Between the Pews: Faith, Envy, & Murder

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On January twenty thirty, two thousand and eight.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I went to church to do my cleaning.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I went to the side door and put my key
in and.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
The door fell loose.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
So I walked into the office and as I get
to the desk, this object on the floor catches my
eye and it was a woman, and I didn't recognize her.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
She was laying on her back and she was in a.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Pool of blood.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
And I screamed, and all I thought of was is
somebody else in the church yet? So I ran outside
and I called.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Nine one one. I'm worthy d.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
C the.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
B Listen. I listen, ma'am, Listen for what part of
the church are she?

Speaker 5 (00:52):
Is she able to talk to you?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
She looks like.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
Her head around her.

Speaker 6 (01:05):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. I'm Jill and I'm Dick.
Mary Jane Fonder was a sixty five year old woman.
She was living in Springfield Township, Pennsylvania, and she was
known to be a bit of a loner, socially awkward,
emotionally fragile, and very involved in her local church. But

(01:43):
behind her reserved and harmless demeanor simmered a potent mix
of envy and resentment, a hidden inner turmoil that would
ultimately erupt into a shocking and tragic act of violence.
So join us for between the pews, faith and be
and murder. In early two thousand and eight, a new

(02:04):
face appeared at the church, Ronda Smith, a forty two
year old woman looking for comfort and a supportive community
after a difficult life. So this bright young woman quickly
became a beloved member of the congregation, receiving support and
attention from the pastor and from others, attention that Mary

(02:25):
Jane Fonder would grow to resent. So fascinating. Love this story, Dicky,
What you got for a beer?

Speaker 7 (02:31):
I got a beer from Weirebocher Brewing Company which is
in Easton, Pennsylvania. This is an American Imperial stout called fifteen.
It's a ten point eight percent alcohol by Vuyan, so
be careful in a snifter. It's a black colored beer.
Really no head to it. A lot of these stouts
really don't have foamy heads. Got a smoky chocolate aroma.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, I still don't like smoking my beer, but fair.

Speaker 7 (02:56):
Enough, it's got a lovely taste chocolate coffe. There's still
a little hint of smoke. It's a very smooth and
rich beer. I've got a few we can have with
our bar denizens down there.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
You ready, I'm ready. I've had a rough day with
four dogs making my life hell. Really, so I could
use a beer. Don't even care how it tastes, really,
but I bet it tastes pretty good. Because you have
good taste.

Speaker 7 (03:22):
You'll like this.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Okay, let's open it. I do enjoy the smell. Let
me have a sip. Not bad, dickie, I kind of
enjoy it.

Speaker 7 (03:42):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, all right, Well, come on down and let me
tell you a story.

Speaker 7 (03:48):
Ready, okay.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So Mary Jane Fonder she led a troubled and isolated
life that was marked by emotional instability and many difficulties socially.
She was born back in nineteen forty two in Philadelphia,
where she experienced mental health issues from a young age,
suffering a nervous breakdown at age eight. Can you imagine

(04:11):
what was that? Well, it had to be at mental illness.

Speaker 7 (04:14):
Nervous breakdown is just to me a kind of a
generic term.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
It is. But have you ever heard of an eight
year old? What do they have to be nervous about?

Speaker 7 (04:22):
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
So it had to be a dysfunctional household.

Speaker 7 (04:25):
Something's going on.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, And then she attempted suicide at age sixteen, and
when that happened, that led to a brief stay in
a mental health facility. But Mary Jane Fonder continued to struggle.
She struggled academically and socially, and eventually she dropped out
of high school. Throughout her adult life, Mary Jane held
many different low level jobs, such as working in knitting

(04:49):
factories and as a punch cart operator at a publishing company.
So she was never married and she never had any
significant romantic relationships. In fact, her social interactions would remain
very limited throughout her entire life. So in nineteen eighty seven,
Mary Jane returned to her family's home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,

(05:11):
took care for her aging parents. After her mother died
in nineteen ninety two from some complications after having surgery.
Her dad, Edward Fonder, became very depressed, understandable they'd been
married forever, but then he soon disappeared under mysterious circumstances
in nineteen ninety three, so less than a year later.

(05:34):
So his disappearance would cast suspicions on Mary Jane, who
everyone knew did not get along with him. So when
she reported her father missing, she told the police that
she had heard the front door open while she was
still lying in bed that morning, and she'd assumed her
father had gone out to get the newspaper. She said,
she went back to sleep and when she woke up

(05:56):
around eleven a m. She noticed that he was gone.
So she then contacted the police and they began searching
for him with the help of many neighbors.

Speaker 7 (06:06):
So this is something different for this guy to appearing.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Disappearing like that, Yeah, totally. He had the adult daughter
caring for him at home. Her brother wasn't living there
at the time, but his wife had died. He was depressed.
But still where is he going to go? So it
was very odd. It's not like you took anything with
him either.

Speaker 7 (06:24):
No, he just out the door. Yes, clothing on his back.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Well, that's what Mary Jane says, but we don't really
know if that even happened. Mary Jane would later complain
about her frustrations with the police investigation, saying they pressured
her into hiring a lawyer, and this eventually led her
to bar them from her property. She refused to take
a lie detector test, and despite extensive searches with helicopters, bloodhounds,

(06:51):
and volunteers, no trace of her father was ever found
and his case went cold. Even though Mary Jane was
never charged, she remained a person of interest in the disappearance.
So by the time Mary Jane met Ronda Smith in
two thousand and eight, she was already well known as
a lonely and socially awkward person within the church community.

(07:14):
Plus people were suspicious of her. Something just wasn't right
about her.

Speaker 7 (07:18):
Yeah, it's like, but we're not calling you a suspect.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Well, they had no evidence.

Speaker 7 (07:23):
They didn't.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
They never found any trace of him.

Speaker 7 (07:25):
That's very interesting. I'd be thinking that maybe somebody helped
him disappear.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Well, and that's what the police thought, but they had
no way of proving it. Yeah, So let's talk a
little bit about Ronda's background, because these two women interact
and this is where the problem occurs. So Ronda was
born two months premature, and she was born in nineteen
sixty six. After her mother, Dorothy, began hemorrhaging, her husband

(07:52):
Jim rushed her to the hospital and the doctor told
them the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck
and strangling her. Baby. Ronda would have to be delivered
right away or she would die. So the saesarean section
went well. Everything seemed fine, and Ronda was born weighing
four pounds nine ounces, not too bad for two months early.

Speaker 7 (08:12):
Right, No, that's a pretty good size.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah. So Dorothy and Jim were relieved and happy with
their daughter. But then the next day, Jim got a
call from the hospital with some bad news. Ronda was
having heart and bowel problems and she would need surgery
to fix both. Now, before you ask, I don't know
what kind of problems. It's a vague story from her father.

Speaker 7 (08:33):
Yeah. Well, I can make some guesses.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Okay, she never had the surgery, right, Nope.

Speaker 7 (08:38):
Because the heart murmur disappeared.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
So it was a heart murmur. Yeah, we do know that.

Speaker 7 (08:43):
So it's not uncommon within a few hours of delivery
for there's still to be some blood circulation. That is,
if the baby was still attached to a placenta, so
you can get some mild murmurs to just disappear as
the baby starts acclimating to life out of the womb,
And the same with the bowel problem. A lot of
babies will have a fairly inactive gut. With a little

(09:04):
bit of time, he'll crank up. So and this baby
did just that. She got to the tertiary hospital and
did fine.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, she was rushed to the hospital the next morning
and Dorothy wasn't stable enough to go with her, so
it was just Ronda and her dad, Jim, And as
the doctors loaded Ronda and her incubator into the ambulance,
Dorothy was beside herself crying. But during the trip with
his baby daughter, Jim was very distressed too. He was

(09:33):
just watching her to make sure she was still breathing.
But when they arrived and they examined the baby, they
did say she didn't need the surgery anymore, so no
more heart murmur, and she'd had a bowel movement, so
we knew that was working right. Yep. So this was
a time when Jim and Dorothy very religious people would
look back on this as a miracle, so they believed

(09:55):
they were safe from losing their precious daughter. Even as
she grew up and had her own difficulties in life.
And she did have her own mental health problems.

Speaker 7 (10:04):
Yeah, she did. When she wasn't a sickly kid. She
did fine physically, just mentally, there's some difficulties yep.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Her parents couldn't remember a time when she had to
take headache medicine or really even had much of a cold.
She grew like a weed, her mother liked to say,
to the point that strangers asked her to reach for
items on the top shelves when she'd go to the store.
So she was four years old when the family first
took her to Center Valley farm where Dorothy had grown up,

(10:34):
and while some older children were afraid of the cows
and other animals, Ronda was fearless. Her nerves were strengthened,
her mother would say, because she had two older brothers.

Speaker 7 (10:45):
That could do it. Yep.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
But Ronda was also shy and reserved. She mostly kept
to herself, with her pet dogs and her guinea pigs,
giving her the companionship she really wasn't getting from other
children other than her brothers. But even as she got older,
she did have few friends, and she didn't have a boyfriend,
but she was a good student. Allia's and Bee's still

(11:08):
not real involved in extracurricular activities. So without any real
friends her age, her mother became Ronda's best friend, and
the two would hang out together like girlfriends. They'd go
on shopping trips, do each other's makeup or hair, go
ice skating, and cook meals together. Ronda's mom would share
her recipes with Ronda, and Ronda was such a smart

(11:30):
girl she caught right on. But Ronda really started coming
out of her shell in high school. She had new
interests like horseback riding and acting in the school's theater department.

Speaker 7 (11:41):
That says a lot. Here's his kid who's extremely shy,
doesn't have any friends, and she gets to high school
and she's acting in front of people.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
I'm sure it was brave of her very but from
the age of six she wanted to be a teacher,
and she spoke about it so often that her father
used to joke that that that was all she could
ever talk about. In the years immediately after she graduated
from high school in nineteen eighty four, she worked several
jobs ranging from newspaper typists to customer service rep for

(12:12):
a phone company. But then by nineteen eighty six, she'd
saved enough money to enroll in the community college, making
her the first in her family to attend college. Then,
in nineteen eighty eight, Ronda graduated from the community college
with an associate's degree in secretarial science, and she moved

(12:33):
on to Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, which was about
two hours northwest of her family home. But she continued
to work throughout school, mostly as a cashier, and paid
her student loans all by herself, so within three years
she was student teaching and on track to graduate in

(12:53):
December nineteen ninety one with her teaching certificate in Business Education.
But in the months leading up to her graduation date,
it became obvious that something was wrong with Ronda. So
she was losing her appetite to the point that she
was barely eating it all. Then insomnia was keeping her
awake all night, and she started to develop strong feelings

(13:17):
of paranoia, growing convinced that even her close friends couldn't
be trusted. So between her college schedule and the irrationality
of her thoughts, Ronda realized that she might need to
take a break and put her education on hold for
a semester, but she couldn't. She told herself her teachers
and colleagues would think less of her if she did that.

(13:38):
So for Ronda, failing to meet that December fifteenth, nineteen
ninety one graduation date would make her a failure. But
then her mental condition only got worse. She reached what
she later described as her total emotional breaking point. This
was early one November morning, during the two hour drive
to Mansfield University to take her Nextknational Teaching exam. So

(14:02):
she was traveling on the highway and a car swerved
into the opposite lane in front of her, and Ronda
was convinced she was about to crash. There was no collision,
but Ronda pulled over to the side of the road
and broke down, crying, believing for the first time that
she would never be able to earn her teaching certification.
She still forced herself to continue on to Mansfield and

(14:25):
she managed to pass the exam. But eventually Ronda's erratic
behavior began to get attention. One of her friends knocked
on the door of her apartment to check on her
one evening, but Ronda was convinced it was somebody trying
to break into her apartment. Then another time, Ronda called
the police in tears, claiming somebody was trying to break in,

(14:47):
but then when they arrived, there was nobody there. Ronda
also started to believe that there were hidden cameras in
her apartment walls. So Ronda was only a few weeks
away from her graduation day, but now suddenly her dream
of becoming a teacher seemed impossible. Jim told her to
come home, but by now Ronda was not even in

(15:07):
a state where she could drive herself. So two of
the university's psychiatrists convinced Ronda to check into the Geisinger
Medical Center, which was just fifteen minutes away. So two
days after Ronda was first hospitalized, Jim and Dorothy came
to see her. Her parents assumed she had suffered a
nervous breakdown and that it was just the stress of

(15:30):
college had been too much for her. It was only
when they saw Ronda for the first time that they
realized the real severity of the problem. It was bad.

