got him that Saturday morning. Amy and Natalia were planning to hit that local festival with Sean in the afternoon, but they hadn't heard from him.

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Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com. At an emergency dispatch center, the phone rang at 5.51 p.m.

911, is your emergency, please? It's a rescue, please. Where are you? We're at 145 Pleasant Street in Cranston. All right, you stay on the line. I'll get you to rescue. Hold on, please. Sean! Sean! Sean! Sean! Cranston Fire. Hi, we need a rescue, please. 145 Pleasant Street in Cranston. My brother's had a seizure, and he's been in it for quite a bit.

You have a single family home? It's a one family home. Okay. It's a duplex, actually. 145 Pleasant Street. Yes. On the way. Thank you. Cranston, police back here. Hi there, it's Farr. Yes. We need you guys at 145 Pleasant Street. Where you at? A seizure, combative seizure. Okay. Thank you. All right, bye.

Sean's sister, Karen, was with him in his basement apartment. He was lying face down on the floor of his tiny wood-paneled bedroom with a pool of blood and spit under his head. He was wearing only his boxers. When she'd arrived with her nephew, who was 14 years old, Armand, Sean's roommate, approached them outside and said, "'You've got to come in. Sean's been having seizures for like an hour.'"

Sean had a history of seizures brought on by drug and alcohol use. They wouldn't happen right away, but shortly after his partying. He was very aware of it, too, and he would prepare a soft area to lay down to endure the violent shaking while he was unconscious. If he was standing when he blacked out, there was a strong possibility of hurting himself in a fall.

Once he was on the ground, the clenching of his jaw could cause him to bite his tongue or chip his teeth. Another common sign of seizures is loss of bladder control. Seizures that last more than a few minutes are considered a medical emergency. If Sean had been seizing for an hour, it was an emergency and a life-threatening situation. After calling 911, Karen left before the medics arrived.

Sean's teenage nephew stayed with him and so did Sean's roommate, Armand. Within just a few minutes, both a fire department engine and an ambulance arrived. Armand met them and directed them downstairs to Sean's basement apartment. They found him unconscious, still laying face down, breathing with a snoring sound. His skin was very clammy and sweaty.

Armand kept repeating that he had no idea what was going on. He said, "I don't know. I haven't seen him in an hour. I thought he was watching the baseball game." His breathing was partially obstructed, so they turned him on his side to try and clear his airway. One member headed back to the ambulance to get a portable suction machine to help. Sean had his jaw clenched so tightly from the seizure that he couldn't open his mouth enough to insert the tube, so they did their best to clear the front of his mouth.

There was a small amount of vomit on the ground, about enough to fill a coffee cup lid, mixed with a small amount of blood. They noticed the smell of urine and discovered that his boxers were soaked. In between Sean's toes, there was a fresh wound that was oozing blood, and there was dried, crusty blood that went between his mouth and his right ear. They weren't sure of the origin of the blood.

One of the techs thought that the amount of blood on and around Sean was unusual for a typical seizure victim. The sheets of the bed were almost entirely removed, revealing the bare mattress, which had some large red stains on it, one of which was about 15 inches in diameter.

One of the members on the ambulance team had been to the house twice before, both times for Sean and both times for seizures. Both of those previous times, Sean was transported to Rhode Island Hospital.

The three men were tightly squeezed into the narrow walkway by his bed. The room itself could only contain a mattress and an end table. One of the medics picked up the end table and moved it out of the room in order to get into position. Another medic moved a pile of clothing. After installing a cervical collar to brace his neck, the three of them rolled him onto a rigid backboard and carried him up the stairs.

As they were removing Sean from the house, making their way up the narrow stairs, two cops, Officer Gallagher and Officer Sean Parker with the Cranston Police Department, showed up. Officer Parker later wrote a narrative in a police report about that afternoon, which said that Sean was conscious and combative, had no marks or injuries on him, and that his bedroom was neat and orderly.

Armand and Sean's nephew both told them and the first responders that Sean had a history of alcohol and drug use and associated seizure activity. They asked neighbors if they heard anything. The walls were paper thin, and you could even make out the words of conversations that one another were having, and they said that they'd heard nothing in the past few hours.

