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Everyone said it was such a good fit. The new pastor and his rural flock. And a good thing, too, given what was going to happen.
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The sacrilege in God's house. Wasn't a soul alive who could have predicted that.
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Certainly not the big handsome ex-golf pro we spoke to more than a decade ago. Greg Shreves, who had traded in his clubs for a clerical collar
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at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I love dealing with people and the joys and the sorrows of their lives.
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And out there, of all places, a real country parsonage. I often measure this congregation by the hands I see at communion every Sunday,
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with the furrows in the fingers and the dirt under the nails. He had taken the time, as had the members, to find the right place.
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He liked them, and they quite clearly liked him. He's a wonderful pastor. You know, we wanted him, he wanted to come to us in this little town where there's not a whole lot happening.
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Deep Bucks County, where good country Lutherans still valued tradition and community,
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and their old church, the reassuring history of things. Members who fought the Revolutionary War are scattered beneath the grass there.
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This congregation has been worshiping regularly in this building since 1763, before there was a United States of America.
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So now he was Pastor Shreves, had a good sound to it. Sue Bruner sang in the choir.
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His compassion for people, his way with people, he seemed so caring. It was inevitable, probably, that a few of the women would respond to the dashing bachelor pastor.
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Innocent crushes, most likely. And there was no sign whatsoever that Greg Shreves was anything but the soul of rectitude
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when he offered himself as a sounding board or advisor. Didn't seem to notice the darting looks or the extra attention.
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Though church council president Paul Rose certainly did. Unfortunately for him, he's single and he's handsome.
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There was the cheerful teasing from the happily married ladies of the church. The sexton, Judy Zellner.
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The choir member, Sue Brunner. We're just two among many. Lots of characters in a country church.
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Neighbors, friends. Occasionally, like all of us, gossips. There was the slightly eccentric Mary Jane Fonder, always around like a resident maiden aunt.
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Nice person. Yeah, a little eccentric sometimes. But aren't we all? Then there was the new girl, Rhonda Smith.
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Though at 42, she was not such a girl anymore. When Rhonda showed up, Judy could see she needed someone.
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She needed a friend, and I was there for her. But for Rhonda, it was the pastor who seemed to be a lifeline.
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Maybe that's kind of what kept her coming back. His sermons and the way he is with people.
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I suppose I met with her a half a dozen times in my office. As he had done with other parishioners, men and women.
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She would tell me that she had no money to pay her rent. She had no money for medication.
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Rhonda's bipolar disorder had filled her life with trouble. Trouble supporting herself, trouble holding a job.
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She was very fragile at times, and then there were other times that she was fine.
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And if anybody wanted to harbor some tabloid fantasy about the pastor's help for Rhonda,
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well, that's what it was, a fantasy. People who know me here know that it's not something I would ever do.
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I was her pastor, and that's all I was. In isolation, the unusual events when they began to happen didn't seem so terribly significant,
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though they certainly would later. There was the day, for example, when the pastor learned that good, attentive ministering can present its own special hazards.
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It was when one of those friendly women of the church was helping the pastor prepare for Sunday services.
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It just never crossed my mind that what started out as some kind of an infatuation would have led to where it did.
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At some point, she said to me, you can't deny what's going on between us. And at that point, I had to stop the conversation, and a boundary had been crossed in my mind.
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And she got very upset. I mean, she got really upset. Then there was that Sunday as fate was closing in, when Rhonda Smith got up in church,
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a rare thing for these old-fashioned Lutherans. It was emotional. We all had tears in our eyes.
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To thank the parishioners for the secret spiritual and financial help they had been giving her.
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Perhaps God in his wisdom understands these things. Did he allow it to happen? Was he, that Wednesday morning, not watching?
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It was the 23rd of January, 2008. The sexton, Judy Zellner, as she had done so many times,
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turned into the old churchyard about 12.30 p.m. It was cleaning day. Cleaning is what a sexton does.
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And there was a car in the parking lot, but I used the ladies room so bad I just parked my car
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and came to the door and put my key in and the door opened already. It wasn't locked.
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It wasn't locked. And I said to myself whoever's in this church is going to get a piece of my mind.
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Because it's supposed to be locked. Because it supposed to be locked It was that on her mind as she crossed the threshold as she opened the door to the church office as her eyes caught the presence behind the desk
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I didn't even see who it was. I knew her hair was brown and it was flowing in this blood.