Speaker 7 (15:39):
It seems to me, I'm wondering with the paranoia, with
schizophrenia of the diagnosis.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
No, she would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She wasn't
having any hallucinations, really, she was just paranoid, and a
lot of it was because she wasn't sleeping during her highs. Sure,
so Ronda was barely able to speak or even acknowledge
her parents when they came and she was diagnosed with
bipolar disorder. And what Ronda had previously dismissed as mood swings,

(16:09):
she found out were abrupt periods of mania and depression.
So all of these symptoms for the past several months
had been symptoms of bipolar disorder. Ronda refused to believe
the diagnosis at first, just as many people don't when
they're first diagnosed with this disorder. When December fifteenth, nineteen

(16:29):
ninety one came, Ronda did graduate, but not with the
teaching certification she'd wanted. Instead, her degree was in business administration,
for which she had already earned the credits, So she
had to be hospitalized several times over the next few years.
On some days, like the day she visited the shooting range,

(16:51):
she considered ending it all, but then as years passed,
Ronda worked hard to build a life for herself. Sometimes
she would get really down herself and regretful that she
wasn't a teacher. She never lived more than five miles
away from her parents because they were a real source
of strength and support for her. But the Easter before

(17:12):
Ronda died, she wrote a four page letter to her father,
thanking him for inspiring her and never giving up on her.
She'd also written a poem for her mother, which ended
with my mother is the best gift of all.

Speaker 7 (17:26):
Hospitalizations were to adjust medications, try new meds, stuff.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Like that, yeah, and get her stabilized so she could function.
I mean she really couldn't function in life.

Speaker 7 (17:38):
No, I'm getting it. Yeah, I wonder. You know a
lot of times illnesses like this, the medication might help,
but as it helps, then you don't want.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
To take it, yeah, because it sometimes they miss the mania, right,
Sometimes they can feel kind of flat from taking the medication.
You hear it all the time. Yeah, So, like most people,
it just took her a while to realize she needed
to take her medication.

Speaker 7 (18:04):
In the winter of two thousand and five, Ronda and
Dorothy first came to the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. They've
gone to several other churches in the area, but she
and her mother both liked this place right away, and
they especially liked the music from the choir and the
friendly new pastor who managed to keep his sermons funny
and enjoyable while sharing his strong spiritual convictions.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
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(18:52):
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(19:14):
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(19:37):
the same benefits by going to our patreon which is
patreon dot com slash Tigrebber. It was January twenty third,
two thousand and eight, when Rohnda's friend Judy Zelner, tried
to unlock the side door of Bucks County's Trinity Evangelical

(19:58):
Lutheran Church. The the door was already unlocked, and it
opened before she could turn the key, So she looked
down at the doorknob, very surprised and a little annoyed.
This door was always supposed to be locked, and she
thought everyone in the church knew that. So the door
to the church office was shut, but through a large
interior window, Judy could see that the light was on.

(20:20):
She hadn't expected anyone to be there. It was Wednesday afternoon.
This was a day when she came on her twice
weekly schedule to do cleaning in the church. So she
looked through the window, but nobody was sitting behind the
desk inside the small office. Judy walked past the office,
put her pursing coat on a table, and headed for

(20:41):
the bathroom. So Judy had been attending Trinity Evangelical Lutheran
Church for the past twenty six years. Even after she
moved away to Allentown, she continued to attend this church.
Judy's home in Allentown wasn't far it was only twelve
miles away, and she had to pass by several closer

(21:01):
churches on her way, but never considered going somewhere else.
Judy passed the church office again on her way back
to the pastor's office, where she found his door was locked.
Judy was again surprised. Since Pastor Gregory Shrieves had joined
the church almost three years ago, he was almost always there.

(21:22):
Judy took her cleaning supplies from the closet down the
hall and she went back downstairs to the church office.
So nobody was behind the desk, and she started walking
toward the file cabinets in the corner. But as she
passed the corner of the desk, she just froze in
her tracks because something was out of place. Something caught

(21:42):
her eye. Crumpled on the floor behind the desk was
the body of a woman. Her legs were folded at
the knees and her head and upper body were curled forward,
and there was a huge amount of blood. The woman's
head was soaked and lying in the dark red puddle.
Strands of her long, bad hair splay out in all directions.

(22:02):
Judy looked at the woman's chest and saw no movement.
Then she noticed the wound on the right side of
the woman's head. So she realized now that the person
who did this could still be in the church. So
Judy grabbed the cordless phone that was sitting on the
desk and ran outside to call nine one one. Once
the operator answered, Judy screamed into the phone. The operator

(22:25):
tried to calm her down and instructed her to stop screaming.
There's a girl murdered in her office, Judy said, and
her voice was very loud and hysterical. She's lying behind
the desk full of blood, Judy said. Her voice was
growing higher and her breathing was very fast and shallow.
So two paramedics with Upper Bucks Regional Emergency Medical Services

(22:49):
got this call and they rushed out to their ambulance.
The church was just a tenth of a mile up
the road, and when they arrived, Judy was standing their way,
waving at the bottom of a small stairway leading up
to the side door of the church, so the paramedics
stepped inside with Judy. She pointed toward the office and

(23:10):
explained she's behind the desk. So as a paramedics stepped
further into the office, he saw the woman on the floor,
but he could hear that she was still breathing, but
she was gurgling choking on her own blood. It was
clear that the woman had been shot and most of
the blood had come from the right side of her head,

(23:30):
and there was a bullet wound just above her ear.
She had a pulse, but she was non responsive. On
the floor, there was a shiny piece of metal that
appeared to be a bullet fragment, but there were no
weapons there. So after outlining the body on the floor,
the paramedics lifted the woman and put her onto the backboard,
and as they lifted her, her head turned to bed

(23:52):
and Judy was just shocked to see that the victim
was her good friend, Ronda Smith. So after the police arrived,
Judy explained to them what had happened. She described arriving
at the church, going to the pastor's office, finding the
body in the downstairs office, and she told them it's
Ronda Smith, a forty two year old woman who'd been
coming to the church with her mother for a couple

(24:14):
of years now. The office was on the bottom floor
of a modern two story section of the church. The
twelve x twelve foot room was filled with office equipment,
and that included filing cabinets, a copy machine, and a
tall stack of mailboxes for the church officers. Several laptop
computers were found there. But whoever shot Ronda hadn't bothered

(24:37):
to take them, hadn't taken anything.

Speaker 7 (24:39):
Yes, so it wasn't a robbery.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Absolutely not. It was an.

Speaker 7 (24:42):
Execution, yeah, rondas Yes.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So Ronda was taken to a larger hospital which had
a trauma unit. And meanwhile, her parents, Jim and Dorothy,
looked at the answering machine as they entered their home.
They were surprised to see no messages waiting for them
from their daughter. Ronda should have called them by now. So.
The couple had seen their daughter's green car in the
parking lot of the church as they passed on their

(25:07):
way to nearby Quakertown for lunch that day. They had
thought it was strange that her car was still there
at twelve thirty pm, since she was scheduled to work
from nine am to noon. It was Ronda's third day
working mornings filling in as the church secretary while Pastor
Shreeves was away at a convention, so it was kind
of the pastor to give their daughter a little work.

(25:30):
They thought her bipolar disorder, which Ronda had struggled with
since her early twenties, really made finding and keeping a
job quite difficult for her. So the couple had taken
a different route back from the restaurant in Quakertown, so
they hadn't passed the church again on their way home,
but they couldn't imagine that Ronda would still be working anyway.

(25:51):
Jim picked up the phone and called Ronda at home,
but he got no answer. A little while later, the
phone rang. He picked up the phone, expecting to hear
his daughter's boy, but was surprised to hear the voice
of a different woman who identified herself as a social
worker from Saint Luke's Hospital. So the woman told them
that their daughter had been hurt, that there was an

(26:12):
accident down at the church. Jim asked, well, what did
she do fall and break something, but he was absolutely
stunned when the woman said no, she's been shot. So
she went on to say that Ronda was not expected
to live. So Jim and Dorothy of course rushed to
the hospital and they were hoping that another miracle might

(26:33):
happen for them.

Speaker 7 (26:35):
Now, how would you like to be that parent? You
go out for a little lunch, come home. Are you
expecting to see your daughter? I can't get a hold
of her, and you get a call from the person
at a hospital saying that she's been shot.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Well, it's every parent's nightmare, of course. So Judy sat
in her van outside of the church with her husband.
She had met Ronda at the church two years ago,
and it was her habit to go up and say
hello to all new visitors. Then she and Ronda got
along right from the beginning. So despite the almost twenty
years between them, Judy was sixty and Ronda was forty two,

(27:10):
they started to get together outside of church, having lunch
or just hanging out at Judy's house. So from the beginning,
Judy felt that Ronda really needed a friend, and she'd
wanted to be there for her. Judy herself had already
been through a lot in her life. She'd been in
therapy and on prozac, since nineteen ninety two, after she
found her mother dead in her apartment. Judy had gone

(27:33):
over one day to have lunch, but there was no
answer at her mother's door. The coroner determined that she
had died from a heart arrhythmia. But this was a
memory that really haunted Judy, and this was along with
the tragic death of her twenty year old son, Ricky,
which happened in two thousand and one. Ricky had put
lit candles on the back deck when his friends were over,

(27:56):
and he'd left them burning after his friends left, so
while Ricky slept in the house alone, the candles started
a fire, englfing the wooden deck and the cedar sighted
house very quickly. The police told Judy not to look
at Ricky's body as they carried it from the house,
but she just couldn't help it. She wanted to see
her son. So she'd lost her mother and her son,

(28:19):
both very quickly and tragically, really, and now her friend
Rondat It is a whole lot to deal with. So
the police interviewed Judy. She's the one that found the body,
and she explained that several parishioners had keys to the
church and she had won because she was the sexton,

(28:39):
although it was unusual for the church door to be unlocked.
She told the troopers she wasn't surprised to see the
office light on. Pastor Shreeves often left the light on
after he left. Then she said there was a green
car in the parking lot, but she hadn't recognized it
and thought it may have belonged to the new church secretary.
Then she described finding Ronda dying on the floor in

(29:01):
a large pool of blood after her call to nine
one one. Judy recalled how she screamed at cars as
they passed by the church, but no one would stop
to help her, and when the ambulance arrived, she led
the paramedics into the office, and that's when she realized
it was her friend Ronda who had been shot. So
Ronda had been a member of the church for two years,

(29:23):
Judy told the troopers, and her mother was also a member.
Ronda and Judy sang in the choir together. She knew
about Ronda's mental health issues and described how Ronda would
sometimes call Judy when she was depressed. Judy took Ronda's
calls at any hour of the day. During one of
her calls. Ronda told Judy she was on her way

(29:45):
home from a shooting range where she had thought about
killing herself. That time, they'd talked for about an hour,
and Judy thought she had cheered her up, But the
next day she learned that Ronda had been hospitalized. So
there would be days and weeks when Ronda was fine,
but then every couple of months she would fall into
a deep depression. Ronda had had a boyfriend named Ray,

(30:08):
Judy said, but they'd broken up about two weeks ago.
It was a mutual breakup, she said, and Ronda did
seem okay with it. Ray lived about one hour soalth,
and he had taken Ronda to the movies in dinner
several times. But Judy really didn't know a lot about
this guy. She didn't know of any enemies or people
who would have wanted to hurt Ronda either. She didn't

(30:31):
know why Ronda was at the church and could only
assume that Pastor Shreeves had asked her to assist with
some secretarial duties. Nothing appeared to be missing from the church,
and not much money was kept around anyway. The Sunday
collections were deposited into the bank each week so while
this is going on, this is the third and final

(30:52):
day of Pastor Shreeve's conference in Melbourne, Pennsylvania. It was
a requirement for all new pastors free days every year,
all the new pastors in the Lutheran Theology Seminary would
get together to talk about their successes and their challenges
at ten presentations and you know, just kind of talk

(31:12):
to each other. These conferences made sense for the twenty
something new pastors, he thought, but for second career types
like Shrieves, it felt like the kind of thing that
he had already outgrown. But this was the last year
he had to attend this conference, and he'd be happy
to leave it behind. Just a few years ago, Shreeves
never would have expected to be surrounded by pastors in

(31:35):
training and learning how to be a man of God,
because ten years ago he was a golf pro working
out of Philadelphia as Director of Section Affairs for the
Professional Golf Association. So now he was fifty six years old.
Although he still looked more like a pro golfer than
a pastor. He was athletic, over six feet tall, with

(31:56):
a touch of blonde left in his graying hair. He
had very bright blue eyes, that made him very attractive
to women.

