ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

Life in a Larger Box

Michael Chertoff, then U.S. attorney in Newark, has always had a reputation as a tough and aggressive prosecutor, and he took a personal interest in the Seale's prosecution. Chertoff, who later rose through the ranks of the Justice Department and ultimately succeeded Tom Ridge as head of Homeland Security, insisted that Arthur Seale get the toughest penalty available. And on a late fall day in 1992, he got his wish.

Judge Garrett E. Brown, a U.S. district court judge in Trenton, issued a blistering condemnation of the man who claimed that he was simply a normal person driven to "absolute desperation."

"What you have done is thoroughly evil," Brown said, according to published reports at the time. "Your actions were not for any cause. They were not rash or impulsive. They were cold-blooded and calculated. To the extent you seek mercy you will be given the same you gave your innocent victim —none."

Moments earlier, Reso's son Christopher had issued a statement in which he said that the depravity of the Seale's crime had confounded even the family's most desperate fears during the nearly week ordeal while their father was missing. As quoted by the New York Times, Christopher Reso said, ""When Arthur and Irene Seale were arrested and the answers finally came, they seemed more cruel and perverted than even our tormented dreams could conjure."

"After all," the Times quoted Reso as saying, "these are people with their own family. Couldn't they realize the depth of the wound that this would inflict on our family? Shouldn't they have known in the core of their beings that what they contemplated was a violation of all that family and decency stood for?"

In the end, to Christopher Reso and other members of his family, there was only one word to describe what Arthur Seale and his wife had done. "People who do this can only be described as evil," he said.