Year later, man's death still a mystery

Toward the end of his life, Lee Stanley lived in solitude.

But that doesn't mean he was alone.

His home, a three-story rowhouse on tiny Mole Street in Center City, was filled to the brim with artifacts from a time gone by: baseball cards, sports almanacs, opera scores, orchestra programs. Pieces of his passions, surrounding him every day.

A few times a week, he exercised, inconspicuously, by walking up and down the Art Museum steps, his oversize coat draped over his shoulders. Even though he was thin and frail, after retiring from the city records department, Stanley would walk, surrounded by the kaleidoscopic crowd.

And there was the synagogue, Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street, where his father had been a cantor. He grew up there, and as an adult, after his parents died, he would attend services and programs three nights a week. He was in the choir and the men's club.

"His home was really the synagogue," said Daniel Behrend, a friend and fellow congregant.

Stanley, who never married or had children, occasionally grated on some people with his eccentricities and social quirks. But he built a life for himself in Philadelphia, a quiet life, another resident making his way in the haphazard, disorderly city.

Then, on Aug. 15 of last year, Stanley, at age 65, became one of the city's murder victims.

He was found dead on the first floor of his home with wounds to the chest and a white, powdery substance sprinkled around his body. There was a fire extinguisher nearby. Beyond that, clues were virtually nonexistent, police said.

A year later, the picture is no clearer.

"It's a real mystery," said Lt. Mark Deegan, of the Homicide Division, who is overseeing the investigation.

Deegan said that detectives had few leads to work with from the outset and that in the year since, virtually nothing had materialized to help their case. At times, detectives have even wondered whether Stanley's death was really a murder, or just a tragic accident - perhaps a fall.

"It's one of those jobs where there's really nothing to hang your hat on," Deegan said. "We were trying to come up with some scenarios. We never did."

For many who knew Stanley, the brutal nature of his killing contradicts the spirit in which he lived.

"He was just a gentle soul," said Eric Bray, 67, a classmate of Stanley's at Central High School. "He never hurt anybody."

Behrend's wife, Susan, said she still grieves over losing her friend.

"I just personally feel that he died frightened, and scared, and helpless," she said.

Stanley grew up with his parents in the house on Mole Street, and from them he inherited a love of music. His father was a cantor at the synagogue, the Behrends said, his mother an opera singer.

Stanley, by extension, became a connoisseur, with a sprawling music collection, the Behrends said.

He also loved baseball and was a diligent researcher of statistics, with dozens of almanacs and thousands of baseball cards.

A 1965 graduate of Central High School, Stanley was well-known by his classmates, Bray said, perhaps in part because of his unusual social manner.

Still, Bray said many students felt protective of Stanley in school and tried to prevent him from getting picked on or riding the subway alone.

An online message board for his class has dozens of tributes expressing sorrow for his death - and regret for how some may have treated him as teenagers.

"We [classmates] probably felt the pain just a little more deeply than we would have had this been just another sad, anonymous victim of urban crime," one poster wrote. "Because finally, as adults, we came around to appreciating that Lee was one of us."

The Behrends grew close to Stanley over the last 15 years.

Susan Behrend said she cared for him almost like a brother - inspired by his independence, occasionally frustrated by his stubbornness, but always proud that they were in each others' lives.

"We related with him and loved him unconditionally," she said.

Behrend, a nurse, was thrilled when Stanley celebrated his 65th birthday last May. She took a cupcake over to Mole Street that evening. Wearing his pajamas, Stanley blew out a candle alongside some of his neighbors, who were outside having a barbecue.

It was the last birthday they would celebrate together.

The initial focus of the investigation into Stanley's murder, Deegan said, was to look at two angles: contractors who were working on Stanley's roof, and whether robbers had entered the home.

Neither inquiry provided much to work with. Nothing tied the contractors to the killing, he said, and little suggested that the house had been ransacked.

Investigators were similarly stymied when they tried another old tactic in tough cases: questioning neighborhood criminals, such as drug dealers and prostitutes.

"They didn't even know who the guy was," Deegan said.

While the medical examiner ruled Stanley's death a homicide from blunt-force trauma to the chest, Deegan said investigators have wondered whether Stanley might simply have fallen, injured himself, and perhaps set off the fire extinguisher.

Stanley was frail, Deegan said, and his injuries "didn't seem . . . so serious."

Every angle police worked seemed to run into a wall, Deegan said.

"A lot of stuff is black and white," he said. But in this case, "everything's gray."

On Sunday, the Behrends will visit Stanley's grave, at Montefiore Cemetery in Jenkintown.

In keeping with Jewish tradition, family and friends will gather for a ceremony to mark a year since his death and to unveil the headstone on his grave.

The rest of Stanley's family is buried there, Daniel Behrend said, and relatives will attend. A rabbi from Rodeph Shalom will be there as well.

The Behrends miss their friend.

And for one more afternoon, a year after his death, Stanley won't be alone.

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