SALEM, Mass. — As a young Italian boy growing up in Haverhill, Patsy “Pat” Schena wore socks as mittens when it was cold. He walked the railroad tracks looking for loose coal from train cars to heat his family’s home. Neighbors sometimes gave food and clothes to his family, who worked in the city’s shoe mills.
As a man, Schena wanted to help others, to give people a head start. That included his three daughters; Valerie, Michele and Brenda Schena, whom he adored.
“I was asked, ‘Who would want to murder your father?’” Brenda Schena recalled Friday on the stand in Salem Superior Court.
Brenda had no way of predicting it would be Leedel Graham — a Haverhill area handyman her father knew of 15 years prior — who had beaten and stabbed her father to death in his Groveland home.
Schena, then retired, had been the building inspector in Groveland for 36 years.
On Friday, exactly five years to the day after the killing, Graham, 54, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the June 21, 2019 murder of Patsy Schena, 82, in his Governor’s Road home in Groveland. Judge Kathleen McCarthy-Neyman presided over the trial and imposed the sentence.
As Schena family snapshots showing Patsy with his daughters and grandchildren were posted on large video screens in the courtroom, Brenda and her sister Michele Schena spoke of their father’s love and devotion. That affection was tragically juxtaposed by the horrible damage Graham inflicted on their family, they said.
“He enjoyed seeing my Dad suffer,” said Michele, adding Graham has never shown any remorse or regret.
Graham, flanked two defense attorneys, chose not to address the court Friday.
A superior court jury this week found Graham guilty of first degree murder with extreme atrocity and cruelty. He was also convicted of breaking and entering with intent to commit larceny over $1,200.
Schena arrived home on June 21, 2019, to find Graham robbing him. A struggle ensued and Graham bludgeoned Schena to death with a lamp and stabbed him with a knife.
Gold jewelry, including a pendant, and car keys were also stolen from the house.
An investigation by Groveland Police and Massachusetts State Police led to Graham’s arrest four days later.
The prosecution presented video evidence showing that Graham was around Schena’s home at the time of the murder. DNA evidence also implicated him.
During the trial a state trooper testified that police found a brown paper bag with the help of a canine near Schena’s home. The bag contained a towel, knife handle and other evidence.
An autopsy showed Schena suffered injuries to the back of his head, skull and brain.
In her victim impact statement, Michele Schena said her father had a heart and smile “that shined like gold.”
His murder deeply damaged her emotionally. She cannot watch anything that involves physical or mental violence. and she has to be in constant contact with her sons because she fears for their safety.
Brenda described her father’s hard work, which included building two family homes in Groveland and another in Maine.
Her father was also funny and enjoyed calling her and telling her about the characters he knew around town. They had a Sunday night ritual where they would talk after 60 Minutes was on television, she said.
She recalled seeing the blood spatter over the headboard in his bedroom.
“You can’t imagine the trauma we endured,” she said, noting she and her sister now have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Through counseling for murder victims, Brenda said she now knows “unimaginable things can happen.”
Specifically to Graham she said her father’s legacy was “building things.”
“Yours is destroying things … You are a monster,” she said.
Follow staff reporter Jill Harmacinski on Twitter/X @EagleTribJill.