by Colin McEvoy
Four troopers testified for the prosecution during the preliminary hearing, including Greg Stumpo, who rehashed everything from Mary Jane’s past history with the church to the discovery of her gun in Lake Nockamixon. Zellis took considerable time describing Mary Jane’s long and often confusing police interviews, as well as her conflicting statements about how and why she allegedly threw out her gun fourteen years ago. Zellis described the day Rhonda thanked the congregation for providing her with financial assistance during her hour of need, and described it as the moment that sparked Mary Jane’s jealousy so strongly that it moved her to commit murder.
Applebaum argued much of the evidence was circumstantial at best. But at a preliminary hearing, the prosecutors do not yet have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They simply have to establish sufficient evidence exists that the case should be moved to trial. After ninety minutes of testimony, Judge DuBree found enough evidence indeed existed, and ordered that Mary Jane be held for trial. But not before Applebaum argued vigorously in her defense, offering Zellis a window into what he might expect from the defense at trial.
Applebaum argued that even though the gun was indisputably registered to Mary Jane Fonder, the police had no evidence that she was in possession of it on January 23, much less that she used it to kill Rhonda. Mary Jane had already claimed she threw the gun into the lake back in 1994. Applebaum indicated it was possible somebody else had found the weapon and killed Rhonda with it.
He even hinted that he might have another plausible suspect in mind, although he declined to elaborate before the trial began. Nevertheless, just the hint of it was enough to cause a considerable stir among the media in the room.
Neither Zellis nor Stumpo were particularly impressed with Applebaum’s argument. For one thing, the gun was in nearly pristine condition. It had barely any rust on it whatsoever, and had obviously not been sitting in Lake Nockamixon for the last fourteen years. In order for a jury to find Mary Jane Fonder not guilty, Stumpo surmised, they would have to believe somebody else who had a motive to kill Rhonda Smith had fished the gun out of the lake in 1994, kept it for fourteen years, shot Rhonda to death, then put it back in the lake just in time for police to find it.
That’s bizarre, Stumpo thought. To believe that is ridiculous.
Somewhat more troubling than that argument, however, was the way Applebaum seemed to target the police investigation itself. While cross-examining Patrick McGuire, Applebaum forced the trooper to admit police took no fingerprints from the gun or ammunition after it was found. The attorney claimed to be “appalled” by this revelation, as well as the fact that the crime scene where Rhonda was murdered was not preserved for the defense to eventually inspect.
“They did a poor job of preserving the evidence,” Applebaum claimed.
Zellis countered that the church was still in regular use, and that the office could not very well have been preserved for months until an arrest was made. But Applebaum had made his point, and it was clear to Zellis that the police investigation would fall victim to further attacks at the trial—that Applebaum would argue they couldn’t prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because of their mistakes.
But at the end of the day, it was Stumpo’s testimony about Mary Jane’s day planner that ended up making the most headlines. When he described that Mary Jane had actually written “Rhonda MURDered” under the date of Rhonda’s death, it was the first time that irresistible detail had been publicly released, and it sent the reporters—and later the public—into a tizzy.
For a fleeting moment, some in the courtroom believed Mary Jane had made the notation before Rhonda was killed, as a sort of “to do” reminder. But Stumpo’s testimony made clear that was not the case, and that it was more likely it was written in later, perhaps with the intention of keeping her story straight while dealing with the police.
Zellis placed great emphasis on the notation, claiming the mere fact that it was written at all was important evidence. Applebaum did his best to downplay it, saying Mary Jane had written it later on, after somebody had notified her of the murder. Zellis tried to argue against this theory, claiming the police had never publicly disclosed whether Rhonda had been killed or committed suicide. Applebaum simply scoffed the argument away, and insisted that everyone in the community knew it was a murder.
“She went back and made notes after the church had called her,” he said.
Although Stumpo was forced to admit upon cross-examination that he had no way of knowing exactly when the notation was written, he privately thought very little of Applebaum’s theory. In his mind, it came down to the simple fact that the notation about Rhonda’s murder was written above the note about the hairdresser, not below it. If Mary Jane had simply been taking note of the day that Rhonda died, she would have written it after the hairdresser appointment had already taken place, so it would have been written below the appointment.
Another set of notes in the planner appeared slightly more innocuous than the note about the murder, but was later looked upon by police and Zellis with great importance. Under January 16, Mary Jane had written, “Choir Practice 8:15–8:30 Everyone Disappeared Party?” Next to it, on the 17th, she wrote, “Rhonda’s B’DAY?” It was only after reading this note that Stumpo and Egan remembered that during one point in their four-hour interview, Mary Jane had gone off topic and briefly mentioned that she’d seen several cars in the church parking lot a few days before Rhonda was killed, and she believed they were holding a birthday party for her.
Zellis had looked into the claim, but after speaking with several church members, he learned there had never been any such party. Much like Shreaves’s apparent infatuation with Rhonda, it appeared to be simply a concoction of Mary Jane Fonder’s imagination. But if she had believed the church had held a party for Rhonda, and that they had not invited Mary Jane and kept it a secret from her, it would play right into Zellis’s theory about her jealousy toward Rhonda Smith.
