by Colin McEvoy
“You won’t believe this,” Mincer said, before giving him the news.
“You’re kidding me,” Stumpo said, a mixture of disbelief, amazement, and relief striking him all at once. He had been convinced Mary Jane still had the gun, and that they would have to build enough evidence for a warrant to seek it. The idea of a random citizen stumbling upon the gun alongside a lake just seemed too good to be true.
Stumpo’s first instinct was to rush over to Doug Sylsberry’s house himself, day off or not. But he had promised his five-year-old son he would spend the day with him, and he had already been called away for most of the morning. His son was visibly upset when Stumpo had to leave for the SERT assignment, and was just as obviously happy when he came back. As much as Stumpo wanted to get out to that gun, he knew he couldn’t let his son down. Besides, Patrick McGuire was on call. Pat was a perfectly competent investigator, and there was nothing he would do differently than Stumpo.
Mincer also put out calls to Bob Egan and Dave Zellis, both of whom were home for the evening, and were just as shocked as Stumpo to receive the news.
“What are you talking about?” Zellis first responded. The more Mincer told him about the recovery of the gun, the more stunned he got. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
Egan felt great, as if everything was now finally coming together. He had hoped Mary Jane would make some sort of mistake in response to losing her car, but this was better than he could have hoped. At first glance, it appeared she had hurriedly tried to get rid of the gun, and had botched the disposal so poorly that an eight-year-old boy found the weapon by accident.
Sometimes, you just need luck to solve these things, Egan thought. You need good strategies, you need good investigators, but sometimes, you just need plain old good luck.
Trooper Gregg Dietz had a similar reaction. He knew firsthand how much work Stumpo and Egan put into the investigation, but also knew from experience that sometimes, you need a bit of luck to close a case. He could recall several of his own cases where the police work was solid and everything was done right, but ended up going unsolved because he needed that little bit of luck and never got it.
But even as they thought it, the two men knew they were not giving the police work enough credit. The finding of the gun might have appeared serendipitous, but if Mary Jane had indeed only recently disposed of her gun, it was only because the police had taken her car in the first place and made her nervous.
McGuire and Trooper Joseph Longmore Jr. were called and dispatched to the Sylsberry household in Quakertown, along with additional patrol units. Mincer also ran a background check on Doug, but found no criminal history. It was a little after nine thirty when they arrived, and both Doug and the Rossi .38 were waiting for them. It wouldn’t be until later that Doug would learn who had owned the gun. At that point, it didn’t even occur to him that it was connected to a local crime, and he believed it had been discarded by a criminal from Allentown or Philadelphia just passing through the area.
The gun was placed into an evidence envelope and secured in McGuire’s police car while Doug ran through everything with the troopers. He told them about the discovery of the gun, as well as the rounds he removed and discarded into the lake. McGuire asked whether Doug would be willing to go back to the Haycock Run Bridge to look around and try to recover the casings, and Doug agreed without hesitation.
It was quarter after ten and dark by the time they arrived at the bridge, but Doug led McGuire and Longmore down to the area where the gun was found. Troopers Nicholas Desantis, William McDermott, and Justin Oliverio were all brought in to help with the search, scanning the beams of their flashlights along the shore and water as Doug pointed out areas he believed the casings might be.
After only a few moments, Oliverio and McDermott spotted something shiny sitting in the water, just along the bank. One of the officers reached down and picked up one of the three empty casings, lying just where Doug said they would be.
“I found ’em!” one of the officers called out.
“Don’t touch them!” McGuire ordered.
Doug watched as the trooper froze, the casing still in his fingers, a slightly panicked look over his face. “I already touched one,” he said, slowly and guiltily. Doug found it amusing, but it appeared McGuire did not. It was clear that they had caught a lucky break in finding the gun, and they didn’t want to make a stupid mistake now that could eventually help Mary Jane Fonder’s defense attorney.