They asked about Sean's history of drug use. His nephew said that although Sean had used drugs in the past, he said that he didn't know what he had done on Friday night. Once in the ambulance, they tried to install an oropharyngeal airway, which is a tube that extends down into the throat and provides an unobstructed airway. Suspecting a possible drug overdose, they administered Narcan, but Sean didn't respond to it.

They called into Rhode Island Hospital's emergency department to let them know that they were coming in with a patient in need of urgent care. Meanwhile, Amy first learned of Sean's condition. She got a call from Karen with the scary news that Sean was unconscious and being rushed to the ER. The hospital did some imaging of his head and they determined that he had a large amount of blood pooling in his brain.

caused by blunt force trauma. It was a major impact and it was an unusual place for a seizure victim. Usually, a seizure victim will fall forward or backward and the injury will be to the front or the back of the skull. But this injury was on the side of his skull, over his right ear, a more fragile part of the cranium's anatomy.

The blood was about 4 by 1.5 inches in area and an inch and a half thick underneath the skull, which was creating a lot of pressure on his brain matter, causing what's medically known as a midline shift, squishing his brain so much that the center of the brain was no longer in the center of the skull cavity.

An on-call brain surgeon came in and operated Saturday evening and performed a craniectomy, a major surgery that involves peeling the skin back from the scalp, cutting a large access panel to the bone of the skull, and suctioning out the pooled blood. They also installed a port to drain any additional blood.

The procedure was a success and his vitals were stabilized, but his brain damage was irreversible. They were doing rapid blood testing and the toxicology screen came back positive for cocaine, opiates, and barbiturates. That evening, Amy's sister, Jennifer, called the Cranston police and asked them to send someone to talk to Armand. She already had her suspicions that Sean's injury to his head was not a result of a seizure.

Officer Sean Parker later wrote that he went to the Rhode Island hospital to check on Sean's condition, and he stated that he was in stable condition, according to a hospital employee, and was admitted due to a blood clot in his brain that could have been caused by the seizure. Amy stayed with Sean at the hospital until 2 a.m. when she went home to get some rest.

When she returned the next morning, she noticed some injuries on Sean's body. He had a deep scratch and bruising on his upper chest, bruising on his knees, cuts or rug burns on his nose, forehead, and right knuckles, and was missing part of a tooth. All of these injuries, along with a cut between his toes, made her suspicious. She thought he might have been struck in the head, fallen, and been dragged.

She spoke to a nurse and she told Amy, there is no way his injuries were consistent with a fall. Somebody hit him. The CT scan indicated head trauma. Even the neurosurgeon asked the family at the hospital, what happened to him? Does anyone know if he's been in a fight? At which point, 13-year-old Natalia became very suspicious. He also explained that the wounds may not have been sustained on Saturday afternoon.

The medical examiner explained it to us because I said, you know, how long could he have laid there like that? Like, there's no way that it happened Friday night and he was found Saturday night. That's almost 24 hours, you know, like he would have bled out. And the medical examiner kind of like laughed at me and he was like, no, that's not how that works. His brainstem just hadn't swollen to the point of pushing, um,

on his spinal cord so he once it swells to a certain point you stop breathing he was like he could have survived up to five days like that it changes the timeline completely because it's like okay so it could have happened friday night and he said there was a very slim chance he would have ever lived never mind like woken up or done anything i mean you say vegetable like he would have it would have been nothing

Aaron, another one of Sean's sisters, went to the duplex and questioned Armand about the timeline leading up to discovering Sean unconscious. He said, quote, Amy dropped off Sean Friday night, and he came in by himself. Armand said he worked on Saturday and thought that Sean had gone to work too. He worked for the post office, and his days would start very early as well.

Armand said that after he got home, he went downstairs to use the washer-dryer to do some laundry, and he noticed Sean lying down on the floor. He then checked on him an hour later, around the time that Karen had arrived. Armand also said that he had taken the cash that was on Sean's table, and Aaron asked for it back. Armand, after making a show of looking for it, eventually came out with $70 from his bedroom and gave it to her.

