Love Me or Else

by Colin McEvoy

  And, while most of the messages were long, some were more casual or uplifting. At times, Mary Jane simply called the church to see if they needed any supplies, or to see whether they had any luck finding a new church secretary. When Shreaves would take a few days away from the church, he would usually return to a message from Mary Jane, telling him she hoped the rest had done him good.

  “The offer’s always open if you need anything,” she said. “Give me a call and I can always dash over to town and get things for you if you need any errands run, okay? So keep it in mind, and you’re always on my mind.”

  As uncomfortable and stressed as the messages made Shreaves feel, everything he was going through was made harder by the fact that he couldn’t tell anybody that the police suspected her. With the way gossip traveled around the church, what if word got around to Mary Jane and she tried to run away or—worse yet—hurt somebody? Or, on the other hand, if she were innocent, it would permanently and irreparably harm her reputation.

  Shreaves decided he would call the new church council president, Paul Rose, and insist that he call Mary Jane and demand she stop the phone calls, stop talking to Shreaves in church, stop everything. The pastor had made that request to church council months ago, but they didn’t want to deal with it, but now they’d just have to. There wasn’t much Shreaves could do to make himself feel safer or more comfortable, but this much, at least, he could do.

  * * *

  By mid-March a core group of church members was routinely calling the police, with several providing information about Mary Jane. On March 13, Don Ludlow called Trooper Stumpo to tell him he had remembered that Mary Jane gave Pastor Shreaves $100 for a Christmas gift in 2006.

  The next day, Stumpo and Egan verified the gift with Shreaves, who also said Mary Jane had given him checks and restaurant gift certificates worth $25 and $35. He gave the gifts to other church members in need of some financial assistance.

  On March 16, Stumpo spoke to Steve Wysocki, who had grown so concerned about Mary Jane’s behavior that he started jotting down notes on scraps of paper after speaking with her, then saving them in his wallet to share with police later. Steve told Stumpo about the choir rehearsal Mary Jane had shown up early for, and told him all about how she had just visited the Smiths and kept declaring that Rhonda’s spirit was finally at rest.

  On March 18, Don Ludlow called Stumpo with a similar story. He had been at Bible study the previous Sunday with Mary Jane, and he heard her mumble Rhonda’s name. Curious, Don asked her what she was talking about, and Mary Jane burst out, “I’m feeling much better about Rhonda now.” Don asked her why, and Mary Jane said it was because she had visited with Rhonda’s parents for a few hours.

  The next day, Les Zellner called with another tip about Mary Jane. She had been helping around the church more than usual, he told Stumpo, and had a new dress.

  With now two reports of Mary Jane visiting Rhonda’s parents, the police wanted to hear about it for themselves. Stumpo followed up with a call to Jim Smith, who retold the story for him. Mary Jane had been the only person from the church to visit them since Rhonda died besides Pastor Shreaves and the Zellners, Jim Smith said.

  Mary Jane also sat with the Smiths at the breakfast held at the church for Easter, where she gave Dorothy Smith a hook rug as a present, Jim Smith told the trooper.

  As Jim hung up the phone, he turned to his wife.

  “They’re after that woman,” he said. “They haven’t been asking us about any other church people.”

  But Dorothy Smith still found it hard to believe that Mary Jane Fonder could have killed her daughter.

  CHAPTER 26

  The circumstantial evidence against Mary Jane was mounting, but police still lacked the physical evidence needed to shore up the case.

  It had now been two months since Rhonda’s death, and a month after their big interview with Mary Jane, but they hadn’t gotten very far since then. With all the searches for the gun coming up empty, they were starting to get frustrated.

  One day, while Egan and Stumpo were brainstorming about what to do next, Egan came up with what Stumpo thought was a wild suggestion.

  “Let’s go get her car,” he said.

  “Bob,” Stumpo responded, confounded. “We can’t get a search warrant for the house, how are we supposed to get one for the car?”