After they had secured the empty casings, the two discarded live rounds were found only a few moments later. They had what they came for, but the troopers planned to do a thorough search of the area to see if anything else came up. After sending Doug back home, the police spent about forty-five minutes searching before McGuire and Longmore spotted a silver and blue cardboard box, submerged in about eight inches of water just a yard or so off the shore.
It was a box of .38 special high velocity hollow-point rounds, still about two-thirds full with thirty-two unexpended bullets. The exact same type of ammunition from Mary Jane’s gun, presumably discarded into Lake Nockamixon along with the gun.
The items were taken back to the Dublin barracks and entered into evidence, along with the gun. The next day, they were submitted for analysis to ballistics expert Corporal Mark Garrett. Fortunately, he was available that Sunday due to another case he was working on in the crime lab, but after this case was explained to him, Garrett agreed the situation was sufficiently important enough for him to drop what he was doing and focus on the Fonder case.
Garrett tested the gun that very day and confirmed what Stumpo, Egan, and everybody involved in the case had already suspected for some time: Mary Jane Fonder’s gun was used to kill Rhonda Smith. Now all that was left was to make the arrest.
* * *
Meanwhile, on the evening of March 31, church council President Paul Rose prepared for what he expected to be a very long and awkward phone call: He had to ask Mary Jane Fonder to leave Pastor Shreaves alone.
It was a call that was long overdue, but one that Paul knew had to be made. It had been months since the pastor—rattled by the long phone messages and Mary Jane’s strange admission of her romantic feelings toward him—asked the church council to speak with her. Paul wasn’t president of the church council at that time, and he knew the council leadership was uncomfortable with the idea of getting involved, and consequently nobody ever reached out to her.
Now that task fell to Paul, who had started his term as council president in February, about a month later than usual due to the circumstances of Rhonda Smith’s death. In the chaos of everything that had happened since then, Paul hadn’t had a chance to call Mary Jane until now, but Shreaves seemed to have only grown more and more uncomfortable around her, so he decided it was time to speak with her.
Paul had been a member of Trinity Evangelical for about twelve years. He always liked Mary Jane and would always give her a big hug whenever they saw each other after service. Sure, she could be a bit flighty at times, but he never knew her to be anything other than a friendly, happy-go-lucky woman, one that Paul felt others in the congregation didn’t really know as well as they thought they did.
That night, Paul told Mary Jane that she couldn’t talk to Pastor Shreaves anymore: no more phone calls, no more conversations after services, nothing. To his relief, she didn’t seem angry at the news, but rather a bit puzzled.
“You’ve got to do me a favor,” Paul said. “You’ve got to leave the guy alone.”
“I don’t understand,” she replied. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I was just being sociable.”
“I understand, Mary Jane. I just need you to do me this favor.”
Although obviously displeased, Mary Jane seemed to begrudgingly accept this and did not press the matter. Instead, she launched into a tirade about how horribly the police were treating her. They wouldn’t leave her alone, she said, and now they had taken her car. Mary Jane was convinced they believed her to be a suspect in Rhond
a’s murder.
“They’re out to get me,” she said.
Paul could tell Mary Jane was a nervous wreck over the matter. She kept rambling on and on about how she had nothing to do with Rhonda’s death, how she had nothing against the woman, how she was getting her hair done that day and couldn’t have possibly hurt her. Mary Jane went on for nearly an hour, and Paul felt like he hadn’t spoken for more than two minutes the entire time.
“They’re putting me under all sorts of pressure,” she said.
Paul tried his best to comfort her, adding, “If you didn’t do it, Mary Jane, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
After a few more minutes of conversation, Mary Jane and Paul concluded their conversation. As he hung up the phone, Paul got the impression that his comment had done little to put her mind at rest.
CHAPTER 28
The morning of April 1, Stumpo and Egan spent about an hour with Zellis discussing the criminal complaint in the Smith case before seeking Mary Jane Fonder’s arrest warrant. By now, they were sure they had more than enough information to seek a warrant, but the two troopers—especially Stumpo—didn’t want to leave any room for error. They had no idea what kind of a defense Mary Jane’s lawyer would one day present, and with her incarceration just around the corner, they didn’t want to make any stupid mistakes now.