Upon the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, Mary Jane remained silent as she was escorted from the courthouse, saying nothing to the swarms of reporters surrounding her except the word, “No,” when asked whether she had committed the crime. The Smiths and their granddaughter also declined to speak to the media as they left.
As the reporters asked their questions and the excitement in the courtroom began to wind down, Bob Egan was approached by Judy Zellner, who had been watching from the audience. She told Egan the church had recently been notified that Mary Jane had purchased something for the church sometime before she was arrested, and that it had just arrived at her home. Apparently, it was some sort of an angel statue.
A statue dedicated to the memory of Rhonda Smith.
Later, Egan arranged for the statue to be obtained, and sure enough, it was a two-foot-tall stone statue with a winged angel draping its arms over a tombstone and weeping. Mary Jane had purchased the sculpture, which was apparently inspired by an original work from nineteenth-century sculptor William Wetmore Story, for $60 from an online home décor company. Upon the gravestone was an inscription, “The bud was spread/to show the rose/our Saviour smiled/the bud was closed. Anon.”
Mary Jane made the purchase on March 14, which Egan noted was exactly two days after she had knocked on the front door of Jim and Dorothy Smith to offer them a pie.
To Egan and the other investigators, the statue was not just another confirmation of Mary Jane’s eccentricity, but another sign of a pattern of cunningness that was becoming all too clear to them.
Police had already interviewed Mary Jane twice by the time she ordered this statue, and it must have been obvious to her that she was under suspicion. The statue, the pie, the sympathy cards she had sent to members of the church: Egan believed these were all part of a strategy Mary Jane employed to portray herself as a kind, sweet old lady who adored Rhonda Smith, and couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with her death.
This theory was further supported, in Egan’s mind, by Mary Jane’s be
havior immediately after the long police interview back in February. She went out of her way to visit Dorothy Smith in church, making a big show out of how much she missed Rhonda and making sure to mention that she spoke to Rhonda the Monday before she died. Mary Jane knew that now that the police were aware of that Monday phone call, they’d start asking questions about it, and she wanted to lay the groundwork so she could later claim she had nothing to hide.
Likewise, Mary Jane had gone out of her way to let several people know about the pie she had so graciously given Rhonda’s parents. In investigating the gift, Egan learned Mary Jane had stopped by her friend Rosalie Schnell’s home with a pie for her, and was sure to mention to Rosalie that she was bringing one to the Smiths. And then, a few days later, Mary Jane had called Steve Wysocki and Donald Ludlow to let them know about bringing the Smiths a pie.
To Egan, Stumpo, and Zellis, this showed that behind Mary Jane’s apparently odd and senseless behavior was an intelligent, calculating woman who knew exactly what she was doing, and was taking measures to cover her steps.
CHAPTER 35
After the district attorney reopened the investigation into Ed Fonder’s disappearance, county detectives began looking into his bank records. They were surprised to find he was still receiving monthly pension payments now, even fifteen years after his disappearance, and that Mary Jane Fonder controlled the account where they were being deposited.
The district attorney’s office forwarded this information in May to the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. In July, the organization filed suit against Mary Jane, seeking back payment of the pension money she had collected since August 25, 2000, the date under Pennsylvania law her father would have been presumed dead with seven years passing since his disappearance. Ed Fonder’s pension payments since that date totaled $32,913.63.
Mary Jane’s attorney, Michael Applebaum, told The Philadelphia Inquirer, who broke the story, that he felt Mary Jane didn’t do anything wrong, considering she had power of attorney over both her parents’ finances.
“As far as I know, the police still consider [Fonder’s father] to be a missing person,” he told the newspaper.
Ed Fonder retired from his job as a machinist in 1976 and started receiving $353.91 in monthly pension payments in April 1979.
In 1992, Mary Jane took power of attorney over her father’s bank account, into which the pension payments were deposited. She contacted the pension company in 1999 about a change in the bank account number, but never mentioned that her father had been missing since 1993, the company noted in the lawsuit.
In total, Ed Fonder received $62,642.07 in pension payments. In its lawsuit, the pension company requested Mary Jane pay back all of her father’s pension payments, plus interest, since his presumptive death in August 2000.
Applebaum told The Intelligencer he feared new media coverage from the lawsuit would further hamper his client’s ability to get a fair trial in Bucks County.
“I’m sure it wasn’t a calculated move (by prosecutors) to just keep heaping more and more information to the public to taint the jury pool. Hopefully, that won’t be the effect,” he told the newspaper.
* * *
Mary Jane’s first-degree murder case was assigned to Judge Rea Boylan, which meant one thing for sure: Things were going to move very, very quickly.
In general, most murder cases were tried quickly in Bucks County. While in some surrounding counties it was not unusual for a trial to be delayed one or two years from the time of the arrest, in Bucks they tended to take place about six months following an arrest. But Boylan wanted this case on a particularly fast track, and scheduled an August 25 trial date.
Boylan had built up a strong reputation since taking her seat on the bench in 1999. She graduated from college at age nineteen and previously worked as a public defender and assistant district attorney before starting her own civil practice. She was the first woman president of the Bucks County Bar Association, and was only the fourth woman to take on the county judgeship.
