by Colin McEvoy
Egan asked whether the Smiths owned any guns. Jim told him he had some hunting rifles he had inherited when his brother died, but that he never used them. When Egan asked about handguns, Jim said he had given his only one away to his nephew, who lived in Vermont. Jim consented to a search of his home to confirm what guns were on the property.
Jim and Dorothy both spoke candidly about the challenges of raising Rhonda and dealing with her bipolar disorder. She was often out of work, didn’t have much money, and they constantly had to help her, even when Rhonda was resistant.
“But she was our daughter,” Jim said, “and we loved her.”
Jim shared with the detective a four-page letter that Rhonda had written to him the previous Easter, which Jim now kept at the table next to his favorite living room chair and read repeatedly when he started to miss his daughter. Printed from the computer on paper with clouds in the background, it was labeled “My Gratitude List for my Father, Francis W. Smith, a/k/a/ Dad-E-O.” Rhonda spoke of how thankful she was for the way Jim had taken care of her throughout the years, and helped her realize that she could overcome her mental illness and do anything she set her mind to.
“You taught me that my name, even as common as it is, means a lot and I should defend it at all costs, legally and financially, and I will for life!” the letter read in part. “You taught me even with my mental illness, I can do anything anybody else can do. I have this theme where when somebody tells me I can’t do it, I prove I can.
“You instilled in me a belief in God through your actions. You forgave me for my mistakes, even when I couldn’t forgive myself. You never bring them up, even when I insist on doing it. We are taught that God loves us and wants the best for us. Maybe I should learn to accept this from my earthly father! You taught all of us not to give up even when all the cards are dealt out. Sometimes I think it would be easier, but I still fight because I know I’m on a good team.”
The letter ended, “You will always be my dad and I wanted you to know these things that you taught me in 41 years. I love you! But sometimes, I still need a hug. Happy Easter! Love, Rhonda.”
Egan left the house convinced that Jim and Dorothy were loving parents who had nothing to do with covering up Rhonda’s suicide. Nothing they had said aroused his suspicions or led him to believe they were lying. Egan knew to wander into such a horrific scene as finding their daughter dead in a church would have been one of the most difficult things for a parent to see, and he did not believe they would have been able to conceal their emotions from the police if they had.
Afterward, police ran a check on guns owned by Jim Smith, and confirmed that what Jim told him was true: The only handgun registered to him was now owned by his nephew in Vermont, just as he had said. Later, authorities in Vermont checked out that gun, but it didn’t match the one that killed Rhonda.
Additionally, Egan and Stumpo later checked out a security surveillance tape taken at the Red Robin restaurant where Jim and Dorothy ate the day Rhonda was killed. If the police theory about Jim finding Rhonda were true, then the Smiths would have already known their daughter was dead when this footage was shot. However, the tape revealed Jim and Dorothy showing no signs of strong emotions when they entered or exited the restaurant. Stumpo and Egan agreed that if they had just found the body of their dead daughter, there was no way they would have appeared so calm on the tape.
For Stumpo and Egan, there was no longer any doubt in their minds. The Smiths were completely innocent, and Rhonda Smith’s death was no suicide. It was murder.
* * *
Looking further into Mary Jane’s background, Stumpo and Egan learned through unemployment hearing records that she had been fired from a Denny’s restaurant in 1994 for threatening a coworker. Her unemployment hearing in the case took place on December 13, 1994, a date that particularly stood out to the two troopers.
It was the same date Mary Jane first obtained her gun.
The officers were able to track down several of Mary Jane’s former coworkers from Denny’s in Center Valley. Kimberly Riedy remembered Mary Jane as a strange woman who took a lot of medications. She also recalled that Mary Jane would often complain about how mean her father was to her, but that she was very upset when he went missing.
She couldn’t remember any specific threats Mary Jane ever made while at the restaurant, and it was clear to police that the topic made her uncomfortable.