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As I get to the desk, I see this person on the floor, and it just, you know, it just startled me.
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On January 23rd, 2008, just after lunch, Judy Zellner stumbled on a body behind the desk in the church office.
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I just stared at her, and I could tell. She was shot. Who was it? Judy couldn't tell who it was. All the blood.
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She had blood on her head, and she was in a pool of blood. and the first thing that came to my mind was CSI.
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You know, don't touch the crime scene. And I ran around the desk, grabbed the phone, and I ran out.
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There's a girl murdered in our office. There's a girl what? Murdered. What do you mean? What's wrong with her?
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She's laying behind the desk full of blood. Oh, my God. It was when the paramedics arrived, they discovered that whoever it was wasn't dead.
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They went, oh my God, she has a heartbeat. Now there was a rush to get her out of there.
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The paramedics gathered up the bleeding woman, got her on a stretcher and rushed past Judy in the hallway.
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Her head just rolled to my side and I thought, oh my God, I said, that is my friend Rhonda.
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Rhonda Smith. What was she doing there in the church office? And what had happened to her?
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And they picked her up and the blood was just dripping. And I just thought, oh my God.
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The policeman came then, took Judy into the sanctuary, asked her about a gun, about the possibility this was suicide.
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No, I did not see a gun. Did you kick a gun? No, if I would have kicked a gun, I would have known I kicked a gun.
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Are you sure you didn't help Rhonda? I said, no, I would not do anything like that.
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At the hospital, the doctors took a look at Rhonda, and then someone picked up the phone and called her parents.
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It was her father, Jim Smith, who answered the phone. And they said, I'm calling from St. Luke's Hospital,
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and your daughter has had an accident down at the church. Well, what did she do, fall and break her arm or something?
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No, she said, she's been shot and she's not going to live. Over the phone? Over the phone.
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That's how I got that message. And no way, it still grapes me inside. I said to the doctor, come on, we're going around and needs us.
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Pastor Shreves was out of town, knew none of what happened, until somebody found him at a three-day church retreat in nearby Wayne, Pennsylvania.
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I didn't know Pastor was gone for those three days, and I didn't know why Rhonda was there.
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Rhonda had been covering the office in the pastor's absence. He suggested it, a way for her to make a little money.
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I figured it would help with her sense of self-esteem and so forth, so it made sense.
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Pastor Shrees rushed to the hospital to join the little group at Rhonda's bedside.
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And we all went into Rhonda's room and circled around and said a prayer for her.
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Prayer was about the only thing anybody could offer Rhonda. They said, as far as they're concerned, she's brain dead now.
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And the exact words I said to my daughter was this, take my hand, precious Lord, and lead me home.
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It was about seven o'clock in the evening when they let Rhonda go. Pastor Shreves did what comforting he could,
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all the while wondering if that little job he'd given Rhonda became her death warrant.
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and Jim Smith noticed that one of the men in the room didn't look like a doctor.
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And he was taking notes on everything that was being, people coming in, how they reacted and everything else.
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I just sat and listened to what was being said and what was going on, trying to get a feel.
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Stumpo was the man's name, Trooper Greg Stumpo. Because at that point we really didn't know what had happened.
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except that this young woman was unaccountably dead in a church the ultimate sacrilege
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but the detective a closer observer perhaps of life's profanities already understood what dawned
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that awful night on pastor greg shreves i knew that my ministry would never be the same in this
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congregation just like that we would forever be changed as a worshiping community and and me as a
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pastor. But what he didn't know, no one did, was that the death of Rhonda Smith would put into
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question everything this quiet country parish had ever believed about itself, or its members,
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its fellow Christians. No way we thought anybody in here, that wasn't even on our radar screen.
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It was a really an emotional time for all of us. Unbearably sad and quite disturbing.
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A neighboring church offered its sympathy and opened its doors for a special memorial service for Rhonda.
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Members brought in flowers and cards They clung together for support Offers of help and sorrow arrived from Lutherans all across the country
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Then there was the funeral, of course, a few days later. Here's our wonderful, beautiful church, and we've been violated, a tragedy.
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It was really tough. But had this poor woman killed herself? Or had someone killed her?
