The allegation became part of Lannon's explanation, but prosecutors said no evidence was presented in court establishing the abuse claim.
What was established was that Dabkowski was killed and that Lannon fled in his vehicle.
By March 9, the New Mexico and New Jersey cases were converging around the same man.
The next day, March 10, U.S. Marshals found Lannon in St. Louis, Missouri. He was taken into custody while connected to Dabkowski's stolen vehicle.
The man who had sat across from Detective Turney denying knowledge of any bodies was finally off the street.
Lannon Begins Talking
Once in custody, Lannon began giving investigators a far more incriminating account than anything he had said in Grants.
His statements must be understood carefully. They were confessions and explanations by the killer himself, not independent proof of every motive he described. Some details were supported by forensic evidence and later guilty pleas. Others were his attempt to explain or justify why he did what he did.
Lannon said the first of the New Mexico victims was Jennifer.
He claimed he had discovered Jennifer and Jesten together at the Grants home and believed the children had been exposed to drugs. According to his version, Jennifer later tried to overdose. He said she still had a pulse and that he shot her.
Whatever emotional framing he placed around the act, his later guilty plea established the essential legal fact: he unlawfully killed Jennifer Lannon.
He then concealed her body.
Jesten Mata
Lannon told investigators that roughly a week later he used Jennifer's phone or identity to draw Jesten Mata back to the residence.
He claimed he was angry about material he said involved one of his children. Authorities specifically cautioned that some of Sean's accusations about sexually explicit images were not supported by evidence.
The important proven fact is not Lannon's justification. It is that Jesten Mata came to the house and Sean killed him.
Lannon said he shot Mata and later dismembered the body so it could be placed into storage containers.
The physical evidence recovered at the Sunport was consistent with a deliberate attempt to conceal the victims and move them away from the original killing location.
Matthew Miller
Matthew's disappearance had started the chain of police work that eventually exposed the case.
Lannon said Matthew came to the residence later. In the confession, he minimized the young man's importance to him, sometimes even struggling to use his name correctly. He said Matthew had been involved in providing drugs to Jennifer and Jesten.
At some point when Matthew came to the house without his girlfriend, Lannon killed him.
Again, the motive Sean offered is less reliable than the act itself. By 2024, Lannon had formally pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Matthew Miller's death.
The man whose family had spent weeks hoping he was in a hospital, jail, or rehabilitation center had been killed by someone who then helped create false stories about where he had gone.
Moving the Bodies
After the three Grants killings, Lannon had a new problem: the bodies were still connected to the house.
He later told investigators that he spent days trying to work up the nerve to move them. The exact sequence in his confession is sometimes difficult to follow, but the central fact is clear. Jennifer, Jesten, and Matthew were placed into containers and eventually transported toward Albuquerque.
Other people moved belongings for Lannon without necessarily knowing what the bins contained. That distinction became important because early in the investigation several friends and acquaintances were treated as persons of interest simply because they had handled property, vehicles, or weapons around Sean.
The evidence ultimately did not establish that those people participated in the murders.
Randal Apostalon entered the story because Lannon needed transportation and somewhere to put the containers.
Randal Apostalon
Apostalon was known around Albuquerque as a man who sometimes gave rides for money. Lannon met him through an acquaintance and offered to pay him to help move storage bins.
According to Lannon's later statement, the two drove around looking for a place to store the containers. They were unsuccessful.
When Apostalon eventually wanted the bins removed from his truck and asked for more money, Lannon attacked him in the parking lot of a southeast Albuquerque apartment complex.
Lannon admitted using a hammer to kill him.
He then kept the three bins in Apostalon's truck, covered Apostalon's body in the passenger area, and continued using the vehicle while trying to decide what to do next.
One of the most chilling aspects of the timeline is that Sean was briefly arrested on the unrelated warrant during this period. While he sat with Detective Turney denying he had killed anyone, the truck containing four dead people existed only miles away.
After he was released, he returned to the truck.
Leaving the Truck at the Sunport
Lannon knew he was preparing to leave New Mexico with his children.
On March 3 he drove Apostalon's Ford Ranger to Albuquerque International Sunport. The bodies of Jennifer, Jesten, and Matthew remained in the containers. Apostalon's body was in the vehicle as well.
Sean parked the pickup in the airport garage and left it there.
He later told investigators he knew the truck would eventually be found. The airport was not a permanent hiding place. It was a way to abandon the evidence while giving himself time to leave the state.
The following day, he and his children flew east.