“The whole subject sort of freaks me out,” Kimberly said.
However, she pointed the officers in the direction of Diane Anderson, who had been the Denny’s general manager at the time and was now living in California. A few days later, Stumpo and Egan contacted Anderson via telephone, and she seemed equally uncomfortable talking about Mary Jane.
“One day, she’d come in and she was perfectly fine,” Diane said. “The next time, she was just a crazy woman.… It was like a switch you could click on and off. One minute, you’re like, ‘Oh, this older lady is a wonderful person,’ and the next minute, you’re looking at her like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”
Mary Jane was a little unusual right from the very beginning, Diane recalled. Sometimes, she would show up to work with her wig backward and look just plain ridiculous. Having previously worked at a hairdressing salon, Diane repeatedly offered to style her wigs so Mary Jane could tell the front from the back and put them on correctly. But Mary Jane always politely refused, and continued coming to work with her hairpieces on backward.
But despite her oddities, Diane initially liked Mary Jane. She felt bad for the woman, who often spoke about how desperately she needed money and how difficult it was to take care of her aging father. Diane was happy that she was able to give Mary Jane the job at Denny’s, feeling she was helping the woman in some small way.
But after Mary Jane’s father disappeared, her oddities intensified—to a frightening degree.
It all started when Diane made a special type of lasagna and served it as part of the Denny’s menu. Shortly afterward, a furious Mary Jane came storming into Diane’s office, screaming that that lasagna was her recipe and that Diane had stolen it. To Diane’s surprise, Mary Jane even went so far as to threaten to kill her.
“That was the beginning of the end there,” Diane recalled.
Mary Jane’s erratic behavior continued, as did the threats against Diane’s life. 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. As Diane expected, Mary Jane flipped out, once again threatening to shoot Diane with a gun and kill her. Diane and the other manager followed Mary Jane out to ensure she left the restaurant and, as they walked through the dining area, Mary Jane continued her tirade, yelling and screaming even in front of the customers.
“She’s just not right in the head,” Diane said.
When it came time for Mary Jane’s unemployment hearing, Diane brought her husband along because she was afraid to be there alone, and parked three blocks away from the courthouse because she did not want Mary Jane to see what kind of car she was driving. Diane recalled that Mary Jane dressed well for the hearing and, at first, seemed to act relatively normal. But as the hearing escalated, Mary Jane became more and more worked up, her behavior becoming increasingly erratic.
By the end, when the board ruled against Mary Jane and denied her any unemployment compensation, she seemed to snap, lashing out at the board members and everybody in the room. She even made a bizarre accusation that all the men on the board were Diane’s boyfriends and that was the only reason they were siding with her.
“It was just the craziest thing,” Diane said. “She was just making these crazy accusations all over the place. It was horrible.”
Although Mary Jane had gotten a gun earlier that day, she left it in her car and did not attempt to bring it into the courtroom. Diane never saw the weapon and had no idea Mary Jane obtained it that day until after the police spoke to her. The very thought of it chille
d her to the bone.
“She was going to kill me with it,” she was convinced.
The officers also got in touch with a third Denny’s coworker, Barry Schaller. Schaller was probably Mary Jane’s closest friend at work; he drove her home from work when she had car problems and he also stayed in touch with her for a few years after she was fired.
Schaller also overheard Mary Jane threaten to shoot Diane Anderson, which he believes he reported to management. He knew Mary Jane owned a gun for self-protection, but he had never seen it.
Although they were friends, Schaller was convinced Mary Jane was involved in their father’s disappearance, he told Egan. On one occasion, when Schaller was house-sitting for Mary Jane while she was at the hospital, he even searched the house looking for clues that might prove Mary Jane had killed her father. He said he also thought it was odd that around the time of her father’s disappearance, Mary Jane had hired an out-of-town company to cut down trees on her property.