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Really didn't know. Troopers Greg Stumple and Bob Eakin had been investigating homicides for years.
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But in a church? Never. You know, maybe it was a suicide and maybe it was a homicide.
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We had a lot of work to do to figure that out. The detectives examined the church computer and could see that Rhonda had been online till 10.55 a.m. that Wednesday when activity abruptly stopped.
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She was actually on a dating website. Stumpo listened carefully when Rhonda's parents talked about her troubles,
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her bipolar disorder, her various boyfriends, and romantic attachments. Maybe it had all been too much.
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They thought of suicide, you know. But once Stumpo heard from Rhonda's father, Jim Smith,
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he found himself doubting that it was suicide. Would Rhonda commit suicide? No, absolutely not.
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How do you know? I know because of the simple fact of one thing. Rhonda lived alone, okay?
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and Rhonda took all kinds of pills for psychiatric problems. Anytime she could have gave herself a complete handful of pills and been gone.
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And then the medical report came in, and right away it was obvious to both Stumpo and Egan,
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somebody wanted Rhonda dead. The victim, Rhonda Smith, had two gunshots to the head.
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In addition, she had stippling on the back of her right hand, and stippling only occurs when gunpowder comes out of the barrel of a gun at high velocity.
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It appeared as though she put her right hand up in a defensive posture when the gun was fired at her.
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But who had done this? And why sweet, harmless Rhonda? As the two detectives traveled up and down the wooded rolling hills of the parish,
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they encountered not just shock, but among church members a brand new feeling. Fear.
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Can this ever happen again? Am I safe here? What caused it? All those questions go through your mind.
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Church Council President Paul Rose was certainly not the only one. There's an elementary school about half a mile down the road.
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Those kids were not allowed to go outside for recess. I began to fear for my safety living right next door to the church.
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I had to change all the locks. I didn't sleep here for a few days, and it was very, very upsetting.
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It could have been a random killing, the pastor thought. Strange, though that might seem, out in the country.
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I frankly, for several weeks, thought it was a drive-by shooting. Or maybe her killing was part of a church invasion robbery of a sort.
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Some of the members told the two detectives about a strange visitor in the church
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the Sunday before Rhonda was murdered. There was a stranger in here for worship the week before.
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He just made everybody feel so uncomfortable. He told three different people that he had come from three different states, and he told somebody, this would be a good church to rob.
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And he tried to keep the communion glass. Yeah, he put it in his pocket, and someone said, we don't do that here. He was strange.
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Had that stranger come back to rob the church? Had he found Rhonda there quite by chance and shot her?
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There was investigators assigned to try and locate this mysterious man. No easy task, however.
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That stranger, whoever he was, had disappeared as mysteriously as he'd arrived. Nor had anything been taken from the church, except a life.
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Back at headquarters, Stumple and Egan began to realize they might be dealing with something a little more personal than robbery or random violence.
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I thought there were three questions that we had to answer. Who had a motive to kill Rhonda Smith?
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Who knew that she was at the church on that Wednesday morning? And who owned a gun that could have fired the bullet?
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We felt if we answered them, we would find a killer. And so, as the good folk at Trinity Lutheran worked to absorb the shock
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and clean away the blood from the church office, Stumpo and Egan returned to pay a visit to Pastor Greg Shreves.
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because at that point... We really didn't know what had happened. Nor apparently did the pastor.
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But then, just fishing now, they asked, did he know any name, even a church member, anything that might help?
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And the pastor's expression changed. So then he said, well, there's a woman who,
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he was kind of embarrassed, I think, and really in his position, felt uncomfortable talking about it.
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But we spoke to him a little bit and got him to finally tell us. A woman? But Pastor wasn't the only one.
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Around Trinity Lutheran, the whispers had already begun. You were pretty suspicious by that point.
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Yes. Very suspicious. In fact, my husband, the very night it happened. The very night it happened?
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The very night it happened, my husband predicted it. Detectives investigating the church office murder of Rhonda Smith
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in Bucks County, Pennsylvania were confronted by a frightened congregation, a place in turmoil.
