Tom Schilk didn’t see the tourist he robbed fall from the third floor of his West Philadelphia apartment building.

He was in another unit, two floors down.

“We heard a bang and we went out front and [Felix] Davila was lying on the pavement. He was really, really damaged,” said Schilk in a recent interview.

This was 1984. Earlier that night, Schilk had been out drinking in Center City. On the way to catching the subway home, he says Davila propositioned him on the street.

“I agreed, with the intent of separating him from his money however I could,” said Schilk, “whether by tricking him or taking it off him or whatever.”

Schilk brought the man back to his property. There, Schilk tied him up and took his money.

Schilk left the room, went downstairs and, suddenly, the 35 year-old teacher from Baton Rouge fell to his death.

No one knew exactly what happened.

During his two-week jury trial in 1986, prosecutors said Davila’s body was found naked on the ground when Schilk tried to hide it by wrapping it in a blanket and putting it in the garbage. They said Schilk later fled the city, before being ultimately caught by the F.B.I.

But prosecutors also conceded that Schilk did not kill Davila that December morning.

It didn’t save him any prison time. In addition to robbery, Schilk was convicted of second-degree murder, which triggers a mandatory life sentence in Pennsylvania, the same as first-degree murder convictions.

“I know I can never really rebalance the scales. The harm I’ve done is irreparable. I realize that,” said Schilk, 59, over a crackly phone line from State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Montgomery County. “But I would like to try to do good. I would like to help people.”

Three decades after his trial, Schilk hopes he will have a chance to see the light of day.

State Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia) recently reintroduced a controversial bill that would give more than 1,000 state inmates serving life sentences for murder a shot at getting released.

It would be a big shift.

For more than forty years, life sentences in Pennsylvania have only come one way: without the possibility of parole.

“For the people who deserve to remain in prison, my bill does nothing to say that they will be released. It simply gives the Board of Probation and Parole the ability to sort it out,” said Street.

Under the bill, people convicted of first-degree murder — intentionally killing another person — would be eligible for parole after serving 35 years.

People convicted of second-degree murder — participating in a crime that ended someone’s life, for instance, being a getaway driver — would have to wait 25 years.

Currently, there are 546 first-degree lifers and 519 second-degree lifers who would be immediately eligible.

For inmates and their families, the measure would be a gift, a godsend.

Joanne Schilk-Bierman was devastated when her older brother Tom went away. In the span of seven years, she buried two siblings. With Tom’s life sentence, she felt like she was losing a third.

“It was like a great sense of loss and grief again — all over,” said Schilk-Bierman.

These days, her small Bucks County apartment is filled with things that make her feel close to her brother. For years he was the most consistent male figure in her life, even when he was in the throes of drug addiction.

There are framed photographs, but also colorful paintings and stencil work Schilk created in prison.

“Having something that he actually had his hands on is so important to me. You know, just knowing the card that he sent to me — he physically had this card in his hands. And now it’s like kind of a sense that I’m getting to touch what he touched,” she said.