Love Me or Else

by Colin McEvoy

  Ed did not invite the men into the house. In fact, he stood in the doorway as if to block their view of the inside altogether. Dietz didn’t get the impression he necessarily had anything to hide, but that he simply didn’t like having outsiders at his home. From their brief conversation, it appeared to Dietz that Ed was an extremely intelligent man, but also extremely awkward and completely lacking in social skills.

  The officers left a message asking Mary Jane to call Dietz regarding Rhonda’s death.

  Later, Stumpo checked the various records that state police have access to, including the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Assistance Network, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, the National Crime Information Center, and a Pennsylvania gun ownership query. In his research, Stumpo stumbled across something intriguing. State records showed Mary Jane owned a gun, a .38-caliber Rossi revolver she bought in December 1994.

  Mary Jane Fonder’s name continued to come up as Stumpo proceeded with his investigation. On January 28, now five days after Rhonda’s death, Stumpo received the phone records for the church office. He was surprised to note that on January 21, the Monday before Rhonda died, the church had received three calls from Mary Jane’s home.

  The first call came in at 11:07 a.m. and lasted just six seconds. The second call was at 11:10 and lasted for four minutes and twenty-two seconds. The third call was at 11:25 and ran two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

  Two days later, Stumpo received a report from Corporal Mark Garrett, one of the state police’s local ballistics experts. Garrett had completed his bullet analysis in the case. He studied two bullets—the one in the church office ceiling and the one that lodged in Rhonda’s brain. Garrett had determined the bullets were of the .38/.357 caliber class and that they could have been discharged from several makes of revolvers, including Rossi.

  Holy cow, Stumpo thought. Mary Jane Fonder is basically stalking the pastor, and she owns a Rossi.…

  * * *

  Rhonda’s funeral was held Monday, January 28, at the Heintzelman Funeral Home in Hellertown. It was located on the same street where Rhonda used to live, just up the road from the Smiths’ house. The outpouring overwhelmed the Smiths, with more than 250 people attending the 1 o’clock service.

  “Can you believe it? All these people?” Rhonda’s brother Perry said to his father. “If it was me or you, we’d have about ten.”

  Trooper Richard Webb was sent to the funeral to watch out for white cars that could belong to the strange man who had stopped by the church the week before Rhonda’s death. He was also supposed to check whether Mary Jane Fonder was among the mourners.

  Webb noted eight white cars in the funeral home parking lot, but all belonged to either Smith’s friends or Trinity church members. What he did not find, however, was Mary Jane’s 1997 Ford Escort. She did not attend the funeral.

  Rhonda was buried at the Union Cemetery in Hellertown. Some voiced concern about the idea of Rhonda being buried before it had been formally determined whether she killed herself or was murdered, but Paul Hoffman, Lehigh County’s first deputy cororner, assured the public it was not unusual for a victim to be buried before the manner of death was determined.

  “It’s considered pending,” Hoffman told The Intelligencer.

  Leaving the funeral, a reporter from that newspaper approached Sandy Rehrig, the church council’s secretary. Sandy reflected on how sad the church congregation still was, and how difficult Rhonda’s death had been on the entire community.

  “It’s not only the church, it’s the whole community,” she said. “We’re still just hoping and praying it gets resolved soon for the peace and closure of everyone. We really miss Rhonda.”

  * * *

  The state police received Rhonda’s autopsy report during the first week of the investigation. Dr. Sara Funke, an Allentown-based forensic pathologist who performs regular autopsies at St. Luke’s Hospital in Fountain Hill, filed the report.

  She recorded two gunshot wounds to Rhonda’s head. The first was on her forehead, starting several inches above her eyes, just right of center and ending at her hairline. That bullet had traveled upward along Rhonda’s forehead, splitting the skin and grazing the front of her skull. The first wound was nonfatal. The second one was not.

  The other wound was just above her right ear, penetrating her skull with no exit wound. A copper jacket and lead projectile subsequently found in the lower left rear of Rhonda’s brain indicated the bullet took a front-to-back and slightly left path, Funke noted.

  There was no soot found on Rhonda’s skin that would have been consistent with a gun being pressed to her skin. However, Funke said she could not rule out such contact without knowing what kind of gun was used.

  Funke found stippling, or small, round gunpowder marks, on Rhonda’s right hand and the right side of her face. The stippling indicated Rhonda was shot at an intermediate range, between three and four feet away, but Funke again noted she couldn’t be sure of that without knowing the weapon used.

  Funke ruled that Rhonda’s cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. The manner of death, however, was left as undetermined for now.

  CHAPTER 14

  About a week into the investigation, the state police brought in Corporal Bob Egan to assist Stumpo with the case. The twenty-four-year police veteran was part of the local criminal investigation assessment team, a group that worked on complicated homicide and cold cases. Still unsolved after more than a week, the investigation into Rhonda Smith’s death was proving to be a complicated one, and if not solved soon, authorities feared it could find itself among those cold cases.