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And then the pastor, reluctantly it seemed, offered detectives a name. A woman. She participated in a lot of ministries in this church Had the pastor formed an attachment to one of his female parishioners Well in a way perhaps he had an attachment though Lord knows he tried to avoid it The name
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of this woman? Mary Jane Fonder. She sang in the choir. She had a great voice. She did
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a lot of things for the church. She helped me quite often during communion to distribute
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the sacrament. Mary Jane was older than the pastor, middle 60s, childless, lived with her
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retired brother, but she seemed prepared to do just about anything for Pastor Shreves.
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And I'm grateful to have people who want to help. Mind you, Mary Jane had been contributing her
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talents and services for years, back when Greg Shreves was still a golf pro. The church was very
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important to Mary Jane. She felt there were people there that liked her and cared about her,
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and I think she was lonely. But then he came along, and something in Mary Jane changed.
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Then she was coming to eight o'clock service, then she was staying for Sunday school, and then she was
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coming to the late service. I just saw Mary Jane as a person who loved her church. The pastor told
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the two detectives the story of Mary Jane's artistic talents, of how, since he was oblivious
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to any feelings she may have developed for him, he'd invited her to help decorate the
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church for Sunday services. She was actually in the church working on changing the bulletin boards.
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At some point, she said to me, you can't deny what's going on between us. And I took that to mean that she had a romantic interest in me.
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And at that point, I had to stop the conversation, and a boundary had been crossed in my mind.
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And I dismissed it and laughed it off, and then so we ended the conversation. It was soon after that, said the pastor, when the phone calls began.
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Welcome back, Pastor Shreve. This is Mary Jane, and it's now 25 minutes to 3. I know you're still out of town.
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I didn't expect you long until tonight. We will miss you Sunday. I hope you had a chance to get enough of it to soothe yourself.
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Long rambling messages, and I would never answer the phone because I knew she just wanted to leave these rambling messages.
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How often? Sometimes as often as, you know, 15 a week. I have one of the train today and all kinds of things.
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I couldn't believe it. It bothered the pastor. He asked her to stop calling. She didn't.
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He spoke to Council President Paul Rose. What did you advise him to do? You know, Pastor Mary Jane, she's harmless.
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But was she harmless? Or a nuisance? Or worse? The pastor had generally left his house unlocked when he went out.
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But now? Food began appearing in my freezer at the parsonage. She had put that food there.
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And then began delivering food in bags and leaving the food on the porch. And now you're locking your door.
00:21:06
Yes, exactly. Oh, he tried to be civil with Mary Jane, and the women of the church were friendly with her,
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but she began to seem upset, depressed. I think Mary Jane thought that somehow we were doing things and not including her.
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Like that night after choir practice when Mary Jane concluded, quite mistakenly,
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that the other women were having a birthday party for Rhonda Smith and hadn't invited her.
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And then there was that January Sunday morning when Rhonda got up in church to thank the congregation
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for their financial and moral support. After church, Mary Jane phoned her neighbor, Sue Bruner, with a question.
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Sue, did you know that the church was helping Rhonda? I said, yes, I did. She seemed angry, a little upset.
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Was this elderly church lady jealous of the younger, more popular Rhonda Smith? And if so, why?
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Time the detectives decided for a chat with Mary Jane, Stompo and Egan found her at choir practice.
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This wasn't one of your classic interrogations, was it? No, it wasn't. And when they took her to police headquarters to interview her,
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they discovered that Mary Jane loved to talk and talk. He's a real man. Pastor Shrews is a real man.
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I don't know if I ever needed a marriage. So the detectives listened for hours as Mary Jane told them about her life, her church, her pastor,
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and her fears about that younger woman. It's a possibility that my pastor's reputation is at stake.
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A lot of people think maybe my pastor was involved with that lady. I don't know that.
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It's such a terrible thing. Even today I just thought, oh God, a poor pastor was involved with that lady.
00:23:04
Then the detectives asked Mary Jane the strangest question. Do you own a gun? Yes, she did.
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She owned a .38 caliber Rossi. They knew the right answer when they asked it, of course.
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They had checked the records. 38 Rossi was one of the guns that could have been used to shoot Rhonda Smith.
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But only if she still had the gun. And Mary Jane told the two detectives she had gotten rid of it years and years ago.
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She said she threw it in a lake. When? Around 1994. Lake Nakamixin is the only one around.
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They decided to mount a search for the gun. For a week, a brace of state troopers peered into the shallow waters around the edge of the lake.