Speaker 7 (32:03):
That's an interesting career switch, I think, isn't it a
professional golfer decides to become a minister. Yep, huh.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Interesting. Well, Shreves had really loved the golf back to
when he was like eleven years old, and that's when
he borrowed a set of clubs that his father had
received as a Christmas gift. So Shreves would hit balls
out of his backyard and found out he had a
gift for the spot. So by age thirteen, he was
traveling all over the country to play. As an older teen,

(32:33):
he was the runner up in the USGA Junior Amateur
Golf Championship.

Speaker 7 (32:38):
So he was not just a pro golfer. He was
a good golfer, a very good golfer Amateur Golf championship.
It's quite a feat.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah. I think that he expected his life to be
that of a pro golfer. Yeah, it's very competitive, oh
it is. So around nineteen ninety nine, Shreves started to
feel a pull toward a life of ministry and started
when one of his friends had noticed that he had
gift that Shreves hadn't seen it himself. Shreves always treated

(33:06):
people with respect and compassion, the friend said, and these
were traits that would serve him well in the job
as pastor. So Shreves joined the Lutheran Theology Seminary in
Philadelphia in January two thousand and two, and he graduated
in the spring of two thousand and five, so he
finished in two and a half years instead of the

(33:26):
normal four. But he liked to say this didn't happen
because he was smart, just because he worked really hard
at it. He took classes in the summer and during
his internships, and by March two thousand and five, he
interviewed for the job of pastor at the Trinity Evangelical
Lutheran Church. Many of the congregants were descendants of the

(33:47):
families that were buried in the graveyard behind the church,
so this was the kind of place where even if
you'd been there for fifteen years, there were probably still
some people who would consider you a newcomer. So immediately
upon seeing the place, Shreeves could tell that the church
was a perfect fit for him, and the church council

(34:07):
really felt the same way. Shreves wanted to find a
place he could call home for a really long time,
which is exactly what the congregation was looking for in
their new pastor. The church had been without a full
time pastor for about two years at that point, and
Shreeves was just what they were looking for. He was energetic, outgoing,

(34:28):
and he would really reach out to the community and
try and engage his congregation. So now three years later,
he was in the room he'd been staying in during
the conference when someone knocked on his door. He was
told he had a call from Jim Nilsson, a past
council president from Trinity Evangelical. So Nilsen told the pastor

(34:49):
that the state police wanted to talk to him, and
a few minutes later an officer called him. As Shreves
listened to the news about Rohnda, he just felt sick.
He realized then that the quiet life he'd envisioned for
his small parish was forever changed by this horrible crime.
So police cars were parked around the church parking lot

(35:10):
all day, but troopers had concluded the first part of
their investigation and found nobody inside and no gun. Police
dogs were going to be brought in for a more
thorough search, and the forensic investigators still had many hours
of work ahead of them. Now, the Springfield Elementary School,
which was just half a mile away, was in lockdown

(35:31):
mode in response to this shooting, and they would actually
remain in lockdown for the next several days because this
wasn't solved right away.

Speaker 7 (35:40):
No, well, it's not like you got the perpetrator standing
there was a gun saying I did it.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
No, And some people were thinking it may have been
a suicide by Ronda, which confuses me because there was
no gun found.

Speaker 7 (35:55):
There was no weapon found, and she had been shot twice.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Right, right, you could do that, well if you kind
of missed with the first one. Sure. But another thing
they would bring up is maybe someone covered up for
her because she was religious and tried to hide the fact.
If they didn't want the police to think it was
a suicide, they would take the gun. But that just
seems like a real long shot to me. All right.

(36:19):
So Judy's elner and her husband last drove straight to
Saint Luke's Hospital as soon as the police let them
leave the church. Ronda's poor parents were waiting in a
small room with Pastor Shreeves, who had just returned from Melvern.
After a few minutes, the doctor came out and gave
them the news that they'd been dreading. Ronda was brain dead.

(36:40):
He said the doctors were keeping her on life support
for the possibility the family might consider donating some of
her organs. So Jim and Dorothy thought, well, this might
be some way to honor her. At least she can
live on in this way, and they started filling out
the organ donation paperwork. But then they were told that

(37:01):
they wouldn't be permitted to donate Ronda's organs because her
body needed to remain intact for an autopsy the next day.
So that was kind of disappointing.

Speaker 7 (37:12):
Yeah, I never given that much thought. Yeah, can't be
an organ donor if you're going to have an autopsy
bed exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Other close family members, Judy Less and Pastor Shrieves, all
went into Ronda's room. Her head was wrapped in bandages
and her right eye was red and swollen. So this
was not the Ronda they'd all known and loved. But
they stood in a circle around her bed in said
a prayer. That was their way of saying goodbye to Ronda,

(37:40):
and it was heartbreaking, I'm sure it was so the
sweet young woman. So Shreeves agreed to be interviewed, and
two investigators began asking him about his history with the
church and his involvement with Ronda. So the pastor really
hadn't known Ronda that well. He couldn't remember when she
first came to the church, but he said Ronda had

(38:03):
come to him for counseling and advice two or three times.
She had told him about a past relationship she'd been
in that was abusive and had ended with Ronda having
an abortion. Then there had been a more recent boyfriend,
the pastor said, a man from northeast Philadelphia who Ronda
had met on the internet, but the relationship had ended

(38:25):
when he no longer wanted to continue a long distance relationship.
So Ronda had also mentioned that she was dating a
married man, but she had never revealed his identity. The
troopers noticed that Shreeves seemed a bit nervous. He was
stuttering and his eyes were darting back and forth. This
was a difficult situation, and he did seem like a

(38:47):
nice guy who was just doing his part to help
Ronda during difficult times. But at this point they couldn't
rule out anyone as a suspect.

Speaker 7 (38:55):
Right, of course, the guy who exactly nervous and may
be guilty of something they'd pay more attention to.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah, and it was at his church, right So, forty
five year old second grade teacher Steve Wasisaki was still
working at the elementary school when he got the news.
So he'd worked for the school district for twenty five
years and had been Trinity Evangelical's choir director and organists
for about twelve years. So the weekly choir practice was

(39:25):
scheduled for later that day, and Steve had planned to
go straight over to the church and start getting ready
once his workday was over. But then his wife called
him and told him about the shooting and that Ronda
had died. The news, of course, upset Steve because he
just couldn't believe that something like this could happen in
his own church. Under the circumstances, though, there was no

(39:49):
way that choir practice would continue, so Steve and his wife, Debbie,
spent the next hour between five and six o'clock calling
each of the choir members to tell them the news,
and everyone he called was just horrified. Some church members
already knew that something had happened, but they hadn't been
sure exactly what or to whom some falsely thought it

(40:10):
was the new secretary, Megan who'd been shot. But then
by the evening, word of what really happened was starting
to reach most of the congregation, So with his calls
nearly complete, Steve dialed the number of Mary Jane Fonder, who,
at sixty five years old, was a longtime church member.
So Steve had saved her for last, and that's in

(40:31):
part because Debbie had told him that Mary Jane called
the week before and left a message saying she was
quitting the choir. So something had made Mary Jane upset,
Debbie told him, but it was unclear if it was
related to the church or to something else, so Steve
hoped to talk to her about that and find out
what was on her mind. And the other reason he

(40:53):
saved Mary Jane for last was because Mary Jane was
a talker. She had a reputation with other true ch
members as being quite the oddball, and she was well
known for her tendency to ramble on and once you
got into a conversation with her, you could get kind
of stuck. We've all known someone like that, but it
seems like she was just kind of wacky. The things

(41:15):
she said as well.

Speaker 8 (41:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
So when Mary Jane answered, Steve explained that Ronda had
been found shot inside the church and that she had
not survived. But Mary Jane seemed neither shocked or really
all that phased by the news. Rather than even acknowledging it,
she started talking about the things she'd been doing that day,
which included a trip to the hairdresser and some shopping.

(42:01):
Mary Jane, Steve said, did you hear what I said?
There's been a shooting. Mary Jane just continued talking, but
again did not acknowledge what was said to her, So
Steve wondered, what's going on? Is she in shock? Then,
after listening politely for a few minutes, as Mary Jane
continued to talk about nonsense, Steve finally interrupted and said, well,

(42:22):
please pray for Ronda, okay, and said goodbye, and Mary
Jane said goodbye and they hung up.

Speaker 7 (42:29):
Not the response that Steve was expecting.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
No, not at all. There were three men of interest
to the police that day as they investigated Ronda's death.
They were the man she had recently broken up with,
the guy she was supposed to see that night, and
the man she had been in an abusive relationship with
so troopers interviewed Gregory Denisavitch, the local man Ronda had

(42:53):
a date with for that evening. They found him at
his house in Coopersburg, a small town about ten minutes
from the church. So he was supposed to pick up
Ronde at her apartment at six o'clock that evening, but
after getting no response from knocking on her door, he'd
waited a few minutes and then just gone back home.
So now it was seven fifty pm, and Denisovich said

(43:16):
he was worried that he hadn't heard from Ronda and
had planned to call her later that night. So these
two had met at a Lehigh Valley Hospital bipolar support
group three months earlier. They'd gotten together outside of the
group his friends, maybe five or ten times, and he
said he would try and make her feel better by
taking her out. Ronda had told him she had been

(43:37):
suicidal in the past, and Ronda was still upset over
the abortion she'd had years ago. He said recently, she'd
been dating a man named Ray, who she'd met on
match dot com, but he said that Ray stopped calling
her about a month ago, and Ronda was upset about it,
but she believed Ray had only wanted sex from her anyway. Now.

(43:58):
As for him, he and Ronda had talked last on Monday,
when he called to reschedule a dinner day. She seemed
in good spirits when they talked. He told the troopers
he was home the entire day taking care of his mother,
who was recovering from surgery, and the only time he
left the house was to get pizza for his mother
around five PM, and his mother did confirm his alibi.

(44:22):
So while this is going on, two more state troopers
were en route to Philadelphia to talk to Ray Finkel,
and this was Ronda's most recent ex boyfriend, so it
turned out not to be an easy task. When the
troopers arrived at the address listed on his driver's license,
they learned he no longer lived there. Finkel wasn't at

(44:43):
the next apartment in northeast Philadelphia that the troopers had
been referred to, either, but then with the help of
the Philadelphia Police, Finkel was found at his parents' house,
so he agreed to answer the troopers questions and went
willingly to the police station. Finkel said he took US
six eleven a m train to go where he worked
as a financial analyst. He was there all day with

(45:06):
his boss and another co worker, except for a noontime
meeting and then lunch at one thirty pm. The times
could be verified with his building's swipe card system. He
said that clocked him in and out of the building.
So when told that they were asking about Ronda Smith,
Finkel replied that she was a friend that he had
met on the dating site plenty of fish dot com.

(45:26):
They met online on the second weekend of October and
had their first date the following Friday. The two had
last gotten together the second weekend in November. He said
he'd broken off the relationship because of the distance, and
she seemed to understand. So when the troopers told Finkel
about Ronda's death, he seemed appropriately surprised, and he was

(45:48):
visibly upset. Police later did determine that his timeline checked
out too, so he couldn't have been in Springfield Township
when Ronda was killed. Then they went and spoke to
Steve Carol Hannas, who were Ronda's landlords, and they said
that Ronda said she was thinking of dating a married man,
but she never mentioned a name. Carol had advised Ronda

(46:11):
against this because she'd still be alone and there was
nothing to gain from the situation. Step and Carol Hannas
had become close with Ronda during the time she rented
an apartment from them, and they really considered her like
one of the family. She said, she was a sweet
kid and you couldn't be mad at her, so why
would anyone possibly want to hurt her? So the police

(46:33):
learned more about Ronda's former emotionally abusive relationship from the
director at Turning Point of Lehigh Valley. So that was
a domestic violence assistance organization. Ronda had come to that
group in two thousand and five for regular counseling about
her boyfriend. At that time. The state police would learn
more about him from Ronda's own writing. As part of

(46:56):
her therapy. Ronda had written about a time in March
two than four when he had had sex with her
without her consent. So Ronda was very upset by this experience,
even more so when she found out that she was pregnant.

Speaker 7 (47:10):
So it seems to me that it was more than
an emotionally abusive relationship.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah, good point.