  Egan was not discouraged. “I don’t know, I just thought maybe we’d talk about it.”

  Stumpo shook his head. “It’s not going to happen,” he said. “We just don’t have enough now.”

  But Egan did not let it drop, and a couple days later, he brought it up again.

  “You know, I think I’m going to work on that search warrant for the car,” he announced.

  Still not convinced, but not looking to argue any more, Stumpo begrudgingly gave in.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Go work on it.”

  Egan was not sure a judge would grant a search warrant for Mary Jane’s car with the evidence they had, but he felt they had to try something. The case was getting into its third month, and if it went on too much longer, Mary Jane was going to get away with murder, possibly for a second time.

  Egan had worked a previous case where he was able to find gunshot residue in a car several months into an investigation, and he hoped that would be the case with Mary Jane’s car. Steering wheels and turn signals are stickier than average surfaces and retain gunpowder for a much longer time.

  Egan included that argument in his search warrant application, and also details of Mary Jane’s timeline on January 23 that showed she would have been in her car immediately following the shooting. He also included the transcript of her long interview to police, which showed she had a possible motive in the homicide.

  On March 25, Zellis signed off on the search warrant and submitted it to Common Pleas Judge Albert Cepparulo, who approved it that same day.

  * * *

  On the morning of March 25, Mary Jane Fonder left a message on Sue Brunner’s answering machine while Sue was out of town in Florida.

  “I see a lot of cars around your house. It looks like there’s so many; I didn’t know what the situation was. Is everything okay up there?

  “I’m trying to get a hold of my housework,” she continued. “I sure hope I can get working on it. Everything’s going okay down here, I’m trying to do the best I can with my housework.

  “So many disturbing things are bothering and upsetting me. Like unhappy moments. They’re stealing my spirit. Nothing seems to be right. So sad these days. Too many losses, too many disappointments, too many sad things this year. Some we don’t understand.”

  She concluded with an eerie warning that stuck with Sue Brunner for a very long time.

  “Endings come and you just never know,” Mary Jane said before hanging up. “You never know when your ending is going to come.”

  * * *

  At 8:45 the next morning, Stumpo and Egan went to Mary Jane’s house to serve her with the search warrant for her car. They brought Troopers Anthony Rhodunda and Joseph Miller, parking multiple cars outside her property. They wanted to make the visit look like a big deal because they wanted to rattle Mary Jane. They wanted her convinced that they were going to keep coming back to her over and over again until they got the gun. Until she was behind bars.

  Mary Jane greeted them at the door with an enthusiastic hello, as if the troopers were just friends paying her visit.

  “Oh, hi Bob!” she said. Then, inexplicably, she removed her wig from her head. It was not the reaction the troopers were expecting and, under different circumstances, Stumpo would have laughed.

  But when they handed her the search warrant, she instantly became quiet and went inside to talk to her brother.

  “I want a lawyer,” she said, when she stepped back to the door.

  “You can call a lawyer,” Stumpo responded. “But we’re still taking your car.”

  The tow truck was running a little behind, so the troopers waited outside u
ntil it arrived. Stumpo went back to his police cruiser while Egan waited next to Mary Jane’s car. As he waited, Mary Jane came out of the house and approached him, asking to get something out of the car.

  “I want my laundry,” she said.

  “You can’t have it,” Egan responded. “You can’t get anything out of your car.”

  Mary Jane looked at Egan with an angry glare and stormed off into her house. But after a few minutes, she reemerged from the house, stormed back toward Egan and started screaming at him. The trooper let her talk, and for a few minutes Mary Jane went on a tirade, angrily ranting on and on.

  Later, Egan would barely be able to remember what specifically she said, but he would never forget her tone. It reminded him of that eerie moment during their long interview when Mary Jane’s voice dropped to an evil-sounding pitch and she insisted she was innocent. Like then, Mary Jane had dropped any pretext of being a sweet old lady, and a hidden side of her had emerged. The side of her that was probably the last thing Rhonda Smith ever saw, Egan suspected.