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Nothing. Did you really expect to find it? We believe that Mary Jane still had her gun.
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She had an alibi too. the troopers. A hairdressing appointment on the very day and, she said, at the very time the murder
00:24:05
occurred. And sure enough, the salon confirmed it. But was it a real alibi? Perhaps Mary Jane had
00:24:12
forgotten about the time sheet she signed when she arrived at the hairdressers. 11.22. Just enough
00:24:19
time, the investigators thought, for the church lady to commit murder before getting her hair done.
00:24:25
In fact, the troopers discovered Mary Jane often wore a wig. And that day, after her hair appointment...
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Her wig was still at the salon. She had forgotten it and left it there. Did Mary Jane leave the wig to support her alibi? Maybe.
00:24:40
Or maybe the wig would be her undoing, a smoking gun. If Mary Jane had fired a weapon that day, gunpowder residue would still be on the wig.
00:24:50
They sent the wig out for testing. The result? She seemed to be telling the truth.
00:24:55
The gunpowder test came back negative. It's a setback, yeah. Around the church, meanwhile, and with the grieving family of Rhonda Smith,
00:25:04
Mary Jane was, well, sweet, attentive. At a church event, for example, attended by Rhonda's parents.
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She sat down right next to them. Rhonda's parents. Even though... I didn't know who the lady was.
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Okay, I did not know the lady. She sent away for a statue, an angel, a memorial gift, which she offered in Rhonda's memory.
00:25:29
And one day she phoned the Smiths and told them she wanted to bring them over one of her homemade pies.
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I said, no, no, no, no. You know, so Dot said, no, no. She says, I don't think we want one right now.
00:25:42
But Mary Jane showed up with that pie anyway and invited herself in, where the Smiths noticed she needed new shoes.
00:25:50
and thought, says, would you care for some of Rhonda's shoes here? And Mary Jane accepted that?
00:25:57
She accepted them. Tried them on? Yes, she tried them on. And she says, yes, ma'am, they sure do fit, ma'am.
00:26:04
Mary Jane began to spend a lot of time at church with the Smiths, often wearing Rhonda's shoes.
00:26:12
Troopers Stumpo and Egan were stuck. They suspected Mary Jane, but that negative gunpowder test,
00:26:18
test, the lack of a gun, the caring demeanor of the woman. Wasn't much they could do about their
00:26:24
suspicion unless they could find some irrefutable piece of evidence, something tangible that would
00:26:30
tie Mary Jane Fonder to the murder of Rhonda Smith. So they seized Mary Jane's car and inside
00:26:38
they did find gunpowder residue in three places. Not much and not enough for an arrest. But they
00:26:46
We let her know they found it, and then they waited to see what she would do. We wanted her to make a mistake.
00:26:53
And just a few days later, a boy named Garrett was down at Lake Nakamixom fishing with his dad.
00:27:02
Then you came down here? Yeah, because there was a gray heron over there, and I was trying to get closer to it.
00:27:07
To have a look at it? Yeah. Then what did you see? And then I saw the handle of a gun sticking out of the water.
00:27:14
And the trap. was sprung. It was an uncertain day in early spring. The sun's best efforts gave in to a cold afternoon wind.
00:27:34
Stumbo and Egan had been trying for months to solve the execution-style killing of Rhonda Smith,
00:27:40
shot in the head as she sat in the office of a country church. They were frustrated unable to prove a solid link to their chief suspect church member Mary Jane Fonder But Garrett Silsbury eight years old knew nothing of that
00:27:55
He was at nearby Lake Naka Mixon, fishing with his dad. And then the wind started getting bigger and I was getting freeze to death.
00:28:04
That's when he saw it, just at the edge of the water, maybe 20 feet down a steep slope from the highway.
00:28:10
It looked kind of rubbery. I thought it was just like a play toy. Once you realize what it really was,
00:28:16
I just looked at it and I was like, hmm, we're going, so I brought it to my dad.
00:28:21
I opened the wheel and, yeah, there was live rounds in it. Garrett's dad called the police.
00:28:26
Were they interested? Oh, yes, they certainly were. Immaculate. It was, like, in perfect condition.
00:28:32
Comparable to being left out in the rain overnight. Policemen went back to the lake for another look.
