PROVIDENCE, R.I. � A West Virginia man who once told a Catholic newspaper that he moved to Providence to find God and a better life was identified Thursday as the person whose body was buried under concrete.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. � A West Virginia man who once told a Catholic newspaper that he moved to Providence to find God and a better life was identified Thursday as the person whose body was buried under concrete in a South Providence factory in the mid-1980s.

The skeleton of Phillip P. Seals was discovered last summer at the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft in the long-vacant Federated Lithographers-Printers factory building, said Providence police Maj. David Lapatin and Dr. Christina Stanley, chief medical examiner.

Seals, who left a wife and at least one child in Ohio, was identified after a lengthy investigation by police and the medical examiner�s office.

The police are treating Seals� death as a homicide, Lapatin said, based on the circumstances of where the body was found � just under the surface of terracotta brick and concrete, in an area roughly 5-by-5� feet and 3 feet deep.

A projectile found with Seals� skeleton has since been determined not to be a bullet, Lapatin said, and it�s unclear how exactly the man died.

�We have enough leads to keep running with it,� Lapatin said. �There are a lot of people who will be surprised when we are knocking on their door.�

Seals was born on May 31, 1936, and grew up in Charleston, W.Va., where he graduated from Garnet High School in 1953. He was in the Air Force until 1955 and also attended West Virginia State College, where he learned printmaking.

Eventually, he found his way to Providence.

Seals� only sister, who lives in Maryland, declined comment Thursday out of concern for her safety.

All these years, she�s kept an article that her brother sent her. It was a story about him published in The Visitor, a newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence (now called Rhode Island Catholic), and it described his journey to Providence at the �crossroads of his life.�

The article, published on May 21, 1981, was about what Seals said was his struggle to overcome years of alcoholism. His health was so poor that his doctor told him to �find Jesus,� the article said.

Seals expected to die. He started to pray. One day, something he saw on a religious program while at his mother�s house in West Virginia caught his attention. It talked about Providence and St. Patrick�s parish. He boarded a bus headed north, according to the article.

Seals told The Visitor writer about what happened when he arrived in the city � how he got a room at the YMCA, got a job at a jewelry manufacturer and started going to St. Patrick�s. He stopped drinking, started reading the Bible and going to prayer meetings, and was confirmed in the church on Easter Sunday 1978.

Seals completed his college credits and reversed his dishonorable discharge to an honorable discharge, he told The Visitor. He said he was a �changed man� and hadn�t had a drink in five years. �He has self-respect, many good friends and a positive outlook on life,� the article said.

Seals had lived in Providence in 1976 until at least 1983, in the South Side, the Hartford section and on the East Side, Lapatin said. Seals was arrested a few times, on petty crimes, and was known to police as a drifter.

It�s not clear when he disappeared for good.

Stanley and assistant medical examiner Dr. Carolyn Revercomb, who reconstructed and examined the skeleton, declined to answer questions about how Seals died and whether he suffered any trauma before his death. They did not release a report by forensic anthropologist Dr. Marcella Sorg, who consulted on the case.

They turned over their findings to the police and said they didn�t want to jeopardize the investigation, especially as a suspect or suspects may be at large. �There are more findings in the skeleton and the items found with him,� Stanley said.

An identification card from Rhode Island Hospital found with Seals� body was one clue to his identity � but the scientists needed to prove who he was.

Seals had a fractured tibia from a past injury, Revercomb said, and that old wound helped investigators determine his identity.





PROVIDENCE JOURNAL VIDEO BY FRIEDA SQUIRES

This video was originally published July 24, 2013, when a skeleton was found under a concrete floor in a building undergoing extensive renovations next to the Providence Community Health Centers in South Providence.

The medical examiner also used DNA from Seals� arm bone that matched with a buccal swab from his sister, according to the police. The University of North Texas Center for Human Identification examined the DNA and confirmed his identity.

Seals was 45 when he was last known to be alive, which is consistent with the age of the remains, Stanley said.

Why was Seals in the building? That isn�t clear � Lapatin said the man appeared to have no connection to the old factory building.

The 1917 building was being rehabbed last summer as part of a major development of a medical-retail complex anchored by the Providence Community Health Centers, at 355 Prairie Ave., which bought the nearby vacant property a decade ago.

According to property records, the mill building had been owned by Vincent A. Patience, of Apco Stationers & Printers, in 1971, and was briefly vacant in 1972 until Apco moved in sometime in 1973. The building changed hands again in 1985, when Federated Lithographers-Printers Inc. bought the facility.

Workers digging up the concrete in the basement floor uncovered a man�s skull on July 24. That led to the discovery of the complete skeleton, clothing and the ID card with Seals� name.

Lapatin said detectives are looking into the pouring of the concrete floor and questioning possible suspects, some of whom are now elderly. Anyone who may have known Seals is asked to contact the lead detective, Emilio Matos Jr., at (401) 243-6306.

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