Love Me or Else

by Colin McEvoy

  “You’d better watch your back!” the man shouted, insisting he was leaving the church and would not return as long as Mary Jane’s address was posted and her name was on the prayer list.

  But he was the only one to leave the church after Mary Jane was arrested. In fact, attendance was as strong as ever, just as it had been immediately after Rhonda’s death. This time, however, things felt different. Rather than the strong sense of unity the church felt at that time, the atmosphere was now constantly tense. Once the shock of Mary Jane’s arrest had worn off, the feelings of many parishioners turned to anger, much of it directed at Shreaves. During all of those church services, they were sitting with a murderer among them, and Shreaves never said a word. Why, they wanted to know, hadn’t he warned them? Judy and Sue tried to explain there was no way he could have said anything without jeopardizing the investigation, but that did little to comfort some.

  CHAPTER 32

  The ink was barely dry on the newspaper stories about Mary Jane Fonder’s arrest before the press started digging into her past and was reminded of the disappearance of her father. That unsolved case added another layer of intrigue and drama to a story that wasn’t short of either in the first place. The excitement in the press was palpable, and it was doubled when Bucks County authorities announced the Edward Fonder case had been reopened due to a renewed interest following Mary Jane’s arrest.

  “The disappearance of the father is being looked at in conjunction with the investigation of the current homicide,” Springfield Township Police Chief Mark Laudenslager announced. “We’re looking at it with State Police. Obviously, we’re interested in any information on Mr. Fonder’s disappearance that anyone would have to offer.”

  Neither Laudenslager nor any other authorities would confirm whether Mary Jane was considered a suspect in the disappearance, but the stories that followed the announcement did little to improve her public image.

  Meanwhile, Stumpo and Egan continued to focus their efforts on strengthening their case. Egan sought and received a search warrant for Ed Fonder’s composition notebooks. The trooper recalled how Ed regularly, almost obsessively, seemed to document every detail of his life into those books, and he was sure there was something on those pages that would be useful in the case against Mary Jane.

  On April 8, Egan, Stumpo, Greg Langston, and Trooper Joshua Miller went to the Fonder home to serve the warrant. They found Ed outside the home, clutching one of the composition notebooks in his arms. He made no protest about surrendering the books.

  Dietz and McGuire had explained that Ed wrote his thoughts and daily occurrences in these books, but as Stumpo and Egan sat down to comb through the pages, they realized this was a great understatement.

  Page after page of the tiny, almost illegible script handwriting documented Ed’s day-to-day activities in bizarre, excruciating detail. It included everything from routine activities and phone calls to references to people he spoke with and neighbors he watched outside his window. Each item included a notation of the exact time and place. Several pages were filled with which Evangelical Christian Radio speakers he listened to, what time they came on the radio, and what they said. Much like the filthy and disorganized state of Ed’s house, the notebooks to Egan were a strong confirmation of Ed Fonder’s eccentricity. The books were filled with such minutia, and the handwriting was so hard to read, that the troopers found it difficult to focus while searching for anything relevant. Stumpo in particular had to force himself to read the pages over and over after he found himself skimming over them.

  Although Ed seemed to write down just about everything, his notes were focused entirely on himself, and he wrote very little about what Mary Jane Fonder said or did. But Stumpo and Egan soon found something they believed would be helpful. Not only did Ed write down where he was going when he drove his car, he noted the mileage before he left and after he arrived. According to the notebooks, Mary Jane Fonder had only ever borrowed Ed’s car on two occasions: on April 1, the day she was arrested, and on March 28.

  The day before Doug and Garrett Sylsberry found her gun.

  Stumpo and Egan showed this information to Dave Zellis and they developed a theory, which would later be used in court. On March 26, Stumpo and Egan had taken Mary Jane’s car. She became nervous, knowing it was only a matter of time before they served a warrant for her house, where they would find the Rossi .38 revolver. Two days later, Mary Jane borrowed her brother’s car, drove over to Lake Nockamixon and hurled the gun over the Haycock Run Bridge.