  Ed Fonder rushed out of the house and, while Mary Jane was still on her tirade, grabbed her and started pulling her back toward their home. “Shut up,” he said. “We’re calling a lawyer.”

  * * *

  The police towed Mary Jane’s car to the Dublin barracks, where it was searched by Trooper Louis Gober, who was the main crime scene investigator the day Rhonda’s body was found.

  He first photographed the car before taking samples to be tested for gunpowder residue from the gear shift, steering wheel, seat belt strap, door handle armrest, turn signal knob, and the driver seat. He also took several items for evidence, including the brake pedal cover, gas pedal cover, the driver’s side floor mat, and several blankets Mary Jane had on her passenger seat.

  Gober also vacuumed the floor mat and other carpeted areas of the car to capture any evidence they might contain. The samples were all sent to the same Pittsburgh-area laboratory that checked for gunpowder residue on Mary Jane’s wig. It would be several weeks before they would get results.

  Meanwhile, Mary Jane, in a panic, tried to contact Pastor Shreaves. She put in a call to the church, and Judy Zellner, there on one of her regular cleaning visits, answered.

  Pastor Shreaves wasn’t there, so Mary Jane confided in Judy.

  “I’m in trouble,” she told her.

  “You’re in trouble?” Judy repeated back. “Well, what did you do?”

  “Well, the police just came and took my car,” Mary Jane answered. “They’re looking for something under my seat. Something I got rid of back in 1996 or ’97.”

  “Do you need any help?” Judy offered, hoping Mary Jane would say more. “Do you need to go anywhere? I’ll take you.”

  “No, no,” Mary Jane responded. “I can use my brother’s car.”

  As they said their good-byes, Mary Jane made another startling statement.

  “What happened ten years ago with my father is coming back to haunt me,” she told Judy. “Rhonda and I are in this together.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Doug Sylsberry and his eight-year-old son, Garrett, had been fishing for about an hour, with absolutely no luck.

  It was a cold and windy afternoon on March 29, and the smell of mist was in the air as a light drizzle fell down on the tranquil waters of Lake Nockamixon. Although far from the perfect conditions for a day outdoors, Doug was determined not to let the weather ruin a day with his son. It was the first day of trout season, and the two so rarely got to go fishing together.

  Doug lived in Quakertown, a Bucks County borough just a dozen miles west of Nockamixon State Park. A forty-year-old contractor, he was a slim man with a goatee and short haircut that contrasted with the brown mop of hair atop Garrett’s head. A second-grade student at the Neidig Elementary School in Quakertown, Garrett was Doug’s eldest son by four years and, although unusually short for his age, what he lacked in size he made up for in energy.

  Being the first day of trout season, Doug assumed everybody would be fishing in the nearby creeks, so he decided to take his son to the lake instead. As a result, there were few boats on the water, and absolutely no other fisherman milling around the edge. Seeking a little shelter from the elements, Doug and Garrett had made their way under the Haycock Run Bridge, which provided some overhead cover but still opened up to an excellent view of the wide-open lake and beautiful green trees.

  As they stood fishing on the rocky surface underneath the bridge, Doug noticed the water was unusually low, with at least three or four feet more surface than usual exposed. What he did not know was that the state police had drained part of the lake a few days earlier, searching in vain for Mary Jane Fonder’s gun.

  Before long, Garrett started to get a little restless and lost his focus on the fishing, setting his rod aside and exploring around the lake’s edge. Off in the distance, he noticed a great blue heron wading in the water, and he told his father he was going to head out for a closer look at the bird. While Doug continued fishing under the bridge, Garrett followed the rocky path along the shoreline of the lake.

  A wooded ledge ran alongside the surface where Garrett was walking. Route 563 was clearly visible just fifteen feet away atop the hill, and the sound of passing cars was so loud it resembled a roar. Down at the water, the surface was coated by layers of foam left over from the rain dropping down on the recently exposed rocks.