Speaker 7 (47:16):
If she was having sex against her.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Will, yeah horrible, huh. Yes, But she was on lithium
for bipolar disorder, and she decided to have an abortion,
but that would bother her for the rest of her life.
I'm sure she's very religious. So in two thousand and six,
Ronda reported the incident to the police, who forwarded the
case to the DA's office. Police reports didn't say why

(47:39):
Ronda had waited two years to report the crime, and
the office declined to prosecute because proving it would be
too difficult. So a check of the church's phone records
led police to investigate Ronda's past suicidal threats. The record
showed a call had been made to the Northampton County
Crisis Center the dave Ronda had died. The call had

(48:00):
lasted one minute in eight seconds. Trooper Raymond Judge was
assigned to find out more about Ronda's call to the
crisis center. So Ronda had called the center four times
in the week before she died. The first had been
January eighteenth, when she called crying uncontrollably, saying she hadn't
been sleeping and felt like a failure. Ronda called the

(48:22):
center two days later, again crying and saying she couldn't
get out of bed. A caseworker visited Ronda that afternoon
and suggested she sign up for an intensive care manager,
so this would mean that a counselor would meet with
her on a regular basis. Ronda did seem interested in that,
but two days later she called the center again, reporting

(48:44):
that she was feeling very anxious. So that was the
day before she died, and that brought police to the
phone called Ronda had made to the crisis center the
day she died. It turned out she had called to
tell a case worker that she was feeling better, but
he wasn't due in until the afternoon, so Ronda said
she'd call back later. But several days passed and the

(49:07):
police had no real suspect in Ronda's murder. They went
back to Pastor Shreeves again to see if something new
might pop up, and after some prodding, Shreeves told them
about a church member named Mary Jane Fonder who he
believed was infatuated with him. So Mary Jane had been
calling his house three or four times a week and

(49:27):
leaving disturbing messages. She would call and say her spirits
weren't right and things like that. Though Shreeves put a
block on Mary Jane's phone number, she still managed to
get through to his number, maybe using a cell phone instead. Also,
Mary Jane had entered his house once when he wasn't
home and put food in his refrigerator. So Shreeves had

(49:49):
confronted Mary Jane about this unwanted behavior, and the pastor
believed that that had angered her because he really hadn't
heard from her in weeks since that.

Speaker 7 (50:00):
But you got to set some limits here.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, he did the right thing, I.

Speaker 7 (50:03):
Believe pastor and parishioner exactly.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
So. Shreves said he had turned off his answering machine
to avoid getting any messages from Mary Jane, but a
detective asked if he'd be willing to turn it on
again so they might be able to hear some of
her messages. Shreve said he really didn't want to, but
he agreed to do it to help them out, and
after the two troopers left his house, they agreed that

(50:28):
Mary Jane did sound unusual, but at the same time,
they really didn't see why Shreeves was so rattled by her,
and they kind of thought the pastor's reaction to her
was strange.

Speaker 7 (50:39):
So, no, you get this woman calling several times a week,
leaving messages on your phone, and you come home one
day and find that she's been in your house putting
grocers in your fridge. That would bother me.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
I think it would bother most people, right. It's weird.
So when new people came to the church, it turned
out to really create some excitement and cure curiosity among
the parishioners. And this was very true with Ronda Smith.
She was attractive and she didn't fit into the church's
older age demographic. So from the morning of that first service,

(51:11):
when Ronda and Dorothy joined the church members for some
after service coffee, Ronda really fit in with the congregation,
especially with Judy. So soon Ronda was singing in the choir,
spending more time at church, and joining the other women
for shopping. But her bipolar disorder was a challenge even
during happy times, and soon she was having trouble with

(51:34):
her finances again. So Ronda confided her troubles to Pastor Shreeves, who,
although he didn't really know her very well, provided her
with counseling on a few occasions. The church had an
informal network of members who had greater financial means than
the others, so it was the pastor who around Christmas
of two thousand and seven decided to reach out to

(51:56):
them and see if they could help out Ronda. It
was maybe a couple of thousand dollars in total, but
the gifts they gave Ronda really helped her out. It
helped her pay her rent, her electric bill, and her
phone bill. And Ronda was so grateful for the assistance
from the church, which had already helped her with many
many things in her life, that she asked the pastor

(52:18):
whether she could stand up at the next service and
thank the congregation for their generosity. So he agreed to
let her do that, and it was during a Sunday
morning service in January two thousand and eight, just weeks
before her death, actually, when Ronda stood up in front
of the congregation and thanked them for their moral, spiritual

(52:39):
and financial assistance. So she spoke about her bipolar disorder,
how difficult her life could be, and how much she
appreciated their understanding and support. She thanked them all, especially
the pastor, and she expressed how much better it made
her feel to know she had friends who she could
count on. So as Judy looked around them church, she

(53:01):
saw she wasn't the only one who had been moved
to tears by Ronda. One longtime church member, Paul Rose,
was really impressed with Ronda's courage. He believed Ronda's life
had changed for the better during her time at the church,
and he was really happy for But among all the
happy and emotional reactions in the crowd, one woman sat

(53:22):
motionless and staring straight ahead with no reaction on her face.
And guess who that was?

Speaker 7 (53:29):
That would probably be Mary Jane Fonder.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Mary Jane Fonder. Yes. So Pastor Shreeves didn't remember when
he first met Mary Jane. He had met so many
people when he started at the church that most of
it was like a blur to him, so there was
no reason for him to have thought of Mary Jane
any differently than any of the others, but he would
become familiar with her in the same way the rest

(53:54):
of the congregation was as an eccentric older woman who
could be a bit annoying at times, but seemed otherwise harmless.
Anne seemed to have good intentions. So he hadn't gotten
to know much about Mary Jane in his first year
at the church, but he did know she was a
talker and her physical appearance was notable. The wigs she

(54:15):
wore were not attractive, and she did dress poorly for
her body frame in her age. But the first time
the pastor spoke at length with Mary Jane was the
day of the funeral of a parishioner, Sue Brunner's father,
and that was in two thousand and six. The service
was almost an hour away from the church, so not

(54:36):
many people from the church attended besides the pastor and
Judy Zellner, but Mary Jane Fonder was there too, along
with her brother Ed, who she was now living with.
So during a luncheon after the funeral, the pastor saw
Mary Jane and Ed wandering and looking for a table.
He knew that the congregation treated Mary Jane civilly, but

(54:59):
he all also knew she had very few close friends
among them, and that she was rarely invited to dinners
or social gatherings. Still, he believed that no one could
question her love of the church and the community. So
the pastor decided to reach out to the Fonders, and
he called them over to sit with him. They chatted
casually for the next ninety minutes or so, with Mary

(55:22):
Jane doing most of the talking, but after a while
they started to discuss her artwork. She had a talent
for painting and crocheting, so to Pastor Shrieves, she just
seemed very lonely. Since she was always wanting to do
more with the church, she thought of a way to
get her more involved, so he asked her if she
would like to decorate the bulletin boards. So Mary Jane

(55:45):
agreed to this, and soon she was visiting the church
one or two mornings a week. The pastor would let
her into the church and help her get started, then
leave her unsupervised to do the work. She worked on
the bulletin board for several months, but after a while
the pastor took over that job himself because it turned out,
for all of her artistic abilities, she really made a

(56:08):
mess out of the bulletin boards. Still, she did continue
coming to the church on weekday mornings and helping out
with other small jobs like updating the calendars or folding
the newsletters, and sometimes Shreeves would start chatting with her,
but really for the most part he tried to avoid her,
which I guess is understandable.

Speaker 7 (56:28):
Yeah, well he does. We wouldn't be trapped into talking
with her for an hour, So he's going to make
him so scarce.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Yeah, he did, because once he gave her an opening,
she'd just go on and on to the point where
it would feel impossible to ever end the conversation right.
So after that the two would just speak in passing
from time to time. But there was one day in
the fall of two thousand and six where Mary Jane
sought out Pastor Shreeves for a conversation, and this would

(56:56):
forever change things between them. The pastor was working on
his laptop computer in his office, Andy heard Mary Jane
coming up the stairs, but between her age and poor
physical fitness, it took her a long time before she
got to his door, but he was polite he invited
her in to take a seat in an armchair at
the opposite corner of the room. This was the first

(57:19):
time Mary Jane had sought him out for a one
on one conversation like this, and she immediately launched into
a long discussion mostly about herself, focusing on her past,
her family, her old home in Philadelphia, and the various
jobs she had worked over the years. She showed the
pastor old photos of her younger self. She showed the

(57:42):
pastor old photos of her younger self that she carried
in her wallet, and she described bilet lessons she used
to take as a young woman. Now he was getting
the impression she just wanted to tell her story, a
story maybe very few people had ever taken the time
to listen to before. So an hour went by and
still Mary Jane was talking. She talked about how pretty

(58:05):
and talented she was when she was young, and about
all the things she had wanted to do with her life.
She talked about moving to Springfield Township when her parents
got sick, and she told him how her life had
changed so much after that. So the pastor spent most
of his time nodding. He tried to validate what she
was saying, without offering his own opinions or passing any judgments.

(58:30):
But then out of nowhere, Mary Jane said the words
that Shrieves would always remember. You can't deny what's going
on between us, she said, and he was completely taken
off guard. So the pastor had never noticed Mary Jane
showing any kind of romantic interest in him, and his
first reaction was to laugh, not trying to be mean spirited,

(58:53):
but just kind of surprised and feeling awkward. But then
Mary Jane immediately went back to her coming conversation, changing
the subject as if nothing had happened.

Speaker 7 (59:04):
Well, that's a two dropper, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
I think it really made him very uncomfortable.

Speaker 7 (59:09):
You can't deny what's going on between us.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
I like the line. Yeah, but you know he was
a pastor. He couldn't just sit there and listen and
not address it. So he said, Mary Jane, we need
to stop. I can't do this anymore. And the conversation
ended because Mary Jane just stood up and left the room,
not saying another word, but the words seemed to hang
in the room even after she had gone. Shreeves was shocked,

(59:34):
and he tried to think back to whether he had
ever given any indication that he was interested in her
in that way, but really nothing would come to mind.
He thought, maybe she got the wrong idea from the
way he reached out to her back at the funeral,
or from the way he listened to her discussing her
past for the last hour, or maybe it was simply

(59:55):
the fact that he was single. Shreeves knew some of
the women in the church which did consider him attractive.
But then as he reflected on this, he decided, well,
this really had nothing to do with him. It was
more about the position that he held. He learned about
this in past seminars where they referred to it as transference.

(01:00:16):
So Mary Jane probably wasn't interested in him exactly, but
in what the office he held represented and its connection
to God. But still this whole thing bothered him.

Speaker 7 (01:00:28):
Yeah, I'd be bothered. Yeah, you start thinking maybe there's
something mentally not right with the old Mary Jane.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Well sure well. He did go to the church council
to talk about her, but they thought it would just
go away and really didn't help. Then, just weeks after
that conversation, Mary Jane started calling his house on a
more regular basis, so most of the time she called
when he wasn't home and left long, random messages on
his answering machine. She would talk about some random subject

(01:01:01):
for four minutes until the message time ran out and
the machine cut her off. Then she'd call back and
speak for another four minutes until it cut her off again.
Sometimes she'd call every day for as many as five
days in a row, and sometimes Shreeves would answer and
end up talking to her for as long as he
could stand it before coming up with an excuse to

(01:01:23):
end the conversation. But you know, after a while, he
realized most of the times that she called it was
when she knew or suspected he wouldn't be home, like
she really wanted to just leave a voice message better. Yeah,
So it went on that way for months, and the
number of calls fluctuated. One week she might only call
once or twice. The next week almost every day, but

(01:01:46):
they did continue into the winter of two thousand and seven.
So after a while, Pastor Shreves decided to block her
number from his phone, but Mary Jane would not be deterred.
She started calling from herself instead. Then Pastor Shreeves noticed
he had extra food in his freezer that he hadn't bought.
He usually left his door unlocked, and a few more

(01:02:09):
times after that more food showed up in his home
or a bag of groceries would be left in his
front porch. So at first he didn't make any connection
to Mary Jane at all, believing somebody else from the
congregation had bought it for him. Then one day, when
he answered one of Mary Jane's phone calls, she asked
him if he needed any more food, So he realized

(01:02:32):
she was coming into his house and leaving groceries for him.
He told her to stop bringing food, but Mary Jane persisted,
even after the pastor started locking his door. So when
she left yet another bag of groceries on his front porch,
Shreves decided the only way to make his point was
to leave them there, So they sat in front of

(01:02:53):
his house for about a whole week and the food
went bad. After finding out about this, don't know how
she did, Mary Jane called and left a message for
Pastor Shreves, but this time her voice was lower and acrier,
almost like that of a completely different person. To Pastor Shrieves.