That night, both Aaron and a lawyer who was connected to the family called the Cranston police to encourage them to treat Sean's case as a criminal matter. His apartment was not yet considered a crime scene. Around 4 p.m. the next day, the hospital staff gathered the family to tell them the grim news.

Sean was in a coma, and he was only being kept alive by the machinery in the hospital. He had virtually no chance at ever waking up, and even if he did, he would be completely brain dead. They asked the family if it would be alright to take him off life support, and with a heavy heart, his mom, Ellen, agreed. By 4.30pm, they extubated him and he continued to breathe on his own.

A family member of Amy's who was a registered nurse at the hospital went to the caseworker on the floor with her concerns and suspicions. It had been two days, and still, the police had taken no action.

On Tuesday, July 25th, 2006, at 1.24 p.m., 34-year-old Sean Patrick O'Brien passed away. He had been unconscious since he was discovered on Saturday afternoon, and medical experts would later tell Natalia and the family that he had no chance of survival from the condition in which he was found.

The trauma to his head was too severe for any hope of recovery. His mom contacted the Russell Boyle Funeral Home to begin making arrangements, but she got a call later that day to the relief of the family that the medical examiner's office had claimed Sean's body for an autopsy. They hoped that they would get some answers.

After Sean's death on Tuesday afternoon, Amy and Aaron, Sean's sisters, went to the Frosted Mug and had a beer in Sean's honor. They asked the owner if he remembered Sean coming in on Friday, and he said that he had, but he didn't recall what time Sean left. Around 6 p.m., they left the bar and went to Sean's apartment. Armand met them outside with his golden retriever, Floyd. They broke the news that Sean had passed. Amy asked,

Did you see or hear anything that night?

Armand said, quote, you dropped him off. But Amy cut him off, saying that she dropped him off at Billy's Frosted Mug at 7 p.m. And that was the last time she saw him. Armand, a little shaken, tried to recall other details from Friday night. He said, Sean walked around the corner. Had to be about 8 p.m. He had a bag of beer under his arm. Or did he? He had a white hat on. Right?

We were sitting in the yard. Amy pressed. Was anyone with him? Did he go back out? Did anyone else come in? Armin said that he was alone, that nobody came in, and he didn't think Sean went back out. Amy found Armin's behavior unsettling. She thought that he was nervous. He couldn't maintain eye contact. She noticed four cuts on his face, two on each side, and a band-aid on his finger.

The dog, Floyd, had a chunk of hair missing on his tail that had been shaved off.

Amy bent down and spoke to the dog. Floyd, where were you? Why didn't you bark? Even though Floyd was Armin's dog, he was protective of Sean and loyal to him. In the past, if Sean had suffered a seizure, the dog would bark until someone came to help. Sometimes family would come over and knock on Sean's basement windows, and the dog would bark. He spent most of his time downstairs with Sean.

It seemed to Amy that if Sean had gone into a seizure at any point on Saturday, that the dog would have made quite a racket, certainly enough to disturb the neighbors. Aaron told Armand that Ellen, Sean's mom, had come by on Saturday during the day and knocked on the window. But the dog didn't bark. Armand said that Floyd was in the bathroom with him. Quote, I was scrubbing the tub, just like I do every Saturday.

They left it at that and told Armand that they needed to retrieve a few of Sean's belongings downstairs and explain that they'd be back another time to clean out the apartment. This was the first time Amy had seen Sean's apartment since the Saturday incident. Amy and Aaron descended the stairs to the basement.

They found bloodstains in a number of places: on the carpet near the door, on the door itself, on the bedroom carpet, and on the wood-paneled wall at the head of the bed. There was a bloody, balled-up sheet that was beneath the comforter and a bloodstained loose pillowcase. The long, green-colored body pillow had bloodstains, and there were three large bloodstains on the bare mattress.

There was a white t-shirt with bloodstains that looked like it was used to wipe something. The furniture had spots as well. The bottom of Sean's wooden bureau in his bedroom and the kitchen chair. The door to the half bathroom on his floor had a stain as well.