  In terms of homicide experience, Egan was the antithesis of Stumpo. While Stumpo was now serving as the main investigator on his first homicide case, Egan had worked on seventy-five homicide cases and been the main investigator on fifteen of them. Starting out as a patrolman in Montgomery and Bucks Counties for the first decade of his career, Egan started working investigations at the Bethlehem barracks in 1993.

  Among his cases was Charles Cullen, the male nurse who killed as many as forty patients over sixteen years while working at hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Cullen was serving life in prison, where authorities were still trying to get information from him about all his victims. There was also the case of Bryan and David Freeman, two teenage skinheads who killed their parents in Salisbury Township, just outside of Allentown. The two brothers and their cousin, Nelson Birdwell III, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the slayings.

  Only one of Egan’s cases had gone unsolved—the murder of Charlotte Fimiano, a real estate agent found strangled to death in Lower Saucon Township. His other seventy-four cases were solved and closed.

  Egan had been in Missouri, interviewing a suspect in a seemingly mob-related shooting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when he got the call about Rhonda Smith’s death. Investigators explained there were still conflicting opinions about whether it was a suicide or a homicide, but they wanted him to join the investigation when he returned.

  Egan joined the case on January 31, and was paired with Stumpo as one of the case’s main investigators. Stumpo had briefly met Egan once or twice in the past, but mainly knew him by reputation from others who knew the detective from the Bethlehem barracks. From what he heard, Stumpo got the impression Egan was a fairly low-key guy who liked to stay out of the limelight.

  And, upon first impression at least, Egan more than lived up to his quiet reputation. The balding, forty-seven-year-old man seemed to go out of his way to stay in the background. It didn’t do much for Stumpo’s confidence in the man, and he began to wonder whether Egan would be a help to him at all during the case.

  “Don’t mind me,” Egan said as they climbed into Stumpo’s car. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  “You’re not going to offend me,” Stumpo said. “If you’re going to have anything to say, say it.”

  “No, no, I’m just along for the ride,” Egan repeated.


  Great, Stumpo thought to himself. He isn’t going to be helpful at all.

  But Stumpo would learn this was just Egan’s way. He didn’t say much, but his mind was always fixated on the case.

  * * *

  One of Egan’s first duties was to attend a meeting with the various investigators and law enforcement officials working on the case. State police Lieutenant William Teper ran the meeting, which also included other state police supervisors, criminal investigators, and forensic services officers. Members of the Bucks County District Attorney’s office also took part, including First Assistant District Attorney David Zellis, who had been assigned to oversee the case for the office.

  The law enforcement officials remained split in their thoughts about the shooting. With Rhonda’s history of depression, some still strongly believed she had committed suicide. They cited Rhonda’s previous attempts to kill herself, especially her trip to the gun range.

  One official pointed to statements Jim Smith had made to the media that his daughter would never commit suicide because she knew she would go to hell if she did. Jim had said her daughter was “brought up to believe in God” and that “a self-murderer does not get into the kingdom of heaven.” This made some authorities wonder whether he was some sort of religious nut. It was pointed out that the Smiths had already admitted they drove right past the church the day Rhonda was killed. What if, as troopers had speculated early on, they found her body and, determined to protect their daughter’s reputation from the stigma of suicide, removed the gun from the scene?

  Those leaning toward homicide pointed out that Rhonda had not one, but two gunshot wounds. But that didn’t convince some of the veteran law enforcement officials, who had seen suicides with more than one gunshot wound before, especially in cases like Rhonda’s, where one wound was superficial.

  The stippling noted in the autopsy report suggested Rhonda was shot from a distance of three or four feet. But that didn’t convince all of the investigators, either. While the forensic pathologist had worked on many suspicious deaths in Lehigh County, Dr. Sara Funke was unknown to many in the primarily Bucks County–based group. Some didn’t know whether to trust her findings.

  Those supporting homicide went through the list of possible suspects. The boyfriends all had alibis, they said, and the investigation into the mysterious stranger was going nowhere fast.

  One official asked if they were getting anywhere with church members. The investigators brought up the fired church secretary and Mary Jane Fonder, a parishioner who was bothering the pastor.

  The name sparked a memory in the mind of Mark Laudenslager, the Springfield Township Police Department chief who had also been called in for the meeting. Laudenslager recalled that Mary Jane’s elderly father, Edward Fonder, had gone missing back in 1993, while Laudenslager was still a patrolman on the force. Fonder was never found and was now presumed dead.

  Back in 1993, Mary Jane had been considered the prime suspect in his disappearance.

  Even with this new information about Mary Jane, however, the police meeting concluded with a determination to keep investigating the Rhonda Smith case both as a possible homicide and a possible suicide.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mary Jane Fonder was born July 5, 1942, the youngest of two children of Edward and Alice Fonder, native Philadelphians.

  During Mary Jane’s childhood, her family, which included older brother Edward IV, lived in West Philadelphia, near the intersection of South 57th Street and Thomas Avenue. Edward Fonder III was a machinist at Messinger Bearings, a Philadelphia manufacturer, while Alice Fonder worked as a proofreader at Chilton Publishing Company in the neighborhood.