(01:03:13):
It was an almost demonic sounding voice. And if a
pastor says that he's not fucking around, right, yeah, they
should know the demons right absolutely. Mary Jane said to him,
how can you do this? Ungrateful? Somebody's trying to take
care of you and you're snubbing them. So this to
the pastor was actually frightening. It had gotten to the

(01:03:36):
point where he didn't feel comfortable even considering himself Mary
Jane's pastor.

Speaker 7 (01:03:41):
Yeah, I think if I'm Shrieves at this point, I
might even consider going to the police and making a complaint. Absolutely,
at the very least, I would make sure my house
was locked. I'd probably buy new locks for the doors
and make sure there's the best you can that there
isn't any way she's going to get in there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Agree. While the situation did finally come to a breaking
point one Sunday when Mary Jane called the pastor at
around ten thirty at night, so not accustomed to calls
at that hour, Shreeves worried that it was some sort
of an emergency, but it turned out to be Mary
Jane just trying to leave another message. So fed up

(01:04:20):
at this point, he yelled into the phone, telling her
not to call any more. He suggested she find another
church and pastor too, So at first there was nothing
but silence on the other end. Then Mary Jane launched
into an angry tirade against him, a lot like she
had after he refused to accept her groceries. So when

(01:04:43):
reflecting on the call later, Shreeves could not remember exactly
what Mary Jane had said, but he remembered her voice.
It was that same evil sounding voice like the last
time she became angry, except this time with a touch
of restlessness as well. So the calls became slightly less
frequent after that, but the pastor was very disturbed. It

(01:05:07):
was like, you know, Mary Jane had revealed a completely
different and darker personality. It was different. I guess it
was scary.

Speaker 7 (01:05:16):
I'm reminded of the movie The Exorcist, right the little
Girl when the demon was speaking through her absolutely guttural,
deep scary voice.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
I'm with you, That's exactly what I was thinking. So

(01:05:52):
detectives went over to Mary Jane's house the day after
meeting with Pastor Shrieves. Her small ranch home was just
three miles from the church. After pulling up to the house,
they knocked on the door and waited, but nobody answered.
There was a car in the driveway, and they saw
a light on inside the house, so they knocked again
and waited a little while longer, pacing around the front

(01:06:14):
steps and eventually walking around the house, checking to see
if anyone was in the backyard or at one of
the windows. After about ten minutes, the front door of
the house suddenly opened and Mary Jane's older brother, Ed
Fonder appeared. So Ed was a sixty nine year old
man of average size with a balding head. He wore

(01:06:35):
glasses and a blank facial expression. The officers explained that
they were looking for Mary Jane because they were interviewing
members of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church about Ronda Smith's death,
but Mary Jane was not home now. According to Ed,
he explained that unlike his sister, he was not a
member of Trinity Evangelical and he instead attended a different pair.

(01:07:00):
So the officers left a message with him asking Mary
Jane to call a detective regarding Ronda's death. State records
would show that Mary Jane owned a thirty eight caliber
Rossy revolver she'd bought in December nineteen ninety four. On
December twenty eighth, five days after Ronda's death, the police
received the phone records for the church office, so they

(01:07:24):
were surprised to note that on January twenty first, the
monday before Ronda died, the church had actually received three
calls from Mary Jane's home. So the first call came
in at eleven oh seven am and it lasted just
six seconds. The second call was at eleven ten and
lasted for four minutes in twenty two seconds. The third

(01:07:46):
call was at eleven twenty five and it ran for
two minutes and thirty seven seconds. Ballistics experts studied two bullets,
one in the church office ceiling and one that had
to be removed from Ronda's brain. The bullets were of
the thirty eight three point fifty seven caliber class and
they could have been discharged from several makes of revolvers,

(01:08:08):
but that included a ROSSI, which is what Mary Jane had,
so the state police got Ronda's autopsy report during the
first week of the investigation. The medical examiner recorded two
gunshot wounds to Ronda's head, so the first was on
her forehead, starting several inches above her eyes, just right
of center and ending at her hairline, so that bullet

(01:08:32):
had traveled upward along Ronda's forehead, splitting the skin and
just grazing the front of her skull, so that wound
was not fatal, but the second one was. It was
just above her right ear, entering her skull with no
exit wound. A copper jacket and lead projectile found in
the lower left of Ronda's brain meant the bullet took

(01:08:54):
a front to back and slightly left path, so there
was no soot on Ronda's skin. Would have been consistent
with a gun being pressed to her skin. Stippling or
small round gunpowder marks on Ronda's right hand and the
right side of her pace indicated that Ronda was shot
at an intermediate range between three and four feet away.

(01:09:16):
So Ronda's cause of death was ruled to be a
gunshot wound to the head, but the manner of death
was left as undetermined, which I find surprising to me.
It's obviously a homicide. But law enforcement did remain split
in their opinions about this shooting. With Ronda's history of depression,
some still believed that it could have been a suicide.

(01:09:38):
They brought up Ronda's previous attempts to kill herself, especially
that trip to the gun range. One investigator pointed to
statements her father, Jim Smith, had made to the media
saying his daughter would never commit suicide because she knew
she would go to hell if she did, and this
made some wonder whether he was some kind of a
religious nut. It was pointed out that the Smiths had

(01:10:00):
admitted they drove past the church the day Ronda was killed,
So what if, as some troopers had speculated early on,
they had found her body and determined to protect their
daughter's reputation from the stigma of suicide removed the gun
from the scene, but those leaning toward homicide pointed out
that Ronda had not won but two gunshot wounds. The

(01:10:24):
stipling noted in the autopsy report suggested that Ronda was
shot from three or four feet, but that didn't convince
all of the investigators either. While the forensic pathologists had
worked on many suspicious deaths in Lehigh County, the me
was unknown to many in Bucks County. Some didn't know
whether to trust the autopsy findings. Those supporting homicide went

(01:10:48):
through the list of possible suspects. The boyfriends all had alibis,
and an investigation into the strange man who had shown
up at the church a few times led them nowhere.
The investigators brought up Mary Jane Fonder, a parishioner who
was bothering the pastor. So this name sparked a memory
in the mind of Mark Laudenschlager, the Springfield Township Police

(01:11:12):
Department chief. So Laudenslager remembered that Mary Jane's elderly father,
Edward Fonder, had gone missing back in nineteen ninety three.
While Laudenslager was still a patrolman. Fonder was never found
and was presumed dead Back in nineteen ninety three, Mary
Jane had been the prime suspect in his disappearance. Even

(01:11:35):
with this new information about Mary Jane, though, the police
agreed to keep investigating the Ronda Smith case both as
a possible homicide and a possible suicide. It was just
a few days after Ronda's death when Mary Jane called
her longtime friend Rosalie to say she was heading to
Quakertown to go to the laundromat there. Rosalie said she

(01:11:57):
had planned to go to Quakertown that day too to
pick up some things at the grocery store, so the
two women decided to go into town together and made
a day of it by stopping for lunch while Mary
Jane's clothes were drying so over lunch, Rosalie asked about
the murder at Mary Jane's church. The church was only
a couple of miles away from her home, and it

(01:12:18):
was hard for Rosalie to even imagine that a murder
had happened in her township. But Mary Jane said that
the police didn't know if it really was a murder.
Maybe it was a suicide. With the question of whether
Ronda's death was a homicide or a suicide still out there,
the police decided the best way to get to the
bottom of it was to go ahead and talk some

(01:12:39):
more to Jim and Dorothy, Ronda's parents. The theory that
Jim found Ronda's body and cleaned up the scene so
it wouldn't look like a suicide was not unprecedented, but
it was a long shot. So it was about a
week after the murder when Jim and Dorothy once again
answered all of their questions. They recalled the details of
that horrible day that they lost their life daughter, the

(01:13:01):
phone call, their trip to the hospital, and when they
were told that their daughter was brain dead. They also
reconfirmed that they drove by the church that morning, but
that they had not stopped there. Detectives left the house
convinced that Jim and Dorothy were loving parents who had
nothing to do with covering up Ronda's suicide. Afterward, police

(01:13:23):
ran a check on guns owned by Jim Smith and
were able to confirm what Jim had told them was true.
The only handgun registered to him was now owned by
his nephew, who lived in Vermont, just as Jim had
said in an earlier interview. Later authorities in Vermont checked
out that gun and it didn't match the one that

(01:13:45):
had killed Ronda, So the Smiths were completely innocent, and
Ronda Smith's death was not a suicide. Now they were
convinced it was a murder. Looking more into Mary Jane's background,
investigators learned through unemployment records that she had been fired
from a Denny's restaurant back in nineteen ninety four for
threatening a co worker. Her unemployment hearing in the case

(01:14:09):
was on December thirteenth, nineteen ninety four, a date that
really stood out. It was the same date Mary Jane
had bought her gun. The officers were able to track
down several of Mary Jane's former co workers from Denny's,
and they remembered her as a strange woman who took
a lot of medication. They also remembered that Mary Jane

(01:14:31):
would often complain about how mean her father was to her,
but they also thought she seemed very upset when he
did go missing. So next they interviewed Diane Anderson, who'd
been the Denny's general manager at the time. One day,
she'd come in and she'd be perfectly fine, Diane said,
and the next time she'd just be a crazy woman.

(01:14:52):
It was really like a switch she could click on
and off. Mary Jane was strange right from the beginning.
She remembered. Sometimes she would show up to work with
her wig on backwards and just looked really ridiculous. Having
previously worked at a salon, Diane repeatedly offered to style
her wigs so Mary Jane could tell the front from
the back and wear them correctly, but Mary Jane always

(01:15:15):
refused and continued coming to work with her wigs on backwards,
so it was just really weird despite her oddness. Though
Diane had liked Mary Jane at first, she'd felt bad
for her because she always complained that she needed money
and that she had a hard time taking care of
her aging father. But after Mary Jane's father disappeared, she

(01:15:36):
got weirder, almost to a scary degree. When Diane made
a special lasagna and served it as part of the
Denny's menu, a furious Mary Jane stormed into Diane's office
screaming that that lasagna was her recipe and that Diane
had stole it. So Mary Jane even threatened to kill her.

(01:15:57):
Mary Jane's erratic behavior continued, as did threats against Diane's life,
and eventually Diane called Mary Jane into the restaurant's back
office and with another manager present for protection, told Mary
Jane they were firing her. So, as they'd expected, Mary
Jane freaked out again, threatening to shoot Diane with a

(01:16:18):
gun and kill her. Diane and the other manager followed
Mary Jane out to make sure she left the restaurant,
and as they walked through the dining area, Mary Jane
continued yelling and screaming in front of the customers. After
the unemployment hearing, when the board ruled against Mary Jane
and denied her unemployment compensation, she really seemed to snap,

(01:16:42):
lashing out at everybody in the room. So she even
made a crazy accusation that all the men on the
board were Diane's boyfriends and that was the only reason
they were siding with her. So, although Mary Jane had
gotten a gun earlier that day, she left it in
the car and did not attempt to bring into the courtroom,
and Diane never saw the weapon and had no idea

(01:17:04):
that Mary Jane had had a gun until after the
police spoke with her. So the state police continued to
interview as many church members as they could. The more
they talked to, the more often Mary Jane Fonder came up.
So Sue Brunner, mary Jane's neighbor, talked about a conversation
she had with Mary Jane just two days before Ronda died.

(01:17:26):
Sue was out walking her dog when Mary Jane passed
her in her car and stopped. She said, I've decided
I'm not going to come to choir anymore. I'm just
too upset about things and I can't do it. So.
Mary Jane also sometimes filled Sue's answering machine with messages
all about the bad vibes she was feeling. Mary Jane
told her with disgust about how Ronda had stood up

(01:17:49):
in front of the congregation to thank the church members
for helping her financially. The police also interviewed Mary Brunner,
another Trinity parishioner. Mary Jane had told Mary Brenner to
stay away from Pastor Shrieves. Mary didn't remember that exactly,
but she did say that Mary Jane had been acting
a bit odder than usual, especially in regard to the pastor.