The shorts that Sean had worn Friday night looked untouched and had his ID in the pocket. His belt and hammer holder were on the left of the kitchen table, which was consistent with Sean preparing for work. Amy described Sean as very modest about his dress. He would never walk around or lounge bare-chested in his boxers, so she believed that whatever had happened, happened while he was in bed.

Erin took some photos with her camera phone, which, though they are very low resolution and poor quality, documented some of the things that they'd discovered. Some of the clearest images, which we have now, show the large stains on the mattress. They noticed a few things that were missing. A faux brass lamp, the kind you tap the base to turn on, his hammer, an alarm clock, and a dumbbell set.

They found a piece of paper with some writing on it. It had Armand and John's phone numbers and a license plate number that belonged to Lynn's best friend, Chickie.

Armand's nephew John came down and asked them what had happened. After sharing the bad news, they asked him if he was visiting Armand on Friday evening, and he said no. He then said, Sean had no problems with my uncle. Amy and Aaron left shortly thereafter. They shared what they learned with the rest of the family, and one detail stood out. Why was the dog's tail shaved?

It took us years to figure out. And it's probably like the saddest part of the whole story. When you were walking up the stairs, there was kind of this like brush of blood. And when my mom pointed it out, the detectives later on said, oh, like when he was coming up on the structure, they probably like bumped into the wall. But then years later, we thought like that as my dad was laying there in this pool of blood, Floyd probably went and sat by him.

And Armand went and picked him up to get him out of there. And Floyd probably had blood on his tail and that's where the swipe on the wall came from. So then he has to shave his tail because he has blood on his tail.

Given that Floyd sat with my dad so much, it's kind of what makes sense. Like that, you know, Armin probably tried to keep him away if whatever, you know, if he knew whatever happened or, you know, however long my dad was laying there. But at some point, Floyd probably went down there and was like, you know, trying to nudge him because that's what he did. And that's where the stain on the wall came from. And that's why his tail was shaved. That's our like theory.

The next morning, around 9.30 a.m., Amy and her sister went to the Cranston Police Department to explain their story. It was the fourth day since Sean had been found, and this was the first time that they took action to investigate. They met with a detective in the station, and shortly thereafter, the police went to the house and sealed it off as a crime scene.

A sergeant with a Cranston PD was quick to blame Rhode Island Hospital for not letting them know that it looked as though Sean had been a victim of a crime. That same morning, assistant medical examiner Alexander Cherkov conducted an autopsy. He said that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

But because he didn't have a clear story of how the injury was sustained from the police, he ruled manner of death as undetermined. He later clarified to Natalia that the skull fracture was likely from a single blow and would have rendered him unconscious instantly.

Cranston PD immediately prepared a search warrant application and brought it to a judge for approval. Detective Sergeant Michael Gates wrote in the supporting affidavit, quote, When police consulted with the medical examiner's office, Dr. Cherkoff concluded that the magnitude and extent of the trauma to Sean's head was

was inconsistent with a fall caused by a seizure. Furthermore, police found blood evidence inconsistent with a fall. Blood residue and spatter was found in areas of the dwelling away from where Sean was discovered at the time of rescue.

If Sean didn't die from an accidental fall during a seizure, what could explain his death? Did you interview Sean's landlord, Armand Rouleau, and his girlfriend? Yes. And are they people of interest? They are, yes. ♪

Join me next week for part two as we conclude the Sean O'Brien story. If you have any information about the death of Sean O'Brien, I encourage you to reach out to the Cranston Police Department at 401-942-2211 or text Natalia at 401-284-9555 with any information.

I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you would like to support the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. Another way to support is telling a friend, sharing on social media, or leaving a review. A very special thanks to Natalia for reaching out, trusting me with her dad's story, and sharing her memories with me.

Most of this episode was crafted with the research that she's done in original documents. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. This episode was co-written and researched by Byron Willis. If you have a story that needs to be told or a correction, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've kept the memories of your loved ones alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told. Thank you for listening.

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