  And in that foam, Garrett saw something.

  A glare from the sun gave the object half emerged in the water a bright shine, but as Garrett approached it, the water made it look blue. As Garrett got closer, his eyes widened as he realized what it was … a toy gun! He wrapped his fist around the barrel and lifted it from the water, pointing it out toward Lake Nockamixon like a Wild West gunslinger.

  But the weight was heavier than Garrett expected, and he quickly realized it could not be made of plastic. He looked down at it and noticed it was black, not blue. There was some minor rust where the revolver had been exposed, and some wear and tear along the cylinder and interior of the barrel.

  It’s real, he thought.

  Garrett quickly pointed the gun down at the ground. Rather than continue grasping it, he loosened his grip, extended his arm forward and held it by a few fingers on the barrel, as if it might contaminate him somehow. Garrett doubled back toward the bridge, where he found his father still fishing underneath.

  “Dad, I found a gun!” Garrett said excitedly, holding the newly found item in the air.

  Doug would never forget the image of his son coming around the bend with that gun in his hand. A lump caught in his throat, and his feeling of shock was overwhelmed by an instinctive pang of terror for his son’s safety. He quickly rushed toward Garrett and carefully snatched the weapon out of his hand.

  “Garrett, you know better than to pick that up!” Doug said. He owned a handful of guns himself, and had always gone out of his way to teach Garrett how to act properly around them. Doug believed strongly in his Second Amendment rights, but always stressed to his children never to touch the weapons at his home.

  Doug opened the wheel and his fears were confirmed: In addition to three empty casings, two live hollow-point shells were inside the gun. Doug asked Garrett to take him back to where he found the weapon and, as they walked, he shook the empty casings loose from the barrel and tossed them into the lake. By the time they had walked back to where the gun was recovered, he had removed the live rounds and tossed them into the lake, too. He knew how unstable wet ammunition can be, and didn’t want it anywhere near his son.

  Everything around the lake was state game land, so Doug’s first thought was that the gun had been dropped by some hunter, or by a fisherman who brought his pistol along with him. After looking around a bit and finding nothing else of interest, Garrett and Doug went back down the path to the bridge. Doug placed the now-unloaded gun in his pocket, and the two once again picked up their fishing rods.

  “Garrett,” Doug said. “Don’t you dare tell your m
om that you touched the gun. Don’t say you touched it.”

  They continued fishing for another three hours until the sun went down, almost completely forgetting about the gun altogether. Once they left Haycock Run Bridge, Doug called his brother, a friend, and his wife to let them know about the gun. None were particularly surprised or disturbed by the news, except for Doug’s wife, Karen, who immediately suspected something was wrong and insisted Doug call the police when he arrived home.

  “Doug, there’s dirty dealing here,” Karen said. “There’s dirty dealing.”

  * * *

  Trooper Andrew Mincer was working at the communications desk at the Dublin state police barracks, and it was around quarter after eight when the phone rang. It was Doug Sylsberry, a Quakertown man who claimed to have found a Rossi .38 caliber while fishing at Lake Nockamixon near the Haycock Run Bridge.

  Mincer, of course, knew that Mary Jane Fonder’s gun was a Rossi .38 caliber, and he felt a twinge of excitement as he asked Doug for the serial number: AA362102. He plugged it into the National Crime Information Center, a computerized index of criminal justice information, and sure enough, the gun belonged to Mary Jane.

  “Stay right there. We’ll send someone over right away,” Mincer said to Doug, who knew from the trooper’s urgent tone of voice that something major was going on. His wife was right. Dirty dealing.

  The first person Mincer called was Greg Stumpo. He was off that Saturday, but had already been called in to work earlier that morning as part of the Special Emergency Response Team, a program in which state police respond to emergency or high-risk incidents. Earlier that morning, a man with a gun had barricaded himself into his car, and Stumpo was among the team that responded to the potentially dangerous situation. He was still wearing his SERT gear when he got Mincer’s call.