After meticulously combing through every detail of the complaint, Zellis assured them everything was in order, and Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry approved the warrant. The troopers took it to the office of Magistrate District Judge Charles Baum in Perkasie, a Bucks County borough about a half hour south of Trinity Evangelical. The judge signed off, and everything was in order for the arrest.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane and Judy were together in the church kitchen that morning, getting the food ready for the noon Prime Timers meeting. It was still a few hours away but Mary Jane had arrived early, much to the discomfort of Judy, who did her best not to show any outward signs of her uneasiness. By now, between her husband’s prediction after Rhonda’s death and the fact that the police had taken her car, Judy had little doubt that Mary Jane had killed Rhonda.
Pastor Shreaves came into the kitchen and, upon seeing Mary Jane, also tried to conceal his anxiety. She had been looking terrible lately, and today was no exception. Her skin was red and clammy, her forehead sweaty, the hair on her wig somehow more disheveled than usual. She knows something’s up, Shreaves thought. She knows her days are numbered.
Immediately upon noticing the pastor, Mary Jane frowned and, in a confrontational tone, asked him about the phone call she had received the previous day from Paul Rose.
“What does he mean, I can’t ever call you?” she asked.
Shreaves was finding it increasingly difficult with each passing day to keep his frustration with Mary Jane at bay. How many times did Mary Jane have to have this explained to her? How much clearer could it be? Although he had tried not to do anything that might excite or upset Mary Jane ever since learning she was a suspect in Rhonda’s murder, Shreaves just couldn’t take it anymore. Judy watched as Shreaves motioned for Mary Jane to step out of the kitchen.
Although the two moved into the large multipurpose room outside the kitchen, Judy could still hear their conversation through the large window connecting the two rooms.
According to Judy’s recollection, the following conversation took place:
“Mary Jane,” Shreaves said. “What part of Paul’s phone call don’t you understand? Do you understand that you cannot call me anymore?”
Obviously upset, Mary Jane asked, “Does that mean I can’t be counseled by you or talk to you about the church?”
“You cannot try to get a hold of me in any way, shape, or form,” Shreaves said. “You have to stay away from me and the phone.”
Mary Jane paused a moment to take this in, then asked, “How about if it’s not, like, a pastoral concern? If I just wanted to say hi or something?”
“No,” Shreaves asserted. “You can’t talk to me at all. Not until this is resolved. You just can’t.”
With that, Shreaves walked away and left Mary Jane standing in silence. After a few moments, Mary Jane slowly walked back into the kitchen, where Judy tried her best to pretend she hadn’t heard a word.
“I … I don’t feel good,” Mary Jane said. “I’m going home.”
“Okay,” Judy said, masking her relief.
A few hours later, around noon, other members of the Prime Timers started arriving at the church. Shreaves returned and asked Judy where Mary Jane had gone. After Judy explained, Shreaves frowned, and it was obvious to Judy that he felt guilty for talking to Mary Jane the way he had.
“You’d better call her,” Shreaves told Judy. “See if she’s all right, and ask her to come back.”
Judy called as instructed, and was secretly disappointed to hear that Mary Jane sounded much more cheery than she had a few hours ago. “You know, I’m feeling better,” Mary Jane’s voice came over the receiver. “I think I’m coming back.”
By the time Mary Jane had arrived, everybody was already gathered and assembled for the Prime Timers meeting. Normally, the meetings included some sort of a guest speaker, but today they were just watching a video about the church and parsonage of Pastor Shreaves’s parents. Judy watched Mary Jane as she joined the others and, when Mary Jane took her seat, Judy could barely contain her horror.
Mary Jane sat down in the vacant seat right next to Dorothy Smith.