  From Ed’s notes in the books, it was clear Mary Jane had put more than enough mileage on the car to have driven to the lake and back. In fact, Zellis believed Mary Jane probably drove back and forth on the bridge several times, waiting for the right opportunity to throw the gun. He imagined Mary Jane was nervous, which is why she probably threw it from the moving car rather than get out of the vehicle and risk being spotted with it.

  If you think about it, Zellis thought to himself, it’s not that easy to just throw a gun out of a window.

  And if that was how it went down, the police were extremely fortunate that Mary Jane was so nervous. Lake Nockamixon is a huge body of water, and searching for a gun there would have been like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Not only that, but Zellis later learned that only a few hundred feet from where Mary Jane discarded the gun, the water underneath the bridge was very deep. If she had dropped the weapon there instead, it would have gone straight to the bottom.

  We never would have found it, Zellis thought.

  * * *

  On April 9, Egan received a call from Corporal Paul Romanic, who had some incredible news to share with him. Ed Fonder was sitting in the corporal’s office in the Bethlehem barracks right now, and he claimed to have found something in his car that might be considered evidence against his sister.

  Egan met the two at the Bethlehem barracks, where Ed explained he had gotten into this car that morning to go for an oil change, and saw sunlight reflecting off a metal object on the floor of the driver’s seat. Ed thought it was an earring at first, but after he picked it up and took a closer look, it appeared to be some sort of discharged bullet. Ed placed the object back where he found it and immediately called his attorney, who suggested he turn it over to the police.

  Egan asked for permission to search Ed’s car and he agreed, signing a written consent form. The search confirmed Ed’s original suspicions: A large bullet fragment was indeed discovered on the driver’s side floor, as well as another smaller fragment elsewhere in the car.

  When this later became public knowledge, many were stunned that Ed Fonder so willingly cooperated with police in handing over potentially damning evidence against his sister. But to conclude he was siding against his sister would be to deeply misunderstand Ed Fonder. He was not at all pleased about the investigation into his sister, and although he generally acted cordially toward the troopers, he made his displeasure clear to them on several instances.

  On one occasion, Fonder and his attorney were speaking with Zellis about trial preparations, while Stumpo and Egan observed and listened. When one of the troopers briefly interjected or tried to clarify something, Ed looked at them with an icy stare, then turned to Zellis and asked, “Who’s answering the questions here? Me or them?”

  Nevertheless, Ed cooperated with police at every turn, and shocked many in the public when he eventually agreed to testify against his sister in court. Zellis, however, believed this had nothing to do with taking sides against his sister, but rather spoke to Ed’s strong sense of morals and devout religious spirituality. He didn’t believe he was siding against her, Zellis thought. He simply believed he was telling the truth, simple as that.

  But among those who believed Ed had taken sides against Mary Jane was Mary Jane herself.

  From the day she was arrested, Ed Fonder was one of his sister’s few regular visitors. Police monitored their visits and calls, and it was clear to them that Mary Jane was not pleased with her brothe
r. Zellis and the troopers believed her anger stemmed not only from Ed’s cooperation over the bullet fragments, but also the fact that Ed was the last person to see Mary Jane before she left the house on January 23, the day Rhonda was killed. If Ed would just claim she was home up until a few minutes before her haircut appointment, it would help her defense a great deal. But Ed couldn’t remember the exact time she left that day. That’s what he told police, and it angered Mary Jane so much it caused her darker side to emerge again.

  Zellis grew convinced that if Mary Jane were acquitted and set free, there was a risk that both Gregory Shreaves and Ed Fonder could become her next victims.

  Also that day, Stumpo received a call from Elana Foster, an employee at the RJ Lee Group laboratory where the police had sent specimens from Mary Jane’s car to be tested for gunpowder residue. A specimen from the turn signal handle and the driver’s door handle both had tested positive for the presence of gunpowder residue, Foster told Stumpo. When Foster completed her tests a few weeks later, she would uncover another positive specimen from Mary Jane’s driver’s seat.