00:28:37
And there, sitting on a rock in the water, they found a box of unused bullets and a few spent shells.
00:28:45
And they all matched the gun? Yes. The gun was a Rossi .38, the type Mary Jane said she'd thrown in the water 14 years earlier.
00:28:54
The bullets, their cardboard container still intact despite its immersion in the lake,
00:29:00
were a perfect match for the shells that killed Rhonda Smith. But who could provide evidence to show Mary Jane actually
00:29:08
threw the gun and the bullets into the lake herself. Her brother. Her own brother?
00:29:14
Yes. After police seized Mary Jane's car, she borrowed her brother's car. And he reported finding in his car a piece of bullet
00:29:24
that didn't make it into the lake. And we submitted that to the lab to see if it was fired from her gun.
00:29:32
And? It was fired from her gun. Had Mary Jane Fonder driven her brother's car to Lake Nakamiksen?
00:29:39
He reported that she put enough miles on the car to have done so. Had she thrown the murder weapon and the box of bullets out the window
00:29:48
as she sped across the bridge? And if so, was her timing off? The gun was found at the edge of shallow water,
00:29:57
as if somebody driving along the busy highway tossed it out the window and over the edge.
00:30:03
Had they thrown it off the bridge about 40 feet back, it would have landed in much deeper water in the channel of the lake.
00:30:10
It might never have been findable then. It was that April Fool's Day when Mary Jane Fonder attended a meeting of the church's seniors club
00:30:19
and sat next to Rhonda's parents until the meeting ended. She was there and we're cleaning up
00:30:26
and she's still there and she's still there. It seemed like she just didn't want to leave.
00:30:33
Did she know who was waiting outside? Did she understand what was happening when they pulled her over?
00:30:39
She made a comment. She thought we would be coming today. I've been working as a prosecutor in the Bucks County District Attorney's Office for 24 years,
00:30:46
and I've never seen a case like this. Prosecutor Dave Zellis had been working with the troopers all along.
00:30:52
He charged Mary Jane Fonder with first-degree murder. Never shot, Rhonda. I never killed that woman.
00:30:58
At the trial, Pastor Shreves testified, as did Sexton Zellner and young Garrett Silsbury.
00:31:04
32 witnesses in all the raw material for the case the prosecutor presented she's a cold calculating
00:31:13
murderer of the first degree somebody who is clever manipulative and egocentric and was
00:31:23
driven to do this it was jealousy that did the driving said the prosecutor Mary Jane he said was furious that
00:31:30
Rhonda Smith was embraced by the congregation Rhonda and not her And she was convinced that Pastor Shreves her Pastor Shreves had fallen into the clutches of that woman She perceived somehow that the pastor was having an affair with Rhonda Smith
00:31:52
She almost believes that it was her job or her duty to protect the pastor from himself and protect the church from Rhonda Smith.
00:32:02
It's a possibility that my pastor's reputation is at stake. His reputation is at stake.
00:32:09
What do people think? Maybe my pastor was involved with that lady. Even though, said the prosecutor, the pastor had in fact been entirely correct
00:32:17
in his relationships with all the women of the church. So all these things were starting to really gnaw at her insides
00:32:27
to the point that when she called and found out that Rhonda Smith answered the phone,
00:32:32
that was it. That was when the pastor had given Rhonda a three-day part-time job covering the
00:32:39
church office in his absence. The door opens and Mary Jane walks in, walks up three feet away and
00:32:47
pulls out a gun and fires away. Two shots. Then as police closed in, she tried to dispose of the gun
00:32:55
in Lake Naka Mixon. Mary Jane, do you have anything you want to say before you go in? No, dear. The ultimate church lady
00:33:01
exposed as a murderer. Maybe. And maybe not. She's a very kindly, interesting woman
00:33:10
who loves her church, loves the congregants, loves her neighbors. Michael Applebaum was Mary Jane's defense attorney.
00:33:20
She actually loves mankind. And she takes her Bible very seriously. The problem, said Applebaum,
00:33:28
was that the police, not to mention church members, allowed themselves to be caught up in gossip,
00:33:33
allowed themselves to be swayed by Mary Jane's sometimes obnoxious personality. She talks to herself, and she rambles, and she butts in.
00:33:44
She really is the aunt that you never want to sit next to at the Thanksgiving table.