They remained friends through 1996 or 1997 when Schaller stopped hearing from Mary Jane, he said. The year before, Mary Jane had started to change, when he started dating a woman. Mary Jane was very jealous of the woman and called Schaller a ladies’ man and a player. Schaller was surprised at how quickly Mary Jane could switch from one emotion to the next, seemingly at the drop of a hat.
“She’s a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde,” Schaller told Egan.
CHAPTER 17
The state police continued to interview as many church members as they could. And the more they talked to, it seemed, the more often Mary Jane Fonder came up.
Sue Brunner, Mary Jane’s neighbor on Winding Road, told Trooper Raymond Judge about a conversation she had with Mary Jane just two days before Rhonda died. Sue was out walking her dog along the road when Mary Jane passed her in her car and stopped.
“I’ve decided I’m not going to come to choir anymore,” Mary Jane said out her car window.
“Why?” Sue asked her.
“I don’t know. I’m just too upset. I’m just too upset about things and I just can’t do it,” Mary Jane responded.
“Well that’s a shame, Mary Jane, because church and choir are two things that you really love,” Sue said. “I think you ought to really rethink this because I know how important those two things are to you.”
It was far from the first time Sue had seen Mary Jane depressed in the twenty years she’d known her. She often talked about how things were bothering her and how she couldn’t come to grips with her life. Mary Jane also on occasion flooded Sue’s answering machine with messages all about the “bad vibes” she was feeling.
Mary Jane started discussing a new topic. Sue had missed church services the day before, January 20, and Mary Jane told her about how Rhonda had stood up in front of the congregation to thank the group for helping her financially.
“Did you know that Rhonda had gotten help?” Mary Jane asked Sue.
“Yes I did,” Sue replied. In fact, she had been among the group that made the financial contributions.
Looking upset, Mary Jane said good-bye and drove away.
The police also interviewed Mary Brunner, another Trinity parishioner, who bore no relation to Sue Brunner. Trooper Stumpo had heard that Mary Jane Fonder had told Mary Brunner to stay away from Pastor Shreaves, and Stumpo wanted to find out if that was true.
On February 2, Stumpo met with the sixty-six-year-old Mary Brunner and her husband, Gus, at their Springfield Township home. Stumpo asked whether Mary Jane Fonder had ever asked her to stay away from Pastor Shreaves. Mary Brunner thought about the question for a while before saying no, she could not recall that.
However, Mary did note that Mary Jane had been acting a bit odder than usual lately, especially with regards to Pastor Shreaves. Normally, Mary Jane seemed to really like the pastor, but lately had claimed she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. In recent weeks, she also seemed to get angry with Mary for helping the pastor with odds and ends around the church.
Normally Mary Jane helped Shreaves coordinate some of the Sunday services jobs, and when she was unavailable, Mary Jane would ask Mary to do it. But then, a few days later, Mary Jane would suddenly seem mad at Mary for doing the work, even though it was Mary Jane herself who approached her in the first place.
Mary also recalled a conversation she had with Mary Jane just a few days before Rhonda died. Mary Jane would sometimes stop in Mary’s driveway to chat if she was driving by, and had done so on the Saturday morning of January 19.
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 spirits, but that she loved the people at the choir. Mary Jane also offhandedly mentioned that Rhonda Smith was in choir now, and she had been at the last practice. Mary Jane told Mary Brunner she did not plan to go to choir practice for a while.
Also during the first week of February, Stumpo interviewed Pastor Shreaves’s girlfriend, Aline Filippone. Aline, who lived in the Catskills region of New York, had come down to be with Shreaves following Rhonda’s death and had attended services the first Sunday, where she came into contact with Mary Jane. Aline told Stumpo that Mary Jane peppered her with questions about how long she was staying and would not stop.