* * *
Stumpo and Egan wanted to take Mary Jane as quietly as possible and avoid any excitement, which meant making the arrest without her brother around. They drove by the Fonder residence and saw that Ed’s car was not in the driveway. With Mary Jane’s car still impounded, she would have had to take her brother’s car if she went out. The troopers drove to the church and, sure enough, Ed Fonder’s green 1997 Honda was among the other vehicles in the parking lot.
They didn’t want to barge into the church to arrest Mary Jane, especially since they were unsure whether her brother was with her. So instead, Stumpo arranged for Trooper David Turnbow to wait in a marked police car in the parking lot of the Springfield municipal building, on Township Road just a half mile south of the church. Mary Jane had to pass the building on her way home and Stumpo wanted to make sure she was picked up by a marked car with sirens driven by somebody other than Stumpo or Egan. If she thought it was just a routine traffic stop, perhaps she’d act more calmly and not try anything unexpected.
Stumpo also arranged for Greg Langston to wait in an unmarked car across from the church parking lot and keep watch for Mary Jane. Stumpo and Egan waited elsewhere in a separate car for Langston’s call. It was Stumpo’s hope to pull Mary Jane over with as little drama as possible. He couldn’t help but recall the famous televised images of the slow-speed O. J. Simpson chase, with dozens of police cars following his white Ford Bronco down the California highway. Such an incident was the last thing Stumpo wanted.
However, for all of Stumpo’s efforts, the police cars didn’t exactly go unnoticed. As Pastor Shreaves left the church that early afternoon to attend a pastoral visit at St. Luke’s Hospital, he noticed Langston sitting in the unmarked car across the street. Although he recognized the detective, Shreaves didn’t think much of it.
Other church parishioners, however, took greater notice of the police. Despite Stumpo’s wish that Turnbow wait alone at the municipal building, several other marked state police cars had parked there as well. Under the guise of providing additional backup, the troopers really just wanted to be part of the excitement of the biggest arrest the area had seen in years.
All the cars, however, attracted the attention of Reta Bieber after she left the Prime Timers meeting early. Bieber, who also played organ for the nearby St. John’s United Church of Christ, was on her way there to practice when she saw the police cars gathered together. Much to the surprise of the troopers, she pulled over right next to them and casually asked, “Are there any
problems, officers?” The troopers shook their heads no, that they were just parking there that afternoon, and Bieber went on her way.
After some time had passed and the Prime Timers meeting ended, members started leaving the church and pulling out of the parking lot. Langston watched carefully, waiting for Mary Jane to step outside, but even after most of the cars were gone, she was nowhere to be seen and the green Honda sat undisturbed. Minutes passed, then a half hour, then an hour, and still she did not emerge. Stumpo and Egan began to feel restless.
Where is she? Stumpo thought.
* * *
Judy watched as Dorothy Smith left the church after the Prime Timers meeting, her sympathy for the woman matched by her shock that Mary Jane would have the audacity to sit next to her after all she had done to the Smiths. She talked to her like it was nothing, Judy thought. I don’t see how you can do that. I think she has two personalities or something.
As Dorothy and the others left, Mary Jane stayed behind with Judy, Sue Brunner, and Carol Gregory. She casually mentioned to Sue that she had baked a pie for the Smiths and brought it to them a few weeks ago.
“Oh, Mary Jane, that’s so nice,” Sue said.
“I know that John really likes blueberry pie,” Mary Jane said with a nod, referring to Sue’s husband, John Brunner. “I saved some blueberries, so when I get home today, I’m going to make him a blueberry pie and bring it to him.”
Over the next several minutes, Mary Jane lingered in the church long after almost everybody else had gone. At first she busied herself with idle work in the kitchen but, after a while, she dropped all pretext of doing anything productive, and was simply standing around. Judy, Sue, and Carol were waiting politely for her to leave so they could lock up, but when time passed and Mary Jane hadn’t budged, Carol said, “Well, I’m just going to go outside because I notice some of those plants outside have to be trimmed.”