  Mary Jane’s younger years were happy ones. The highlights of her weeks were always the weekends. On Saturdays, she and her brother received their $2.50 allowances, and those mornings were like a party to them. On Sundays, Mary Jane and Ed would go to church before spending the afternoon at their grandmother’s house, where they would play with their cousins and some of the neighborhood children.

  But Mary Jane started having emotional problems at a young age. She had her first nervous breakdown when she was eight years old. Following the breakdown, her parents bought her a dog to lift her spirits, a treasured black dachshund, which she named Minnie Minerva.

  Mary Jane’s emotional problems resurfaced when she was sixteen, and this time, they were far worse. That year, her brother had moved to New York to attend Columbia University and Mary Jane missed him terribly. After he left, she felt she had no one to talk to in her life. She also was upset by the recent breakup from her first boyfriend, Jim Schnell.

  At the time, Mary Jane was taking several accelerated classes at John Bartram High School, and her emotional problems starting taking a toll on her schoolwork. Her problems were affecting her physically, too. She became afraid of crowds, which made her feel like her skin was tightening up.

  That year, she tried to commit suicide by overdosing on chloral hydrate, a sedative used to treat anxiety and insomnia. Her mother came home and rushed her to the hospital before any real damage was done.

  Mary Jane was institutionalized at a mental hospital for a month following her suicide attempt. Mary Jane felt the hospital helped her get herself under control, but social interactions continued to be difficult for her. She dropped out of high school shortly after she left the hospital.

  One respite in Mary Jane’s life was her family’s country home in Bucks County, which they had purchased back when Mary Jane was a child. All throughout Mary Jane’s childhood, the family loved to take road trips. In fact, when Mary Jane was still a little girl, her father asked her and her brother to pick whether the family should buy a car or a television. For her the choice was easy: They went with the car, which allowed them to travel the area.

  One of the family’s favorite places to drive was Bucks County, some of the closest rural land to the urban Philadelphia. When Mary Jane was twelve, her family bought a small cabin on more than eleven acres of land in Springfield Township. Mary Jane’s father so loved the new home that he dubbed it his “Garden of Eden.”

  The Fonder family would spend the weekend away at their cabin as often as they could, and they soon became close friends with the Schnell family who lived down the road. Mary Jane became very close with her ex-boyfriend Jim’s younger sister, Roseanna, and even Jim’s new girlfriend, Rosalie, and she soon preferred life at the country home over her time spent in Philadelphia.

  The Schnell and Fonder women would often play board games or crochet together, while Mary Jane’s father regularly went off on his own to explore the property. At other times he was more social, and enjoyed entertaining the families on the piano or accordion.

  But even life in the country wasn’t always enjoyable for the Fonder family. Rosalie, who went on to marry Jim in 1965, remembers the family regularly quarreling, especially Mr. and Mrs. Fonder. The pair would routinely argue with each other over little things, and would sometimes pick on their children in the same way, too.

  Back in Philadelphia, Mary Jane joined a ceramics studio to fill her days. She found she liked art, and she was good at it. Painting would continue to be one of her life’s passions for many years.

  Once she was old enough to work, Mary Jane found jobs in a wide variety of fields. One of her first was at Philadelphia’s famed Wanamaker’s department store, and then she worked in the knitting industry at several factories. She then became a cardpunch operator for J. P. Lippincott, a publishing company that manufactured Bibles and other religious works. Mary Jane worked there for eight-and-a-half years, one of the longest-held jobs of her life.

  Mary Jane liked to work, and she especially liked living on her own, which she did for the first time in 1969, when she was twenty-six. Her parents’ neighborhood was becoming increasingly crime ridden. One time she was mugged, and on another occasion she was chased and attacked. This finally encouraged her to get her own place.

  As with her jobs, Mary Jane had a variety of apa
rtments over the years, mostly in the northeastern section of the city. She had friends she would walk her dogs with, or who would join her to crochet and sew. She especially reveled in buying her first car, a Toyota her father helped her pick out.

  Just as she took some time before living on her own, Mary Jane didn’t start dating until later in life. She wasn’t romantically interested in men until her late thirties, and even then she kept meeting men who weren’t interested in a serious relationship.

  She had two serious boyfriends, including a man named Joe, who was divorced with children and was significantly older than Mary Jane. When they met in 1979, she was thirty-six and he was already in his fifties. Mary Jane found him smart and funny, but he was out of work and living with his mother. They had talked of marrying, but it never happened.

  Rosalie Schnell didn’t think much of Joe from the beginning. She felt like he was taking advantage of Mary Jane: He regularly borrowed money from her, and generally made a bad impression on her during his visits to Bucks County.

  “I don’t like the man, I don’t like the man at all,” she told her husband.

  “Well there must be something wrong with him, because you like everybody,” Jim Schnell responded.

  Mary Jane once lamented to Rosalie that she wished she could find someone to be happy with, the way Rosalie was happy with Jim. It was clear to Rosalie that Mary Jane was a very lonely woman.

  Ed and Alice Fonder moved up to Springfield permanently in 1981, and Mary Jane followed in 1987 to take care of them. Both were having health problems, which increased as the years went by. In the spring of 1992, Alice Fonder was having such major circulation problems that her doctor recommended one of her legs be removed at the hip.