Kill Mary Kill

By Khrystal Rock

Alice Fonder passed away five years after Mary Jane's return home. She fell into a four-month coma following surgery to get her leg amputated, and never woke up, leaving Mary Jane alone with her father. Heartbroken at the loss of his wife, Edward Fonder III fell into a void of depression, which led to countless fraught arguments with his daughter. Mary Jane would later claim that their already strained relationship would become irreparable following a visit from two of her father's cousins. She believed the three of them were critical of how she ate chicken, and her feelings of humiliation and paranoia pushed the father-daughter relationship over the edge. Hostility between the pair wasn't considered anything more than familial squabbles in the neighbourhood. Their bitter feelings didn't become a concern until August 26, 1993, when Mary Jane reported her eighty-year-old father missing...What did she do to him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201487911

Book preview

KILL MARY KILL

the true story of Mary Jane Fonder

Chrystal Rock

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MARY JANE FONDER

JANEEN SNYDER

DEFRANCISCO SISTERS

MARLENE OLIVE

ALYSSA BUSTAMANTE

TYLAR WITT

MELINDA LOVELESS

SHIRLEY WOLF

KRISTINA FETTERS

BRITTANY HOLBERG

NIKKI REYNOLDS

Mary Jane Fonder

Mary Jane Fonder was born on July 5, 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of Alice Fonder and Edward Fonder III. She spent the first eight years of her life in West Philadelphia before her parents moved the family to a new home in the small, rural town of Springfield Township in the heart of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Mary Jane continued to go to school in West Philadelphia, eventually enrolling in Bartram High School. However, her experience at school wasn’t easy, and she found difficulty in keeping on top of her studies and homework due to emotional problems. In her young adulthood, Mary Jane overdosed in an attempt to commit suicide, causing her to be institutionalised for a month. Her return to school proved to be very unhappy as she struggled to thrive in social situations, and it wasn’t long until she dropped out of high school completely. As she grew older, she had trouble holding down a regular job, grasping opportunities in all sorts of roles, from department store cashier to a punch-card operator at a publishing company. Mary Jane was well into her 30s before she began to form personal adult relationships and begin dating, but found it hard to maintain any serious romantic connections. After years of struggling to find her way in life, Mary Jane returned to her childhood home on Winding Road in Springfield Township at the age of forty-five to look after her elderly parents.

Alice Fonder passed away five years after Mary Jane’s return home. She fell into a four-month coma following surgery to get her leg amputated, and never woke up, leaving Mary Jane alone with her father. Heartbroken at the loss of his wife, Edward Fonder III fell into a void of depression, which led to countless fraught arguments with his daughter. Mary Jane would later claim that their already strained relationship would become irreparable following a visit from two of her father’s cousins. She believed the three of them were critical of how she ate chicken, and her feelings of humiliation and paranoia pushed the father-daughter relationship over the edge. Hostility between the pair wasn’t considered anything more than familial squabbles in the neighbourhood. Their bitter feelings didn’t become a concern until August 26, 1993, when Mary Jane reported her eighty-year-old father missing.

The police received Mary Jane’s report shortly after 11am on that warm Thursday morning. Investigators arrived at the home she shared with her father soon after receiving the call, led by Springfield Township officer, Kimberly Triol. Upon initial questioning, Mary Jane told Triol that she had heard movement earlier that morning. Assuming that it was her father opening the front door to collect the newspaper, she rolled over and went back to sleep. She awoke again at 11am to discover her father wasn’t in the house, and immediately reported him missing before forming a small search party that scoured the neighbourhood to no avail. It wasn’t long before the police began to consider Mary Jane the primary suspect involved in her father’s disappearance, believing he may have been murdered. An elderly man with mobility issues, authorities knew Edward Fonder III was incapable of setting out alone, particularly with no access to his medication or money, and leaving his possessions behind. Officer Triol’s suspicions were raised further when, during an initial interview in the Fonder’s home, she stumbled across a bucket filled with an unusual pink liquid, towels, a mop, and a chicken. Triol later discovered a dog’s corpse inside the Fonder’s freezer, covered in a plastic wrapping. Mary Jane and her older brother, Edward Fonder IV, denied police the opportunity to fully search their property, going so far as to hire a lawyer to help remove the investigators from their home. Despite being very open and helpful with police investigations, Mary Jane soon turned cold as soon as she perceived that she was a suspect, demonstrating a particular bitterness toward Triol. With no way of continuing their search, police were forced to retreat, reducing Edward Fonder III to another face on a missing person’s board as the case grew cold.

On January 23, 2008, just after noon, Judy Zellner arrived at the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield Township. She found the door unlocked and made her way through to the church’s office. As she entered the room, she discovered the body of a woman lying on the floor, covered in blood, having suffered gunshot wounds to the head. Judy called 911, and the police and paramedics arrived shortly after to rush the injured woman to hospital. Later that day, forty-two-year-old Rhonda Smith died after being disconnected from life support.

Rhonda Smith was a local woman from Hellertown. She was very well educated and driven, working two jobs to see her through college as she studied to become a teacher. She was very loving and loyal to her family and close friends, but she did suffer from chronic bouts of bipolar disorder and depression, ultimately forcing her to drop out of college. Consequently, she struggled to keep a job for long periods of time. Despite her struggles with mental health, her parents commended her for never giving up, no matter how many times she was knocked down. She joined the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church with her mother, Dorothy, in 2006. Finding the church community to be welcoming and safe, she threw herself into the congregation, even joining the choir. A well-liked and respected woman, her fellow congregants recognised the struggles Rhonda faced with her illness, and were open to give her aid when required, even going so far as banding together to help her financially. In an effort to keep her busy with work, Pastor Gregory Shreaves hired Rhonda as a temporary secretary. Not only was it difficult to stomach that anyone would cause such chaos and violence in a place of worship, but it was almost impossible to believe that anyone in their small community would want to hurt Rhonda.