  CHAPTER 33

  It was the third week of April when Sue Brunner stepped through the visitor’s entrance of the Bucks County Correctional Facility. She had never so much as written a letter to Mary Jane Fonder in prison, let alone visited her. Sue still felt too hurt, too confused, and the idea of having a nice little “Oh, how are you?” conversation struck her as impossible.

  But she felt that this was something she had to do. She had to try to understand why Mary Jane had done what she did. She had to look her right in the eye and see if she was going to continue with the charade, or tell her the truth.

  That she was somehow so angry with Rhonda, with this woman she really didn’t even know that well, that she had to take her life, Sue thought. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

  Upon Sue’s entering the prison, a guard took her purse and locked it up, then asked her to step through a metal detector. A man standing behind a counter opened a door and motioned Sue into a bare-walled, uninviting room, one that struck her as downright ugly. Across from the entrance was a glass wall, a chair, and a telephone, just like what you’d expect to see in a television police drama.

  A few minutes after Sue took her seat, she saw a door open on the other side of the glass and in walked Mary Jane, wearing a red jumpsuit, handcuffs on her wrists, and chain shackles around her ankles. She was smiling as she took her seat across from Sue, the same kind of smile she might have worn at a church service. Sue nevertheless felt a great sadness well up inside her. It felt horrible to see one of her fellow parishioners in a place like this.

  The two made small talk at first. Sue talked about her pets and filled Mary Jane in on the latest talk around their neighborhood. Mary Jane spoke about life at the prison. The food was good, she said, and she was losing weight because she had plenty of opportunities to exercise outside. Mary Jane asked about improvements Sue was making for the house, mentioning that before she was arrested, she walked by Sue’s home and noticed a painting truck outside. As she often did, Mary Jane quickly and abruptly changed subjects, discussing some nice women who had visited her home a few weeks earlier with religious pamphlets about the Bible. All in all, it was not unlike any given conversation Sue and Mary Jane might have had after bumping into each other during a walk on Winding Road.

  It was Mary Jane who steered the conversation in the direction of the crime when, out of nowhere, she began to talk about Pastor Shreaves.

  “Pastor didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “He’s just being nice to everybody. It’s terrible the things they’re saying about him. It’s going to ruin his reputation.”

  Once the subject was broached, Sue found it slightly easier to ask, “Mary Jane, how did this happen? What happened with Rhonda?”

  “I have no idea what happened!” Mary Jane said, her facial expression remaining unchanged. “Who would kill that innocent girl?”

  Sue paused before replying, “But Mary Jane … it was your gun.”

  “Well, I can’t figure out how anybody found that gun because I threw it away a long time ago,” Mary Jane said.

  And that was that. Mary Jane moved on to another topic, switching back to the more casual small talk of their earlier conversation, but Sue could barely pay any more attention. She was struck by the matter-of-fact tone with which Mary Jane had spoken about Rhonda, how she had so casually brushed the topic aside despite the overwhelming evidence that she had killed the woman.

  She kept up the charade, Sue thought. Either she’s a really good actress, or she really doesn’t think this happened. Like she just kind of blocked it out.

  Soon, the conversation was over. Mary Jane was led back to her cell, and Sue left the prison with the uneasy feeling that Mary Jane was just as casual in killing Rhonda as she was in discussing her death.

  It was just, “You have to die,” Sue thought. “This is a job I have to do, so I’m going to do it.”

  Sue had come looking for some sort of closure, but instead just felt sad. Sad that all this had to happen, sad that Rhonda had to die, and sad that Mary Jane Fonder, a great artist, a woman who loved her church and her house, who loved animals and nature and plants, was now stuck in prison, probably for the rest of her life, while Rhonda Smith was six feet underground.

  And for what reason? Sue thought as she walked back to her car. Nothing. Nothing that makes sense to me.

  * * *

  Around this time, Applebaum started seeking members of the church who would speak positively on Mary Jane’s behalf as a character witness. It wasn’t an easy task, and he had even assigned a private detective to try to find someone, but so far was having no luck.