(01:18:11):
Now normally, Mary Jane seemed to really like the pastor,
but in January of two thousand and eight, she claimed
she wanted nothing more to do with him, so something
had certainly bothered her. Mary would also recall a conversation
she had with Mary Jane just a few days before
Ronda died. Mary Jane would sometimes stop in her driveway
to chat if she was driving by, and she'd done

(01:18:34):
this on the Saturday morning of January nineteenth. Mary Jane
told Mary she was feeling very depressed and had a
bad feeling about the church choir. She made references to
experiencing bad vibes and bad spirits. Mary Jane also mentioned
that Ronda Smith was in choir now and she had
been at the last practice. So Mary Jane told Mary

(01:18:56):
Brunner she did not plan to go to choir practice
for a while.

Speaker 7 (01:19:00):
So there's more people that are talking about the general
weirdness of Mary Jane.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
Yes, it seems to be pretty unanimous.

Speaker 7 (01:19:07):
So that's helping the detectives in terms of making up
their mind, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
So. Yeah, I mean the things they're saying are a
little strange, and they're in relation to Ronda and the pastor.

Speaker 7 (01:19:18):
Yeah, more than a little strange.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
Yeah, So now detectives were desperate to interview Mary Jane.

Speaker 7 (01:19:24):
Oh I bet they are.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
The stories about her odd behavior were just piling up,
so they also needed to find out more about her gun.
To their happy surprise, she was the first choir member
to arrive for practice when they waited for her one
evening at the church, so they recognized the short, heavy
set woman from her driver's license photo. She had almost

(01:19:46):
a big goofy grin on her face, there was a
large pair of wide rimmed glasses balancing on her nose,
and she had a large brown wig that looked like
it was just kind of sitting on top of her head.
But she was just starting to talk immediately as she
saw them. You know, I've been meaning to call you, guys,
I've been meaning to I knew you were at the house.
I've been meaning to call. I was hoping i'd run

(01:20:07):
into you at the church. So the detectives were taken
aback like whoe. Before even introducing herself, she was already
talking a mile a minute and making excuses she did.
She right away went into explaining that she had called
the church Monday looking for the new church directory and

(01:20:27):
had been surprised when Ronda answered the phone. Ronda told
her She said that she was filling in as secretary
at the church office while Pastor Shrieves was away at
a conference, so they talked for about ten minutes. Mary
Jane said that Ronda took down a message for the
pastor to let him know that she had called. But
they also talked about how Mary Jane was not getting

(01:20:50):
along with her brother and said she was tired of
living with him. Mary Jane told the detectives this, and
she claimed that Ronda told her about an apartment next
to hers that was available, so the next day, Mary
Jane said she went to check out the apartment. While
on her way there, she drove past the church in
the morning and saw Ronda's car in the parking lot.

(01:21:13):
There weren't any other cars in the parking lot, but
nothing seemed unusual to her. Mary Jane explained that on
the day Ronda was shot, she had left her house
at five minutes to eleven for an eleven thirty appointment
at Holiday Here in Quakertown. Her brother was home and
saw her leave, she said, and after her hair appointment,

(01:21:33):
she went shopping at Joanne Fabrics in the same plaza.
And she was home by three. So it did kind
of strike them as suspicious that Mary Jane would say
these times so precisely before they even asked her about it.
They did continue asking her some questions, and they brought
up that records showed she did own a gun. When

(01:21:55):
asked where it was, she said she had thrown it
away a long time ago, like years ago. She said
she'd thrown it out of her car along the road
or into the woods. Now, they had never heard of
anyone just throwing a gun away like that, and they
didn't believe her. Asked if she hadn't been concerned that
someone might find that gun like a child, she said, well,

(01:22:16):
if I actually threw it into a lake somewhere. Then
she went on to get more specific and said she
threw it in a lake Knackamixon, somewhere in the deep end,
down by the boat dock. She claimed she got rid
of the gun because she'd been having problems with a
woman at the Dennis where she used to work. So
Mary Jane claimed she was so nervous that police would
find this gun and believed she wanted to hurt Diane,

(01:22:39):
that she threw it away. That same day, she had
fired the gun just once.

Speaker 7 (01:22:44):
She said, yeah, I think she said that just to
be sure that if they did find the gun, she
had a reason for it being fired exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
I think you're right. So tell us a little bit
about that article that came out after her father disappeared.

Speaker 7 (01:23:01):
Well, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article that made her
look like a suspect in their father's disappearance. She said
that upset her and she was so depressed that she
was contemplating suicide. So to test the gun, she had
fired it into her yard, but its loud sounded scared her.
Now the police still didn't believe Mary Jane's explanation about

(01:23:22):
where the gun was. They thought she still had it,
but they doubted she would admit the truth. And by
then Mary Jane was already off on another topic. She
started to tell them about how on the Sunday before
Rondad died, she had stood up in front of the
congregation to thank the group for the financial assistance they
had provided her. Now, Mary Jane sounded annoyed by this.

(01:23:45):
Now it's seven o'clock in choirs starting downstairs. Mary Jane
should have returned to the group because they're getting ready
to start practice, but she had an audience upstairs, so
she was in no real rush to stop talking. She
continued talking as they walked to the door.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Yeah. In fact, Mary Jane talked for so long that
it was too late to interview any of the other
choir members. But the police were encouraged by what they
had gotten from her so far. She had mentioned the
time of five minutes to eleven, the exact time they
believed Ronda was shot, and Mary Jane confessed she knew
Ronda was working at the church that week. Only two

(01:24:23):
other people had known that, Pastor Shrieves and the church
council president. Then there was her out of nowhere mention
of how the church had assisted Ronda, and Mary Jane
seemed really jealous about this, so they couldn't believe Mary
Jane's story about the gun. It all added up to
convince them now that Mary Jane Fonder really had killed

(01:24:46):
Ronda Smith. So when Mary Jane professed her innocence, her
voice completely changed into a slower, low pitched, angry voice.
It was a voice that investigators hadn't previous heard in
all the hours they had spoken to Mary Jane, and
to them it was also a voice that seemed just
plain evil. Mary Jane's sweet old lady facade had been cracked,

(01:25:10):
revealing something else hidden underneath, and this was probably the
Mary Jane that poor Ronda had seen right before Mary
Jane killed her. So, while the two detectives were interviewing
Mary Jane at the church, there were two state troopers
who went to her house to talk to her brother. Alone.
Ed Fonder answered the door, and although both men had

(01:25:32):
seen some filthy homes during their time in law enforcement,
they would describe the Fonder house as revolting. So the
place was a real mess, with piles of paper stecked
from the floor almost to the ceiling. In the living room,
there were plastic jugs half filled with water in one
corner of the room that were covered with cobwebs all

(01:25:52):
the way up to the ceiling. There were also boxes
of assorted junk covering nearly every part of the floor,
and where you could see the carpet, it was so
worn that you could also see the plywood underneath it.
Other parts of the floor were just disgusting and covered
with bird seed and animal feces. So Ed, though was polite,

(01:26:13):
he said he didn't believe his sister had anything to
do with their father's disappearance, but he did say that
Mary Jane had been upset lately. He said she'd been
too upset to go to Ronda's funeral, so Ed had
gone in her place. At the luncheon. After the funeral,
Ed said he picked up some pamphlets about dealing with
grief and he gave them to Mary Jane, and Mary

(01:26:36):
Jane had said to him that the information the pamphlets
reflected exactly what she was going through after Ronda's death.
She said she was feeling depressed and really stressed out
and and had started having nightmares. Then Ed ended the interview.
He told the troopers though, that he would be willing
to answer any questions they might have in the future,

(01:26:59):
and he said he would let Mary Jane know that
they had stopped by the day after speaking to Mary
Jane at the church, the detective's first stop was the
holiday hair salon that Mary Jane said she had been
to the day Ronda died, so the salon was able
to give them the customer signing sheet for January twenty third,
and Mary Jane's name was on the sheet with a

(01:27:21):
sign in time of eleven twenty two am. The officers
were unable to talk to the stylist who did Mary
Jane's hair though that day because she wasn't scheduled to work.

Speaker 7 (01:27:31):
The officers also drove two different routes from Mary Jane's
house to the salon to determine whether Mary Jane would
have had enough time to leave her house, stop at
the church, and get to the salon within the time
frame that Ronda had been shot. During their first trip,
they traveled from her house to the salon, which is
a ten point two mile route. It took about seventeen
minutes to drive. On a second, they first drove from

(01:27:54):
Mary Jane's house to the church, which is three point
two miles and took about five minutes. From the church
to the salon was another eight miles and took fourteen minutes. Now,
if Rihindo was shot just after ten fifty four am,
as police suspected, because that's when her Internet activity had
abruptly stopped, and Mary Jane would have had enough time
to get from the church to the salon by eleven twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
Two, well yeah, really plenty of time. So a few
days later they spoke with Mary Jane's hair stylist. She
knew Mary Jane as a regular customer, though she hadn't
come by for an appointment for a long time prior
to January twenty third. That day, she saw Mary Jane
pull into the shopping center parking lot and parker car
in the handicapped parking spot in front of the salon.

(01:28:39):
Mary Jane had not made an appointment that day, but
she did sign in on the walk in sheet. When
she took Mary Jane for her hair styling, Mary Jane
followed her normal routine of taking off the wig she
was wearing to have her own hair washed and styled.
Mary Jane wasn't acting differently that day, but she didn't

(01:28:59):
mutter to herself well while her hair was drying. Still,
that was not abnormal for Mary Jane. She was talking
a little louder than usual, but the stylist could not
hear what she was saying. After Mary Jane left, she'd
forgotten and left her wig behind, so that was unusual.
The wig was easy to find under the front counter,
but the police did not take it because they didn't

(01:29:21):
have a search warrant. They did contact the DA to
get a warrant, quickly. They thought the wig would give
them enough cause to search Mary Jane's house for her gun,
and if they could find that, the case would be closed.
So the wig was picked up and put into evidence
the next day, and two elements found in gunpowder residue
were found on the wig, but not a third element

(01:29:43):
that's required for it to be a definite match. So
during one meeting with the pastor in early February, when
the subject of Mary Jane came up, a detective leaned
in and said to the pastor, we know a lot
about Mary Jane. Fonder So Pastor Shreeves would never forget
those words, because in that moment he put it all together.

(01:30:04):
The police did believe that Mary Jane, Mary Jane had
called Ronda, had killed Ronda. Strangely, this brought Shreeves some peace.
Of course, the idea of going to church every week
with a murderer did frighten him, but you know, at
least now he had some idea what to watch out for,
and wasn't suspicious of the whole world as he had

(01:30:25):
been for a while. That Mary Jane was the killer
had never even crossed his mind. But after he heard that,
it suddenly made sense all the phone messages she'd left
for him, the confession of her romantic feelings for him.
That gave her a motive. So the lake was searched,
but no gun was recovered until a fisherman found it.

Speaker 7 (01:30:45):
It was a miracle. The police had searched for the
gun in the lake and just couldn't find it, and
then a fisherman sometime in April kind of on the
shore of the lake there was a gun. So that
was enough cause for the police to arrest Mary Jane
for Ronda.

Speaker 3 (01:31:00):
Well, yeah, they could tell by the gun that it
hadn't been in there for fourteen years. For one thing, No,
couldn't have been now, so they arrested her for Ronda's murder.
During police questioning, she'd admitted to purchasing a thirty eight
and she claimed to have thrown it into Lake Nakamixon
in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 7 (01:31:18):
Yeah, well, the gun was in too good shape to
be thrown in fourteen years previously. So the idea from
the police's standpoint is that Mary Jane still had the gun,
and once she learned that she might be a suspect,
she'd decided to get rid of the gun.

Speaker 3 (01:31:34):
Well, plus she'd used the gun to kill Ronda. Forensic
testing proved that the recovered gun and ammunition had been
put in the lake more recently, and the gun found
was registered to Mary Jane, and they knew it had
been used to kill Ronda Smith. So the pastor avoided

(01:32:10):
most of the media's questions that were directed at him,
but he did speak to the Philadelphia Inquirer and expressed
disbelief at Mary Jane's arrests. But of course, Pastor Shreeves
had known for weeks that the police were focusing on
Mary Jane, and he had long since been convinced that
she was the one who had killed Ronda, but the
media reports following her arrest were particularly painful for the

(01:32:34):
pastor to read. Mary Jane had an attorney named Michael Applebaum,
a defense lawyer with a good reputation in the area.
He'd worked four murder cases before taking Mary Jane on
as a client. Mary Jane had contacted Applebom shortly after
a lengthy February twenty fifth interview at the State Police barracks.

