The father of the victim was first to testify. He wore a gray quilted vest, a blue-gray shirt and an expression trying but failing to show nothing. He refused for now even to look at the thickset man charged in the torture and murder of his son.
“Thomas Rath,” he said, when asked to identify himself. The same name as his son. The same as an upstate New York murder case that reflected the struggles of communities to meet the commingled challenges of addiction, mental illness and homelessness.
Drug abuse transformed the younger Thomas Rath from an attentive father with a good job to an addict living under a tarp in an Ithaca homeless encampment so firmly established that it had a name: the Jungle. There, in May 2023, he was handcuffed and beaten, then taken away to be brutalized, shot to death and left in a makeshift grave.
Thirteen people, many of them Jungle denizens, were charged in the case, with the man on trial, Joseph Howell, 38, accused of orchestrating the nightmare. Prosecutors depicted him as a malevolent manipulator who used threats and drugs to get vulnerable people to do bad things.
The trial took place two weeks ago in Owego, in the brick-and-limestone Tioga County courthouse built just after the Civil War. Its only courtroom features a balcony and two slowly spinning fans hanging from the high ceiling. Think “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
About to testify was a father in grief, his sorrow compounded by the state’s decision not to release his son’s body until all the related cases had been adjudicated. Almost 18 months after the death, all he has is an empty urn.
More than a dozen relatives and friends of the Raths shared a tissue box in the seats farthest from the defendant. Several were nearly sick at the thought of reliving the horrific details, but they wanted to be there for the two Thomas Raths.
The father, 57, wears glasses; so did his son, who was 33. He is a successful construction supervisor; his son also worked in construction. He leaned forward in the witness stand, eager to get this over with and still determined not to look at the defendant. That could wait.
Mr. Howell, just a few steps away, jotted notes and shared whispers with one of his defense lawyers, as if he were a legal consultant and not the reason for the two deputy sheriffs sitting directly behind him. His criminal record is considerable.
Speaking softly, the father gave concise answers to straightforward questions designed to establish a life.
“He was my first son,” he said.
Your son’s date of birth?
“July 20, 1989.”
When was the last time you saw your son?
“At my mother’s wake.”
That was in late November 2022, six months before Tommy Rath’s death. Deputy sheriffs had escorted him to the funeral home from a county jail, where he was being held on a break-in charge, so that he could pay his respects. Before being led away, he had paused for a quick photograph that was now being entered into evidence.
“That’s my son,” the father said, glancing at the photo of a scrawny man diminished by methamphetamine and heroin. He looked away as the jurors passed around the image of what he had lost.
Did your son struggle at times?
“Yes.”
And, yes, in late July of 2023, nearly two months after his son’s disappearance, the Ithaca police asked him for a DNA sample — a harbinger of the devastating news to come.
His testimony finished, the father sat with his family and friends. He listened to others describe his son’s final days in the Jungle, a sprawling community behind some big-box stores where “Jungle law” prevailed, and where damaged people with nowhere else to go tried to make do. It has since shrunk in its size and number of inhabitants.
Former residents of the Jungle testified that Mr. Howell had had Tommy Rath beaten up and warned to leave Ithaca. But Tommy stayed, they said, only to be zip-tied, pummeled, hit in the head with a socket wrench and dragged off to a waiting car.
All of this recounted before the trial’s break for lunch.
When testimony resumed, prosecutors introduced a loud, jittery video. It was unclear what was being shown, and then it became all too clear. There was Tommy, handcuffed and vulnerable. There was his voice.
And here was his father now leaving the courtroom, leaving the courthouse and heading to the nearest bar to order a beer that might briefly rinse away those images, those sounds.
“Once he heard Tommy’s voice, he couldn’t get it out of his head,” said his wife, Alicia.
“That was the end of me,” he said.
Over the next several days, the father stayed away. Although he knew the broad outline, he could not bear to hear the specifics from the Jungle chorus.
How a handcuffed Tommy had been taken to a tired house where Mr. Howell and others brutalized him for hours. How Mr. Howell, who had briefly dated Tommy’s girlfriend, sent images of the torture to her mother. How Tommy had pleaded for mercy.
How, under orders from Mr. Howell, the owner of an old truck had driven Tommy and two armed men to some remote woods, where gunfire disquieted the night. And how that distraught truck owner had returned hours later with a shovel to bury, as best he could, someone’s son.
While the trial unfolded, the father busied himself with work. Sat alone in his garage, where he keeps the photos and mementos from a celebration of Tommy’s life last year. Didn’t talk much; still doesn’t.
“The best word to describe it is ‘broken,’” Alicia Rath said. “My husband is a man of very few words. He’s always been a person who says it is what it is. But for the first time in his life, there was no ‘just getting over it.’ There is no ‘just moving on.’”
At the end of each day, Ms. Rath reported to her husband what had unfolded in court — including the time, she said, that Mr. Howell smirked and winked at one of Tommy’s closest friends.
The father did not return for the prosecution’s closing argument that Mr. Howell was the puppeteer of murder, motivated in part by his jealousy over the woman who had chosen Tommy Rath over him. Nor did he hear the defense counter that the state’s case was weak and heavily reliant on the testimony of compromised people from the Jungle, many of whom were cooperating as part of plea agreements.
But when the jury began deliberations, he returned, making a point to sit in the seats closest to Mr. Howell. He wanted the defendant to feel the presence of the victim’s father.
The hours in the old courtroom passed, through one day and into a second. At one point, Mr. Howell nodded off.
“He fell asleep,” the father said. “Fell. Asleep.”
On the morning of Oct. 24, the jury rendered its verdict. Guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty of first-degree kidnapping. Guilty on three counts of witness intimidation.
This was not the end. There were more trials to come, including for the two alleged gunmen. Tommy Rath’s family would not be receiving his remains anytime soon.
Still, the verdict meant some justice for Tommy. And it meant that Mr. Howell, who is also awaiting sentencing on an unrelated burglary and kidnapping conviction, might well spend the rest of his life in prison. “He’s done,” the victim’s father said.
After the verdict, and before the handcuffed Mr. Howell was led away, Thomas Rath stared at him. He kept staring, refusing to break eye contact, refusing even to blink.
Under a father’s glare, the guilty man looked away.
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