Initially, investigators considered that Rhonda could have attempted suicide. The scene was so sparse of evidence, there was no immediate link to suggest that it had been a murder. No cars had been seen coming or going from the crime scene on the morning of January 23, and the room was untouched, with no signs of a scuffle or attempted burglary. There was also no sign of a weapon. Police originally theorised that this could be due to someone discovering the body and removing the gun so as to avoid the controversy of a congregant committing suicide in a church. However, as their investigation continued, it quickly became clear that Rhonda was a murder victim, shot in cold blood as she sat at the computer in the church office. Although there were no bullet casings found at the scene, one slug was embedded in the window pane. Between the following ballistic test and autopsy report, it was found that Rhonda had been shot twice in the head. The first bullet had hit her forehead, but ricocheted off of her skull, becoming lodged in the window pane. It was deduced that the killer then walked around the desk to where Rhonda lay on the floor and shot her in the temple, before leaving the room, closing the door behind her. Bucks County First Assistant District Attorney David Zellis called the crime a cold, calculating murder done by someone who was intent on getting away with the murder of Rhonda Smith. But with no immediate suspects, and a victim who was beloved in her community with no past history of violence, police had few leads to follow to find the culprit.

Panic spread throughout the church community, and the police felt under increasing pressure to make an arrest, though they were well aware of the sensitive nature of the case. With no suspects in a murder that appeared to be premeditated, the congregants and their Pastor lived in fear for the following months that they may be targeted next. A church is supposed to be a safe sanctuary for the whole community, and the horrifying events that had occurred in their place of worship caused considerable distress around Springfield Township. Rhonda’s past romantic partners were quickly ruled out as suspects, only reaffirming her renowned good nature, and deepening the question of who or why someone would harm this woman.

Being a quiet, tight-knit community, many of the congregants were willing to speak with police. A large number of witnesses described one eccentric character who had recently visited the church. An unnamed white male, believed to be in his forties or fifties, had unsettled a large number of people in the church with his demeanour and carefree attitude. A number of witnesses told police that the stranger had named different states when welcomed to the church by various members of the congregation, enquiring where he was joining them from. Another witness recalled that he had made a comment about the church being full of lovely things, making it an ideal place to rob, going so far as to put a glass in his pocket during communion. Caught in the act, he reluctantly returned the glass. Police consequently searched local hotels and motels, hoping to find this stranger. They even went so far as to set up a traffic check point outside of the church in case someone in the town might be able to identify the man in question, but their efforts proved fruitless. However, the police found the absence of clues to work in their favour. As nothing had been stolen from the church, it suggested that Rhonda had not got in the way of a robbery, allowing police to discount a suspect who sounded more like a petty thief than a murderer. Instead, it suggested that the attack was personal, leading them back to their original question of who would want to hurt Rhonda Smith.

Following the murder, another member of the congregation became very friendly with Rhonda’s grieving parents. Several members of the community noticed that sixty-five-year-old Mary Jane Fonder had begun to sit with them at church events and bake them pies. Mary Jane had been a long-time member of the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, although no one seemed to know her particularly well. She was considered to be a bit odd, but harmless: a very talented woman, but a bit of an eccentric. While discussing unusual and suspicious behaviour with Gregory Shreaves, the police discovered Mary Jane was displaying some unnerving behaviour toward the Pastor. Gregory revealed that she would regularly send him letters and call him on a near daily basis, leaving long, rambling messages on his answering machine. He considered them to be fairly harmless streams of consciousness from a lonely elderly woman, commenting on the weather and wishing him a lovely day. However, police suspected Mary Jane had a more personal motive for the calls, particularly after Pastor Shreaves revealed there was only one phone call that I recall where she expressed an interest in being intimate. She said you couldn’t deny what was going on between us. Her overly friendly tendencies toward the Pastor continued to be unveiled to investigators, as he told them that Mary Jane would frequently let herself into his kitchen and fill his fridge with food. In response, the Pastor began to lock his door, but Mary Jane remained undeterred, and began to leave the food on his porch. Eager to discourage this habit, the Pastor would leave the bags of groceries and home-baking to spoil on his doorstep, which deeply upset Mary Jane.

Concerned by this display of possessive behaviour, the police decided to question the sixty-five-year-old woman about her relationship with Rhonda Smith. During the initial interview, Mary Jane was very talkative, admitting to calling the church office on January 20, 2008, and being surprised to hear Rhonda answer the phone. Investigators were alerted by this piece of information, as it was believed that only two people knew of Rhonda’s role at the church office, both of whom had solid alibis. The revelation that Mary Jane also knew Rhonda would be working in the church that Thursday morning came as a shock, but opened up a new lead in a case with so few clues. Following the interview, investigators discovered that Mary Jane owned a registered handgun – a gun that could potentially match the murder weapon, judging by the recovered bullet jackets. Without realising, Mary Jane had implemented herself as the prime suspect of the murder.

As the police continued their investigation, Mary Jane continued to be as helpful as possible. She revealed that on the morning of January 23, she had a hair appointment. She claimed to leave her house shortly before 11am and drive straight to the salon. Investigators confirmed that Mary Jane attended her appointment, arriving at 11.22am. The hairdresser at the salon remembered this particular meeting with Mary Jane, as the elderly woman was known for always wearing a wig. On this occasion, however, she not only asked for her wig to be washed and styled as