Also that week, Stumpo stopped at the Smiths’ home to pick up the sympathy cards and the guest book from Rhonda’s funeral. As police suspected, Mary Jane had not attended Rhonda’s funeral, but she had sent flowers and a card to the Smiths. The card had contained a long and rambling message:
“I am so grateful that so many of our church loved and got to know Rhonda so well. She was swell and so eager to help Pastor Greg. We all loved our pastor, as he was so kind to us all.… He always had a cheering committee. Many times, we took turns helping him, so many of us at different times. He helped so many of us. Judy Zellner and he were very kind to me, too, in 2006 when my world was falling apart.… I was, too, an avid admirer of his, always.
“That’s one wonderful church. Once again I was on my way. The pastor has been there for young and old alike. He has always had a nice way with women. He especially likes the little children. He loves to joke and laugh with people. TLC is a generally happy church.
“That should have been me in the ground instead of Rhonda; many of us would gladly have been in her place. She had too much to live for.
“This never should have happened. Anyone could have been there that day, volunteering. Rhonda was always so nice to me. We all had such a good time at the Prime Timers,” Mary Jane wrote, referring to the church’s senior citizens group.
* * *
The police looked into the tree-cutting company Mary Jane had hired following her father’s disappearance.
The tree cutter, Michael MacHukas, had filed both a criminal and civil complaint against Mary Jane for harassment. The police in Colebrookdale Township, where the MacHukases lived, no longer had information about the criminal complaint, but Bucks County court records showed the civil case was settled.
Although it had been fourteen years, MacHukas vividly remembered Mary Jane Fonder when Trooper Gregg Dietz called him asking about her. Mary Jane had hired MacHukas to cut timber on her property, but there was one area of the land Mary Jane would not let him near, claiming it was sacred.
“She wanted to be there every time,” MacHukas later told a reporter from The Intelligencer. “She pointed out a sacred area and called one spot ‘the hole from hell.’”
Mary Jane spoke openly to MacHukas and his wife, Cynthia, about her father’s disappearance, even when it became clear the police suspected she had killed him. Cynthia recalled to The Intelligencer one time when a state police helicopter flew over the property. Mary Jane turned to her and said, “I guess they’re trying to find where I buried the body,” Cynthia later told the newspaper.
Then one day, Mary Jane inexplicably threw Michael MacHukas off her property, he told Dietz. Although he struggled to recall details after so much time, he said Mary Ja
ne accused him of stealing something, possibly her father’s tools. MacHukas denied it at the time, and continued to deny it to this day.
Then, MacHukas said, the threats started.
Mary Jane started calling him at his work and home, threatening to “take him out,” MacHukas told Dietz. She claimed to know where he lived and said she would “take out his wife and kids,” claiming she “knows how to do it” and that she could “get away with it,” MacHukas told Dietz.
Dietz also talked to MacHukas’s wife, who verified the threatening phone calls. Cynthia MacHukas said she herself received several threatening calls from Mary Jane, saying things like, “I know where you are and I am watching you,” and, “I know where you live and the spirits are going to get you,” she told Dietz.
Cynthia told Dietz that one time, the MacHukases’ young son picked up the phone when Mary Jane called and she asked him to hang up so she could leave a message on the answering machine. Mary Jane called three times in a row, leaving bizarre, rambling messages on their answering machine each time.
The MacHukases reported the calls to police, but they did not stop, Michael MacHukas said. She only finally stopped calling after the civil court judgments were settled.
CHAPTER 18
By now, Stumpo and Egan were desperate to interview Mary Jane Fonder. The tales of her odd behavior just kept piling up, and they needed to find out more about her gun.
Troopers Gregg Dietz and Pat McGuire had struck out when they tried to get her at her house a couple days prior to talking to the MacHukases. But the next day was Wednesday, and the troopers were sure they would find Mary Jane at the church’s weekly choir practice.
Stumpo called Pastor Shreaves the next morning to find out whether Mary Jane was expected at choir practice that night. Shreaves confirmed she was, so Stumpo and Egan made plans to work a late night and head over to the evening choir practice. With Rhonda being a former member, they decided it would be worth their while to interview some other choir members while they were there as well.