# Father, son tortured, robbed

From the Times Herald, 12/4/75

By John F. Brown

An Avoca man and his son, who were beaten and robbed of more that $1,400 then bound and gagged and set on fire, were left to die in a flame-filled bathroom of their old farmhouse about midnight Wednesday.
William J. Brennan, 72, of 4238 Bricker Road, and his son, Terrance Casey Brennan, 27, bound together with a pair of police handcuffs, electrical cord and tape, managed to free themselves to telephone a Michigan Bell operator for help.
Sheriff Norman D. Meharg said Brennan and his son were admitted to Yale Hospital for treatment of second- and third-degree burns of their hands and arms and head and facial injuries.
Young Brennan had been stabbed in the head several times by his attackers.

Both men were reported in fair condition today at the hospital.
Meharg said there have been no arrests made and so far there are no suspects. He has assigned Detectives Robert V. Quain and Donald E. Tuthill to the case.
Meharg said the torture bandit were both white, armed with hand guns and had dark ski masks over their faces when they forced their way into the Brennan home about 9 p.m.

"One of the thieves knocked on the door and when Mr. Brennan answered he told Brennan he had ran out of gasoline, then pulled the ski hat over his face, pointed a gun at Brennan and pushed his way into the house," Meharg said.

"The Bandits used a pair of handcuffs to lock the men together. They set paper on fire and held it under the hands of the two men. Their hands were baked," Meharg said.

Deputy Sheriffs James VanConant and Orrin Burgett arrived at the scene less than six minutes after the operator called the Sheriff's Department.
"You could smell burning flesh when you entered the house," VanConant said.
Brennan and his son told the officers their attackers pushed them into the bathroom of the six-room farmhouse after they had taken the money.

They said sheets and bedding were put around them on the floor and the men poured them on the floor and the men poured some type of flammable liquid over them.
One of the men tossed a lighted match into the sheets, closed the bathroom door and ran from the home.

Brennan said he and his son managed to get the rope and cord off their feet and stamped out the fire with their feet and hands, which were free of the handcuffs. They forced open the door and stumbled to the telephone.

"My dad thought it was a joke at first. He even tried to brush the gun aside from the man at the door, but I told him not to," Casey said.
Every room in the house, except the kitchen, was ransacked as the robbers searched the house for money.

Neighbors of the Brennan's heard nothing, deputies said.

However, VanConant and Burgett said there were footsteps leading from the Brennan home through freshly fallen snow for about a block to an area where a car had been parked.

The Brennan's were described by their neighbors as quiet people who "bothered no one."
Neighbors said the Brennans had few visitors
Brennan's wife, Mrs. Alice Brennan, was killed in a car accident two years ago in Ohio.