(01:32:55):
She and her brother Ed met in his office with
his associate attorney, who would end up being the second
chair for her defense. So following her arrest, Applebaum spoke
to the Prince Press on her behalf. From what we've determined,
she's a good Christian, active in her church, and she
hardly knew Rohnd except from the church. Many reporters were

(01:33:16):
asking if Mary Jane suffered from mental illness, and although
Applebaum said he did not have enough information to answer that,
he was very quick to mention her many physical health problems,
which included diabetes, arthritis, and high blood pressure. He tried
to paint her as a kindly old woman who loved
her church, but said she was not loved in return

(01:33:39):
by the congregants. He even compared their treatment of Mary
Jane to the Salem witch trials. He believed they had
shunned her.

Speaker 7 (01:33:48):
That's a good defense lawyer's ploy.

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
Well, yeah, they have to be dramatic.

Speaker 7 (01:33:52):
There's nothing that's too much hyperbole.

Speaker 3 (01:33:55):
No, I mean his job is to defend her.

Speaker 7 (01:33:57):
Yeah, Salem witch trials.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
Yeah. Well, it was difficult for Pastor Shreeves to see
his church portrayed as being insensitive or not compassionate toward
Mary Jane. He felt like they were being forced to
face a hard truth about themselves. But What bothered Shrieves
even more than those accusations were Mary Jane's own words.
He really hated to read about the feelings Mary Jane

(01:34:22):
apparently had had for him, and he worried about the
many ways people would misinterpret his own role in this
imaginary love triangle. The idea that somebody could suspect him
of having romantic involvement with his congregants, whether it be
Ronda or Mary Jane, left him feeling very uncomfortable. But
nothing would bother him more than the reports of what

(01:34:44):
Mary Jane told police during her interviews about her fears
that Shreeves had fallen in love with Ronda and gotten
involved in something he shouldn't have, so as if she
was some sort of motherly figure trying to protect him,
because as he had gotten in over his head.

Speaker 7 (01:35:03):
That's good.

Speaker 3 (01:35:04):
So the day after the arrest, Mary Jane was close
to the thoughts of anybody at Trinity Evangelical in a way.
Her presence was looming over every church member. Choir practice
did go ahead as scheduled, but few were really able
to concentrate. Most of the women there were still reeling
from the shock of this.

Speaker 7 (01:35:25):
Yeah, of course, it's a small town murders don't happen very.

Speaker 3 (01:35:29):
Frequently, well, not by modest looking church ladies.

Speaker 7 (01:35:33):
H sixty year old church lady.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
Yeah, in poor health yeap apparently. So. Then Ed Fonder
went to the police to tell them about something he
found in his car that might be considered evidence against
his sister. Ed explained he had gotten into the car
that morning to go for an oil change and he
saw sunlight reflecting off of a metal object on the

(01:35:56):
floor of the driver's seat. Ed thought it was an
earring it for, but after he picked it up and
took a closer look, it appeared to be some sort
of discharged bullet. So Ed placed the object back where
he had found it and immediately called his attorney, who
suggested he turn it over to the police. The police
asked permission to search Ed's car, and he agreed, and

(01:36:18):
he signed a consent for him. The search confirmed Ed's
original suspicions. A large bullet fragment was on the driver's
side floor, as well as another smaller fragment elsewhere in
the car. So when this later became public knowledge, many
people were just stunned that Ed Fonder would so willingly
cooperate in handing over potentially damning evidence against his sister.

Speaker 7 (01:36:42):
You, I'm not so sure why people should be stunned.
Ed is doing what he thinks is the right thing.

Speaker 3 (01:36:47):
Yeah, he was cooperating with the police at every turn.

Speaker 7 (01:36:50):
Yeah, they still shocked people when he eventually ended up
testifying against her in court.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
Yeah, but like you said, I guess this said nothing
to do with taking sides. He just had this strong
sense of morals and was devoutly religious. And for him,
it wasn't like he was cited against her. He just
believed in telling the truth. So I guess it was
as simple as that.

Speaker 7 (01:37:12):
Yeah. It sounds simplistic, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:14):
Yeah, it does. The police sent specimens from Mary Jane's
car to be tested for gunpowder residue, and a specimen
from the turn signal handle and the driver's store handle
both tested positive when testing was completed. A few weeks later,
there was another positive GSR specimen from Mary Jane's driver's seat.

(01:37:35):
So Apple Bomb had an expert to a psychological evaluation
on Mary Jane. The results, which were never publicly released,
found that Mary Jane was not mentally ill or legally insane.
So although there was some paranoia and a few schizophrenic tendencies.
The exam found she was not suffering from any major delusions.

(01:37:58):
So had apple Bomb planned to pursue an insanity defense,
he certainly could have had another test done, but Mary
Jane was insisting she was innocent, and that left the
possibility of an insanity defense out altogether.

Speaker 7 (01:38:13):
It's tough to argue insanity if the perpetrator is insisting
of her innocence.

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
Yeah, well, yeah, yes so. Mary Jane's trial began on
October twenty first, two thousand and eight, and prosecutors argued
that she was jealous of new member Randa Smith, who
was receiving sympathetic attention and even financial assistance from some
of the churches, congregants and the pastor. Mary Jane's defense

(01:38:40):
attorney told the court that his client was not present
at the scene of the crime and that she did
not shoot Ronda Smith. He also argued that Ronda's death
may have been suicide or a homicide committed by a
jealous wife or a lover. During closing arguments, Mary Jane's
attorney told the jury that Mary Jane's brother is Act Fonder,

(01:39:00):
was a likely suspect, pointing out that he had hired
a lawyer after finding the bullet fragments in his car
and notifying the police. But the prosecution wanted the jury
to hear Mary Jane's jealousy directly from her own mouth,
so on the eighth day of the trial, almost three
hours of her February twenty fifth interview with police was
played for the courtroom. Lots of people think maybe my

(01:39:23):
pastor was involved with that lady, Mary Jane said, I
wonder if the poor pastor was in love with that lady.

Speaker 7 (01:39:29):
So the recording showed that Mary Jane was forthcoming with
police throughout their interview until they mentioned that her wig
was being tested for gunshot residue. Then her voice broke
as she asserted her innocence. I'm sure that nothing appeared
in my wig because I don't have a gun and
I didn't do anything, she said.

Speaker 3 (01:39:49):
Well, Applebaum knew the interview was going to hurt her
in the eyes of the jury, and he believed if
she had simply declined to talk to the police, she
could have had a not guilty verdict, had the right,
but she simply did not have the ability to remain silent.
So after the prosecution rested its case. It was announced
the defense wouldn't be presenting a case and that Mary

(01:40:11):
Jane wouldn't testify.

Speaker 7 (01:40:13):
Yeah, I guess apple Baum figured that she would be
very damaging to her case if she were to testify.

Speaker 3 (01:40:19):
I know, but think of the entertainment value.

Speaker 7 (01:40:23):
Well, yeah, no, I know, but yeah, I can see
her on the stand.

Speaker 3 (01:40:29):
Well, I would just think that the prosecution would be
able to get her worked up, right, Oh yeah, and
she would show her true self. But Applebaum gave his
closing statement first, and this time his closing argument differed
from that of his opening statement. So, rather than pointing
to the possibility of suicide or that one of Ronda's

(01:40:50):
boyfriends may have committed her murder, he turned the spotlight
right on Ed Fonder, claiming he was a much more
believable suspect than Mary Jane. He pointed out how suspicious
it was that Ed hired a lawyer after finding those
bullet fragments. There's just as much evidence against Ed Fonder
as there is Mary Jane, Applebaum said, in fact, even more.

Speaker 7 (01:41:13):
Well, except for the fact that they have absolutely no
motive for Ed to have done it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 7 (01:41:19):
They got plenty of motive for Mary Jane.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
Yes, that's true and physical evidence. So it was October thirtieth,
after six hours of deliberations, when the jury found Mary
Jane guilty of first degree murder and possession of an
instrument of crime. On December fifth, she was sentenced to
serve life in prison. Now, at her sentencing hearing, she
made the following statement, I did not kill Ronda Smith.

(01:41:45):
I thought she was a lovely girl, and I certainly
wasn't jealous of this woman for any reason. I'm so
sorry she's gone, but in the same respect, I will
be gone too. I'm the second person in the church
to be murdered, murdered by the system, that is. But
after a year, Mary Jane said she was beginning to
remember the actions that brought her to prison. She admitted

(01:42:08):
that on January twenty third, two thousand and eight, she
had cornered Ronda in the basement church office, pulled back
the hammer of the pistol, and fired two bullets into
her head. She said she regrets telling everyone, the judge
and Ronda's family that she was innocent. With time to
think in prison, the events that led up to Ronda's

(01:42:28):
murder are beginning to become clear, she said. But Mary
Jane did say that she still didn't remember killing Ronda Smith.
She remembered calling the church two days before Ronda's death,
and when she heard Ronda's voice, she hung up in surprise.
She also remembered being jealous that Ronda was asked to
answer the phones instead of her. She still didn't remember

(01:42:52):
going to the church on January twenty third, or actually
speaking to Ronda that day, but she suddenly had these
memories of going that morning to a small lake and
park in nearby Haycock Township, near where the gun was found. Now,
as far as the investigation into the disappearance of Mary
Jane's father, that remains open and is not solved. Mary

(01:43:16):
Jane is considered the prime suspect in the case, and
she was the only suspect who had ever been publicly identified.
Because the police can't divert resources from active cases with
suspects who are not already incarcerated, the pace of the
investigation was very slow. Then, in February of twenty ten,

(01:43:36):
Mary Jane dropped her appeal of her conviction, and on
June fourth, twenty eighteen, she died of cardiac arrest at
the State Correctional Institution Muncie in Lycominge County, Pennsylvania. So
now we'll never know what happened to her father.

Speaker 7 (01:43:52):
Yeah, we're not going to pursue that.

Speaker 3 (01:43:54):
Well, no, but there really doesn't seem to be any
other explanation. Why haven't they found his body or anything.
That's the real mystery.

Speaker 7 (01:44:02):
Picked a good spot, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:44:04):
Okay, how about a little feedback.

Speaker 9 (01:44:06):
Okay, it's time for listener feedback.

Speaker 7 (01:44:29):
I got some voicemails for you today.

Speaker 3 (01:44:31):
Love voicemails.

Speaker 7 (01:44:32):
So the first one is from Anna. Yeah, and she
has a couple case suggestions, although I couldn't find very
much information about one of them, so we'll just discuss
one of her two suggestions.

Speaker 3 (01:44:45):
All right, Hi, Jillen Dick. This is Anna from North Dakota.

Speaker 10 (01:44:50):
I recently sat a twenty twenty episode in which you
guys were featured, and I immediately went out of my
Spotify and started following you guys. Couldn't wait to start
listening to you, and now you guys have quickly become
my favorite podcast, especially since you guys are one into
beer two. Dick is a pediatrician and I am a nurse,

(01:45:14):
and three you guys are in the two crime, which
of course is potentially my greatest passion. Anyway, while I
have really enjoyed listening to you guys' episodes, the one
that really resonated with me this morning was listening to
the one about Ala, the little twenty month old girl
that just breaks my heart and it reminds me of
baby Brianna that was also a point of discussion in

(01:45:41):
previous years. I just really don't understand how people can
treat babies that way. Anyway, I have two cases to
recommend to you. One is local to my hometown of Straven, Colorado,
and it is regarding Kayla Brown and Samuel Holman, occurring

(01:46:01):
in March of two thousand and four. Samuel shot Kayla
in the face as she was his ex girlfriend at
the time I guess, and then he also committed suicide.
There really has not been much information regarding that case
since that time, but Kayla is now dating my estranged brother,
so I was very interested to hear about this case

(01:46:24):
and see if you guys can dig up some information
on that. A beer that I would recommend is from
the local Parts in Labor Brewing in Sterling, and it's
called Looselips Sink Ships of Vanilla Coconutporter. I've never had it,
but it sounds delicious. The second one that I would
recommend you guys cover is the case of Anita Knetsen

(01:46:44):
that occurred in my non.

Speaker 3 (01:46:45):
Arth Dakota in June of two thousand and seven.

