He hid the body of his 5-year-old stepdaughter in a park. 'I was very stupid.'

FRANKFORT — A man who has been in jail for nearly 25 years following the 1989 murder of his 5-year-old stepdaughter said in a parole hearing Tuesday that he is still unsure how the girl died.

Thomas Suleski, now 60 and imprisoned in the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Oldham County, admitted to the two-person parole board Tuesday to hiding the dead body of Alex Suleski on Oct. 26, 1989 after she died, instead of informing law enforcement. He later told police Alex went missing, which led to a search of the 5-year-old girl that spanned several years.

In 1993, Suleski's older stepdaughter, Nyssa Corbin, came forward to the FBI and said her mother, Roxanne Suleski, placed Alex in a garbage bag and tied it shut as punishment for the young girl wetting herself. She was dead the next day after she was placed inside another garbage bag for more punishment, Corbin testified.

Afterward, the father buried the body at nearby Otter Creek Park. Corbin said he returned to the park two years later to dig up the remains and smashed the skull, though this was not brought up in Tuesday's hearing. "I remember leaving her, covering her (in leaves) and saying to her I'm sorry," Suleski recalls of Alex's burial at the park.

It's how Alex was killed that still leaves Thomas Suleski clueless.

"(Roxanne and I) were divorced many years ago but kept in touch," Thomas Suleski said Tuesday. "She never told me (how Alex died) and I didn't ask. I should have asked and I've been meaning to."

This led to perhaps the fiercest moment of the hearing, when board member Caroline Mudd questioned Suleski's actions.

"If someone had harmed one of my children, not only would I want to know all the details, but I would never, ever have protected her," Mudd told Suleski. "I don't understand what your thinking was."

The two-person parole board panel was unable to reach a unanimous decision regarding Suleski's release from jail. It will go to the full nine-person panel, who will decide whether or not to release Suleski from jail following his 25-year sentence.

Suleski was stationed at Fort Knox at the time of Alex's death. He said he received a phone call from his wife that Alex was sick, so he rushed home to tend to her.

He assumed Alex had some type of virus, or a rash like she had previously gotten, but his wife informed him that she had died.

"When I got home, Roxanne said she didn't make it. I said, 'What are you talking about?' and she said, 'She didn't make it," Thomas Suleski said Tuesday. "I ran in the back and found her there and tried to give her CPR. I was pretty much panicked. Roxanne said, 'It's too late. They could come and take the rest of the kids.'"

What Thomas was referring to, he later added, was a custody issue involving himself and his previous wife. Suleski said he lost custody of his two children for a year due to accusations from his ex-wife, but was able to regain custody.

Suleski also claimed Tuesday that Alex was not put in a plastic bag for punishment, but rather to sleep in when she had a bed-wetting problem. Her head was not covered in the bag, Suleski said.

"When I went to work, she was sleeping in her bed. She was fine," Suleski said. "When I came home she was not."

Since being incarcerated, Suleski has worked in his prison as a teacher's aid and then in the law library until 2001 or 2002, he said. Then, he was asked to get the prison's newspaper off the ground and has been involved with that ever since. He has taken many classes and hopes to get into computer science if he is released from prison.

Suleski said he was "very stupid" to do what he did and he has been trying to learn how to not much such tragic decisions.

"I know if there's any way I can go back and undo what I did, I would definitely do that. I never intended for anyone in my family to get hurt," he said.

"I've learned how important love is and how important forgiveness and compassion are," he later added.

Suleski also said he would like to make amends with his children and ask for their forgiveness.

The board will make its decision about Suleski's parole on Monday. Earlier this week, the parole board decided to keep Suleski's ex-wife, Roxanne Suleski, in prison for the remainder of her life sentence. Roxanne chose to waive her parole hearing.

This story was originally published June 26, 2018 at 1:50 PM with the headline "He hid the body of his 5-year-old stepdaughter in a park. 'I was very stupid.'."