  He decided to contact the church directly himself and, upon speaking with Pastor Shreaves via phone, arranged to visit the church on a specific date to speak with congregants about the possibility of testifying. Applebaum explained to the pastor that he would be polite and discreet. He did not want to accost or embarrass anyone, the attorney said, but he believed there surely must be some people at Trinity Evangelical willing to speak for Mary Jane.

  A few days later, however, Applebaum received a call from church council President Paul Rose explaining that Pastor Shreaves had changed his mind, and did not want Applebaum to come to the church. Applebaum was furious, particularly with the fact that Shreaves had asked someone else to call him back rather than confronting him directly.

  He doesn’t even have the balls to talk to me himself? Applebaum thought. But he did not want to cause a scene with Paul or anyone else at the church, and there was little he could do but accept the cancellation in stride. The decision severely hampered his efforts to find character witnesses for Mary Jane and, to Applebaum, it was just another sign of the church turning its back on his client.

  Applebaum had an expert conduct a psychological evaluation on Mary Jane. The results, which were never publicly released, found that his client was not mentally ill or legally insane. Although there was some indication of paranoia, and a few schizophrenic tendencies, the exam found she was not suffering from any major delusions.

  Had Applebaum planned to pursue an insanity defense, he might have had another test conducted. But Mary Jane adamantly insisted she was innocent, and that left the possibility of an insanity defense out altogether. As Applebaum put it, “You can’t say, ‘She didn’t do it, but if she did, she’s insane.’”

  Both privately and publicly, Applebaum believed his client was innocent. He found her to be a loving, caring individual who gave so much to the church, but got very little in return. Still, the attorney knew it would be difficult to convince a jury, particularly after the discovery of the gun and the fact that the bullets matched those that shot Rhonda. By far, Applebaum believed, that was the most damaging evidence.

  Although Applebaum believed Mary Jane was innocent, Thomas Joachim was not so sure. While Applebaum had been a defense attorney for decades, Joachim had more of a prosecutor
’s background: In fact, straight after graduating from law school, Joachim spent three years working in the Bucks County District Attorney’s office before joining Applebaum’s firm. That background left Joachim less inclined to believe Mary Jane’s claims of innocence, although he did have difficulty picturing the elderly woman walking into that church and pulling the trigger.

  In any event, at no point during their time together did Mary Jane Fonder ever admit to either Applebaum or Joachim that she had killed Rhonda Smith.

  CHAPTER 34

  Rays of sunlight crept through the row of windows along the wall opposite the entrance to Magistrate District Judge Kay DuBree’s Ottsville courtroom on May 2. A handcuffed Mary Jane Fonder, donning a red prison jumpsuit and fuchsia lipstick, sat beside Michael Applebaum at the defense table. She sat in complete silence, without a trace of her usual chattiness, but behind her the room was positively bustling.

  Normally empty for something as simple as a preliminary hearing, the rows of tightly packed together chairs were full of spectators, including members of the media, state troopers, Trinity Evangelical members, and others who just came to enjoy the show. Also among the crowd were Jim and Dorothy Smith, along with their granddaughter Amber, who sat in silence directly behind David Zellis at the prosecutor’s table.

  It had already been decided earlier that the district attorney’s office would not pursue a capital case against Mary Jane. Zellis had determined the murder did not meet any of the aggravating circumstances required for the death penalty, such as the killing of a witness or police officer, or the use of torture or ransom, or a victim under twelve years old.

  Naturally, some in the public were disappointed with that decision, but to Bob Egan it made no difference whatsoever. As far as the veteran trooper was concerned, there was no death penalty in the state of Pennsylvania. Although it had been on the books in the state since 1976, only three executions have ever been carried out since, and even those were only after more than a decade of appeals. For the most part, pursuing a capital punishment case only means better legal representation for the defendant and a swell of support from anti-death penalty advocates, which only make the prosecution more difficult.