Speaker 10 (01:46:47):
I have had the hardest time getting any information on
this case. I saw one date Line episode about her
that did not really give MA any answers. I just
when getting ready to leave this voicemail, was researching the
woman who was charged with her murder and she was
actually acquitted and found innocent. One of my other favorite podcasts,

(01:47:09):
Midwest Murder, they are local to then at North Dakota,
and they very quickly shut down their request for them
to cover this case. So if there's an information that
you guys could find about that case, that would be amazing.
A North Dakota beer that is local too Bismark, which
is where I live, is from Laughing Sun Brewery and
it is their Red Dwarf, which is a sour and

(01:47:33):
it is very delicious. I enjoy having it every time
I go there. Thanks again for your guys' input. I
really enjoy listening to you guys and can't wait to
catch up on all of your episodes as I have
started right from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:47:45):
Well, thank you, Anna. This is one of maybe a
handful of people who found us through twenty twenty, so
I guess it was worth the effort. It was fun. Yeah,
it was definitely experience that we enjoyed. So we're really
happy you found us. Anna. So, Anita Knutson, what'd you
find out, Dicky? Looks like you didn't find a lot either.

Speaker 7 (01:48:05):
Well I didn't, but I found more about Anita than
I did about Sarah Brown. Okay, I don't really have
at this point a lot more information than Anna had.

Speaker 3 (01:48:15):
Okay, Well, you know, we can always just put it
out there for other listeners who might have invoter right
into us.

Speaker 7 (01:48:21):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:48:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:48:22):
So she was a student at Minor State University and
found stabbed to death in early June two thousand and seven.
This is Anita Anita, and then eight years ago by
crime is still unsolved, and then the Minor Police department
was under more pressure to find the killer. DNA testing
of the murder weapon hadn't been done, and finally did
get done, and it was not a full DNA profile,

(01:48:47):
but what they could tell from the DNA was it
was a female, or at least not a male, and
and his roommate, Nicole Price, wasn't excluded by DNA testing,
so she was arrested when I out March of this
year and it was found not guilty.

Speaker 3 (01:49:04):
Well that's interesting, okay, so we'll look more into that.
And Sarah Brown and just a quick mention of Aila Reynolds.
That was one of the first cases we did, maybe
in the first ten that we ever did when we
lived in Maine.

Speaker 7 (01:49:18):
Yeah. That was a local case, yeah, or a fairly
local case and a.

Speaker 3 (01:49:22):
Real mystery, really, and it looks like we haven't found
out much since. Huh just looking up the Wikipedia here,
and it's not solved. We all think the boyfriend did it.
The mother has filed civil suits against him, yeah, but
nothing more than that. No, Nope, nothing's been found. So
that's just heartbreaking though, who does that nineteen months old?

(01:49:43):
That's just that's the shittiest thing ever. That's just not imaginable,
isn't it. It is heartbreaking. So this guy was just
a real piece of human trash, I guess, not a
great person, but at all what a horrible person, and
it is heartbreaking for the mother. These people with very
limited means, young people, right, so they already had their

(01:50:04):
difficulties and apparently the father of Aila was just horrible abusive. Okay, well,
thanks Anna, and maybe we'll hear some more about those
cases you brought up. And I definitely will try red
Dwarf because sours are my favorite. I love them.

Speaker 7 (01:50:22):
We'll look out for it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:24):
Okay. So the next voicemail is from the next one's
from Louise.

Speaker 7 (01:50:28):
Okay, and she's got a fascinating case.

Speaker 3 (01:50:31):
All right, let's hear it, Hi, Jill and Dick.

Speaker 4 (01:50:35):
I just thought of this one because she's only just
been found guilty Aaron Patterson, the mushroom murderer. She spaking
all over our media for the last I don't even
know how long it's been, but oh sorry, this is
Louise from Brisbane, recent member. So yeah, I mean, she's

(01:50:55):
only she was found guilty like a couple of days ago.
He basically cooked some beef Wellington with death cap mushrooms
and serve them up to her in law's family and
killed three of them and seriously or made a fourth
one really sick. So yeah, that might be an interesting

(01:51:17):
one for you if you get some time. Okay, thanks bye.

Speaker 3 (01:51:22):
Thank you, Louise. Actually, I have seen some information on
this case. It's been pretty big in the news and
on YouTube. I've noticed a lot about it, so I
would love to cover that. Any kind of poisoning is
usually fascinating, especially if it's a domestic situation like that.
So yeah, there's a lot of information on YouTube, lots
of stuff that we can use, and I think we'll

(01:51:44):
go ahead and cover that case soon.

Speaker 7 (01:51:47):
Yeah, we sure.

Speaker 3 (01:51:48):
Plenty of information out there on it. So thank you, Louise.
I love how excited you were about it that you
even forgot to say your name at first. That's a
real true crime person that can get that excited.

Speaker 7 (01:52:00):
Yeah. She killed her in laws and another relative by marriage,
and a husband of that couple survived. Her estranged husband
was supposed to be present for the meal also, but
he begged off, and see he didn't do it, so
good for him.

Speaker 3 (01:52:17):
I guess he got lucky there. Yeah, but yeah, it
was definitely planned out. Yeah, she knew where to get
them and everything. So it was July seventh, Yeah, it
was very recent.

Speaker 7 (01:52:28):
She was found guilty on all counts and sentencing is
somewhere down the road.

Speaker 3 (01:52:33):
Yeah, very famous case right now. Okay, thanks Louise, and
we have a voicemail for Myleen. I just have to
thank you guys for these voicemails. If we could get
four voicemails every week, I would love it because I
would play them. So just keep that in mind. Eileen,
let's hear what she has to say. Hi, Jill and Dick.

Speaker 2 (01:52:54):
This is Eileen. I'm pulling from Tucson, Arizona about a
very fascinating case that began in twenty twelve. It involved
a little six year old girl in Tucson called isabel Cellus.
She was taken from her bed in the middle of
the night, despite their being dogs in the house and

(01:53:14):
the rest of the family sleeping nearby. She was missing
for five years when a suspect became on the police radar,
and he also eventually was linked to another murdering child.
Immediately after missing, finger pointing began and the father was
the prime suspect for quite some time. The public became
very involved and they had ceremonies with lots of purple

(01:53:38):
balloons and everybody praying for Isabelle's safe return. Unfortunately that
was not to happen, and the gentleman who did take
her has been arrested finally and is now serving time.
Thank you very much. I enjoy your podcast, and I
don't drink alcohol, so I don't really have a beer recommendation,

(01:54:00):
but I'm sure you'll figure out something.

Speaker 3 (01:54:02):
Thanks well, Thanks Eileen. Yeah, these cases about children are
always tough. There's actually a big segment of our listeners
that just hate it when we cover a case with
a child, and then there's another segment where it's kind
of their favorite, not in a horrible, mean spirited way,
but just because of you know, your history as a
pediatrician and the discussions that can happen with that. But

(01:54:26):
this was definitely a tragic case and quite a mystery
how she was able to be abducted.

Speaker 7 (01:54:32):
Yeah, especially with dogs in the house.

Speaker 3 (01:54:34):
I know, I always count on our dogs. I was
still safe.

Speaker 7 (01:54:37):
That's why he was a suspect, or at least a
person of interest.

Speaker 3 (01:54:41):
The father. The father, Yeah, yeah, clearly.

Speaker 7 (01:54:44):
The guy who did do it. And I'll have to
look more into this, but apparently he had some sort
of brain cramp because he told authorities he would tell
them where Isabel's body could be found if they would
drop burglary charges against him. Oh so, I guess certainly,
because he knew where the remains were. He was a.

Speaker 3 (01:55:04):
Suspect, absolutely, I could see that.

Speaker 7 (01:55:07):
So he went on trial in twenty twenty three that
ended up with a hung jury. The retrial last year,
he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison,
and Aileen mentioned that he was liable to another murder.
This is a separate trial. He was found guilty in
the murder of a thirteen year old named Marabelle Gonzales
in twenty fourteen.

Speaker 3 (01:55:27):
So just a real scumback, he sounds like it. Yeah. Well,
we can always find beers in Tucson, that's for sure, Eileen.
They have some great breweries there that we visit because
it's really not that far from us. Yeah, and we
have family in the area, so that will be easy
for us to do.

Speaker 7 (01:55:45):
Sure. Well.

Speaker 3 (01:55:45):
Yeah, so thank you, Eileen. Then we have one more
voicemail from Claire.

Speaker 7 (01:55:50):
This is from Claire.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
All righty, hi, hello from the UK. My name's Clare.

Speaker 5 (01:55:55):
I live in the north of England in a little
town called weather Bay, which is in Yorkshire, and I
absolutely love your podcast. I've been listening to it for
oh ages, ages and ages, and I love the way
that you combine prime with a bit of medical stuff.
I'm a midwife, so a lot of what you're talking about,
I'm like, yes, that's right, that does not make sense.

(01:56:18):
But I have something that I would like you to
look into. And also a beer recommendation from brewery in
that same city, so very close to where I live.
A woman called Claudia Lawrence went missing not long after
my first daughter was born, so it's perhaps well almost

(01:56:38):
twenty years ago now. She was basically walking to work
one day and disappeared, and there's loads of podcasts, loads
of furies about it. But I would really love your
take on it. And whilst you're at it, if you
fancy trying a beer called Get Baked. It's the world
famous chocolate cake stout. It's a dark beer, lots of chocolate,

(01:57:02):
cocoa vanilla, very tasty. You can only have one though,
very strong as well. That is also brewed in the
same city. So I'd love to hear your take on
what might have happened to Claudia. Sadly heard Dark Peter
died not too long ago, but her mum is still
alive and still very much hoping for any information about

(01:57:25):
what happened to a daughter.

Speaker 3 (01:57:27):
All very mysterious.

Speaker 5 (01:57:28):
There's lots of Weatherbee is also implicated because there is
some suggestion that she was seen trying to get help
on a very busy road. We're a motorway close to
where we are. Yeah, keep doing what you're doing, love
the podcast, keep going.

Speaker 3 (01:57:44):
Well, thank you. Clear what a beautiful accent they have
to say. So we do like to look at some
of these ansolved cases more because we really haven't covered
that many of them. So I definitely would like to
look into this. Did you find anything out about it,
Dickie or pretty much gave us a story that's.

Speaker 7 (01:58:04):
This basic story.

Speaker 3 (01:58:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:58:06):
One thing I did read was it we did? We did?
The investigators did a little bit of victim abuse. I
guess Claudia Lawrence have a fairly active social life.

Speaker 3 (01:58:18):
Victim blaming and so yeah she was.

Speaker 7 (01:58:21):
Yeah, victim blaming is exactly it. There's a lot of
suspects that have been looked at. One of those suspects
is a serial killer and Christopher Halliwell, but like we've said,
nobody's been charged at this point. I think it'd be
an interesting thing to look into.

Speaker 3 (01:58:37):
Yeah, definitely. And this beer get Baked sounds good. Have
you heard of it?

Speaker 7 (01:58:43):
I haven't.

Speaker 3 (01:58:43):
It's new to you, all right, So let's look into
that because we love a chocolate stout it.

Speaker 7 (01:58:49):
It might be difficult getting it, well.

Speaker 3 (01:58:51):
Look, I have faith in you. I know you can
do it. So another thing just I wanted to say
before we end feedback for the day is this James
Craig trial. We've been following the dentist who murdered his
wife with poison accused it. Yeah, he's not convicted yet.
I believe he will be, but just such a fascinating

(01:59:12):
case about how he was able to get uphold of
these three different poison the texts, just the text that
he had sending the girlfriend and the wife, and it's
really crazy. It's one of the craziest cases I've ever heard.
And that's saying something because we've heard some crazy cases.

Speaker 7 (01:59:29):
Yes we have.

Speaker 3 (01:59:30):
I love it because it is not being televised, but
there is an attorney on YouTube, Lawyer Lee, who we
love to watch, and she does an update on the
case Monday through Friday every day and is able to
go online and actually see the trial, so she can
kind of give us a secondhand experience on that trial.

(01:59:52):
So that's something if you're looking for something to follow
that's a current case, I would recommend it. I think
it's a really interesting case. And I guess that'll be
it for today. Huh. I think I think we've done
enough for today.

Speaker 7 (02:00:05):
We've done enough damage.

Speaker 3 (02:00:08):
Okay, Well, we are so appreciative for all of you
being here and listening to us today. We hope you
have a wonderful week and we'll see you soon at
the quiet end.

Speaker 7 (02:00:18):
Come one, dad, We've got plenty of room.

Speaker 3 (02:00:20):
Bye bye, bye, guys.

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