Abusive Former Henderson Priest Was Beaten to Death in 2003

By Jon Webb
Evansville Courier & Press
April 18, 2019

https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2019/04/18/abusive-owensboro-diocese-priest-beaten-death-2003/3500614002/

No list of predatory priests can tell the whole story.

Both the Evansville and Owensboro dioceses have unveiled inventories in the last two months of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse against minors. The lists contain names, where the priests served and the number of allegations against them.

But they could never convey the hurt these men unleashed, nor the twisted secrecy that allowed the abuse to metastasize.

A lot of information is left unsaid. And in the case of the list Owensboro released last week, that includes a murder.

Joseph Pilger (Photo: Bishop Accountability)

Joseph Pilger served as a pastor in slews of parishes across several Kentucky dioceses, including at St. Ann in Morganfield from 1964-65 and at Holy Name in Henderson from 1967-69.

Owensboro lists 13 substantiated allegations against him. At one point, he was wanted on 84 felony counts of sexually abusing minors, stemming from a 1993 case where he abused four children in Union County in the 1960s, the Associated Press reported.

He eventually pleaded guilty. He could have served 30 years in prison, but because of a plea deal, he only got probation.

And on Dec. 5, 2003, at his apartment on the southeast side of Lexington, he was found beaten to death with a pickax.

Police eventually arrested then-26-year-old Jason Anthony Russell – a former Henderson man who at one point had been living with Pilger. He pleaded guilty and was handed 30 years in prison.

All that by itself is bizarre enough. But as the case slogged through court, more and more grotesque details got dragged into the light – including the terrible circumstances that Russell said caused him to commit the crime.

Jason Anthony Russell (Photo: Courtesy of the Kentucky Department of Corrections)

The other priest

Russell met the abusive priest through another abusive priest: a terrible human being named Earl Bierman.

Bierman spent decades in the Covington diocese, and eventually, more than 60 people would come forward to claim he abused them, making him a central figure in one of the biggest lawsuits ever mounted against the church. In 2005, Covington agreed to shell out $120 million to more than 100 victims.

In 1993, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing boys in the 1960s and 70s.

Russell landed in prison four years later, after being convicted of a Henderson County robbery. The two met behind bars, according to court documents cited by the Lexington Herald Leader.

When Russell got out in October 2003, Bierman pointed him in Pilger’s direction.

The 78-year-old Pilger lent Russell money and invited him to stay at his Lexington apartment, the Herald Leader reported. But police weren’t sure if Russell was still living there when December rolled around.

The killing

The landlord discovered Pilger’s body.

The former priest had been thoroughly beaten in the head and chest, police said, and his white 1999 Buick Century was gone. Later that day, authorities spotted the car just outside Ironton, Ohio – 125 miles away.

They’d ultimately find their suspect there, too. Police arrested Russell on Dec. 17, 2003. He initially claimed he was innocent but later pleaded guilty.

And while he was in court, he told prosecutors why he killed Pilger.

Russell twice walked in on Pilger masturbating to photos of a young child Russell knew, the Cincinnati Post reported. And later, Pilger reportedly offered Russell $5,000 to let him have sex with the child.

At Russell’s sentencing hearing, a family member of several of Pilger’s victims proclaimed that Russell had “done society a favor” by “killing a pedophile monster,” the (Covington) Kentucky Post reported.

Not every victim felt that way. The Cincinnati Post tracked down a man Pilger had attacked back in the 1950s. He somehow found empathy.

“Nobody deserves to go that way,” he said of Pilger's death. “It's not what I would have wanted for him.”

Disappears, reappears

In 2013, another Kentucky inmate wrote a letter to WKYT. In it, he claimed he was the one who actually killed Pilger and that Russell took the fall after he threatened his family.

But Russell remains in prison. He's eligible for parole in 2028.

Whether there's still mystery surrounding the murder of Joseph Pilger depends on your taste for conspiracy theories. But one thing's for sure: plenty still surrounds his life.

There's one huge question in particular: why in the world did the church allow him around children again?

The victim interviewed by the Cincinnati Post said Pilger repeatedly forced himself on him in 1958, when the man was only 12 years old. When he threatened to tell his parents, Pilger would scoff.

"Who do you think they will believe?” he'd say.

So the man never uttered a word – until 1962.

That’s when about half-a-dozen parents of other boys came to his house and asked if he’d ever been abused by Pilger. He said yes.

“The next day, they went to the bishop,” he told the Post. “And Joe Pilger just absolutely disappeared.”

The church reportedly shipped him to New Mexico for treatment – a common tactic for the church, and one the Evansville diocese employed in the 1990s for “incurable pedophile” Joseph Clauss.

But unlike Clauss, Pilger became a priest again. The church put him back into circulation and sent him to the Owensboro diocese – where he abused the four children in Union County.