The retired television lighting director, who had previously endured a life-threatening stroke in 2022, abandoned the storage containers packed with his belongings when he departed, according to the report.
Samantha Markle, who is currently Thomas Snr’s primary caregiver, has claimed her brother is a ‘liar’. She has alleged that there are factual inaccuracies in the Sun’s report, including that Thomas Snr’s possessions were packed in Mexico and shipped to the Philippines. She told the Daily Mail: “They were then in storage in the basement of a building in the Philippines. The boxes were then in Tom Jr’s house. Dad had no access to those computers for two years. Who knows who could have had access to them? Anyone could have set dad up.’”
Samantha has said that there is no proof her father downloaded any images. She has alleged that Thomas Jr first made the accusations “weeks ago when the cash from my dad was cut off”. Samantha claims that Thomas Jr has used his father as a “cash cow” for years and, when the money stopped, has made up “the most outrageous lies” to try to make money from the media. She told the Daily Mail: “My brother has had this vendetta against my dad for years…He made up a story a few years ago about my dad snorting cocaine with hookers in Thailand”.
Thomas Jr, who had served as his father’s carer and relocated to a home just doors away from him in Cebu in January 2025, allegedly raised the alarm on July 10. He contacted the FBI hotline, the National Centre for Exploited and Missing Children, and Pennsylvania state police, where his father had been residing.
However, weeks passed without any follow-up contact from investigators, which he says prompted him to inspect the remaining contents more thoroughly. Inside the four large brown cardboard boxes, Thomas Jr says that he found a jumble of old family home movies on VHS cassettes, books, nine mobile phones, and the Emmy Awards his father had earned during his television career.
He claims that mixed in among these personal effects were the alleged items. “Then the technician helped me turn on the first hard drive and I gasped when all of the icons suddenly appeared,” he told a friend. After submitting his sworn statement to child abuse officers in the Philippines, Thomas Jr declared: “When I found this material I was horrified, and I had no option but to report my dad.