During a discussion about a possible continuance for the original trial date, Boylan explained her simple philosophy to both Zellis and Applebaum regarding the need for a speedy trial: “If she’s guilty, she belongs in the state penitentiary. If she’s not guilty, she belongs back home. And we’re going to make sure this happens, one way or the other.”
Zellis didn’t think Boylan understood exactly how complicated a case this was, and how difficult it would be to try it on such a tight schedule. Nevertheless, Zellis was excited to take on the case, which he believed could potentially be the crowning achievement of his career. He found it fascinating on so many levels: a murder in a rural community that in many ways was a throwback to a time that was long past.
And of course, there was the defendant herself. In his twenty-five-year career, he had never encountered a suspect as unusual as Mary Jane Fonder. If she were found guilty, she would be the oldest woman ever convicted of murder in Bucks County history.
As the months approached and Zellis prepared his case, Stumpo and Egan learned that Jim and Dorothy Smith had given Mary Jane two pairs of Rhonda’s old shoes: a set of sneakers and a pair of dress shoes. The troopers visited Ed Fonder, who told them that he knew about the shoes, but had no idea they once belonged to Rhonda. Ed voluntarily handed over the dress shoes, but said he had brought Mary Jane the sneakers during a recent prison visit. If they wanted to get their hands on them, Stumpo and Egan would have to seek a warrant.
Meanwhile, Zellis was forced to respond to several court motions filed by Applebaum. First, he tried to have several of Mary Jane’s statements from her February 25 police interview suppressed from the trial, particularly when she said “very sexual kind of feelings” and “warm feelings” about Shreaves. That motion was denied.
Applebaum also argued the trial should be moved outside of Bucks County altogether, because the media was making a “soap opera” out of the case. Indeed, the story had drawn particularly extensive media coverage, so much so that the NBC program Dateline had expressed interest in doing a piece about the case. Applebaum argued the stories—especially those about Mary Jane’s romantic interest in Pastor Shreaves—would make it impossible to find an impartial jury in the county, and he feared a “whisper down the lane” effect would make it difficult for prospective jurors to differentiate the rumors from the facts.
It was a common defense tactic for a high-profile murder case, and it, too, was denied, but an unexpected development occurred during the pretrial hearing for that motion. As they waited for Mary Jane to be brought into the courtroom, Stumpo and Egan told Zellis about the warrant they were working on to get Rhonda’s shoes back from Mary Jane.
“Wouldn’t it be something if she wears them here?” Egan joked, resulting in a laugh from all three men.
A few minutes later, Mary Jane was led into the courtroom wearing the same red jumpsuit, handcuffs, and ankle shackles she had donned during her arraignment. The chains made a grating noise that echoed throughout the courtroom as they dragged along the ground, and Stumpo couldn’t help but be reminded of the Ghost of Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
Stumpo looked back at Mary Jane and the shackles around her ankles, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the dirty white sneakers on her feet.
“Bob,” Stumpo whispered to Egan. “Are those the sneakers?”
Egan looked, as his eyes widened in surprise. “Yeah. Those are the sneakers.”
“Holy cow,” Stumpo said, in complete disbelief that Mary Jane would actually wear Rhonda’s shoes to a court hearing about Rhonda’s murder.
“Dave,” Stumpo whispered to Zellis. “Those are the sneakers.”
“What?” Zellis exclaimed.
“Yeah, she’s wearing Rhonda’s shoes!”
“Oh, you’re kidding me…”
Zellis called for a county detective to come down to the courtroom and take a photo of the sneakers. If Jim and Dorothy Smith could l
ook at those photos and identify them as Rhonda’s shoes, it would make getting a search warrant that much easier. The detective, wearing khakis and a polo shirt, arrived just as the hearing was ending.
“Ms. Fonder, do you mind if I take a photograph of your sneakers?” he asked, without identifying himself, as Mary Jane was being escorted back to the jail.
“Oh no, go ahead,” she said, smiling and nodding. “These are Rhonda’s. Rhonda’s parents gave them to me.”
Zellis could have laughed out loud. Well, he thought, now we don’t even need the photographs.
Indeed, a warrant was issued a week later, and Stumpo and Egan personally visited the Bucks County Correctional Facility to serve it to her. And, when a guard brought Mary Jane into the visitors’ room with the detectives, she was wearing those same shoes once again.
Stumpo and Egan, seated in a chair directly across from the handcuffed Mary Jane, informed her that they had a warrant to take back Rhonda’s shoes. An angry look came over her face similar to the one Egan saw back when they took her car. Once the detectives got the shoes, they informed a security guard standing by the door that Mary Jane could be brought back to her cell.
As they waited for the other guards to come and take Mary Jane away, she sat silently, staring at the detectives. Finally, she broke the silence by asking, “When am I going to get my dirty laundry back?”
The question struck Stumpo as so absurd that he was momentarily taken aback. Mary Jane was referring to the dirty laundry that was in her car back when they took it away, before she was arrested.
Here she is, Stumpo thought, sitting in jail with the two men who are going to lock her up for the rest of her life for murder, and this is the only thing she can think to ask?