00:33:50
No edit button in that woman? None whatsoever. But was she guilty? No, said Applebaum.
00:33:57
No more than those women accused of witchcraft up in Salem all those years ago. The case that was being put forward was fraught with reasonable doubt.
00:34:07
Smoke and mirrors and rumors. And that's exactly what happened in 1692. Women were burned at the stake.
00:34:16
So the analogy seemed like a proper analogy to draw. Mary Jane Fonder, the witch of Bucks County?
00:34:24
the defendant herself did not testify and the jury retired to consider its verdict
00:34:31
entirely unaware as you are most likely right now of another investigation that had just begun
00:34:54
There was a bite in the Halloween wind that whipped around the country steeple in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
00:35:02
At the courthouse in historic Doylestown, the county seat, the jury retired to consider the fate of Mary Jane Fonder.
00:35:11
Accused of killing in a fit of jealousy, her fellow church member, Rhonda Smith.
00:35:16
And the congregation of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran held its collective breath,
00:35:20
Especially after a couple of alternate jurors offered their opinions to waiting church members outside the courtroom And the one was so adamant that he felt that she was not guilty that the pastor hadn done enough to help her and he had pushed her away and the facts weren
00:35:43
there. The jury was not allowed to know, of course, what Sue Bruner and the pastor and some of the
00:35:49
others of the church were all too well aware of. The investigation of Mary Jane wasn't quite
00:35:55
finished yet. We have long memories in law enforcement. We don't forget things, especially when it's a missing father who's still missing to this day.
00:36:06
Missing father? That would be the story of Ed Fonder III, crotchety, old, ill, and virtually
00:36:14
lame, who, according to Mary Jane, simply walked out of the country house they shared,
00:36:20
surrounded by its deep woods, miles from any town, and was never seen again. That was back in 1993, before Mary Jane bought that gun of hers.
00:36:33
Did Mary Jane murder her own father? She denied it, but Prosecutor Zealous told us law enforcement was continuing to look into his disappearance.
00:36:43
We now have, I think, more information. we certainly know a lot more about the dynamics that were going on in that house than we did before.
00:36:52
But on Halloween Eve 2008, the jury knew none of that. And Prosecutor Zealous was nervous as Mary Jane moved in and out of the courtroom
00:37:01
with her best Sunday manners sweetly in place. Do you still say you're innocent, Mary Jane?
00:37:08
What was that, dear? Do you still say you're innocent? Yes, I am innocent. I was a little worried.
00:37:12
I'm thinking, oh boy, Mary Jane's coming back. She would just start coming back to church like nothing happened.
00:37:20
How could we deal with that? But in the end, they needn't have worried. The jury was not swayed, not by Mary Jane, the verdict, guilty.
00:37:29
Murder in the first degree. I'm glad it's all over. In December 2008, she was sentenced to life, no parole.
00:37:39
And outside the courtroom faced her fate with an almost ecclesiastical calm. Are you worried about spending the rest of your life in prison?
00:37:47
It doesn't sound appealing. I'll go wherever the Lord's going to offend me. I'll go wherever I'm supposed to.
00:37:54
This is a story, after all, about religion, as much as it is about the ultimate sin.
00:38:00
As far as me judging her, I'm not going to judge that woman at all. Ron dismissed father, Jim, never paid much attention to churchy things, he said,
00:38:09
but he's descended from Mennonites, so he'd been thinking about forgiveness. I leave God forgiven.
00:38:16
I'll let God do that. At Trinity Evangelical Lutheran, the country church in deep Bucks County,
00:38:23
the Reverend Greg Shreves and his little flock still had some work to do on forgiveness, on grace,
00:38:29
in the wake of Mary Jane Fonder. But he had no doubt when we spoke with him in 2009,
00:38:35
they would make it, and he would too. God's grace is not beyond the door of a jail cell.
00:38:42
And she's on our prayer list. We pray for her every week. and will heal in our own time.
00:38:46
And so they did best they could and worshipped week after week as months and years sped by.
00:38:54
Of Mary Jane in her prison cell we heard very little until a decade after her trial
00:39:00
investigators tried one more search to find her father's body. They found nothing.
00:39:08
And two weeks later Mary Jane Fonder suffered a fatal heart attack and took her secrets to the grave.