he is so good at understanding how to comfort other people he was counseling women who are very vulnerable she needed somebody to talk to a popular Pastor hiding something wicked I found text messages I love you I can't wait to see you was like someone just put a hole right through your heart lust lies adultery was there more Reverend Shermer AB to his friends was a small town Methodist preacher in eastern pen he was our friend our confident he was just an all round good guy darl Cox sang alongs
ide eie for 20 years he'd seen the Fresh Face young Pastor grow into an accomplished and devoted preacher all of the things that he helped my family with over the years he was always there he' watched his friend the pastor raise his music loving family ab and his wife juwel even perform together they sang together many many times they were quite the duo as far as the duets were concerned in a church just seemed like the All American couple the couple's daughters Julie and Amy my mom and dad were
people who loved each other and took care of each other and just a very close family but a deep sense fell over the shers in 1999 when ab's wife of 30 years suddenly died his daughter recalls their father being overcome with grief he was very lonely it was a hard year after he was a sad guy huh very lonely but life goes on and their father did in time meet someone who had become their stepmother a recently divorced woman named Betty Who shared his love for running in the outdoors they just seem
like they were best friends I mean it really seemed they had this this closeness I loved Betty and Betty was loved by everyone her sister Tina remembers how she made even strangers feel instantly comfortable no matter who you were it was always hello and you got a hug everybody got a hug and out of everything in her life Betty was enormously proud of her grown son Nate Novak so with First Impressions count what were your first impression of ab Shermer I knew he was a pastor so I had respect for
him right away I thought he was a decent guy for my mom and in fact it was the Reverend his stepfather who officiated at Nate's wedding at a beach a couple of years later AB had embraced his new wife's big family and they him they were thrilled to see their sister find such happiness after coming out of a long marriage that had soured Betty's mother Jean was just delighted that her daughter had found such a fine upstanding man he was so nice you know we just didn't think there was anybody bette
r than him with this fresh chapter in his life opening up ab took a new church posting as the pastor of readers United Methodist Church in the rural Poconos of Northeastern Pennsylvania about 2 hours away from his old church in leanon Nate said his mother was homesick At first she was upset I think initially just uh being so far away from not only myself but also the rest of her family as well but he says Betty found comfort in ab's congregation the parishioners were happy to welcome her the alw
ays fun and friendly pastor's wife very Lively very full of energy always doing something Samantha muan had attended Sunday school at the church from the time she was knee high and she remembers how close the pastor and his wife seemed to be the church members always said oh well Betty and ab never do anything apart they're always together and that's how life passed for seven years AB wasn't expecting her to look as bad as she did could you even recognize her Nate no I couldn't that bad that bad
yes Betty Shermer was on life support and her family was being summoned coming up is you touched her hand or fingers were you getting anything back no and as I put the picture in her hand I whispered in her ear that I loved her and [Music] uh hope she can hear me at Betty's bedside everyone was in tears but according to her son everyone except her husband no crying no praying or anything like that when Date Line [Music] continues she'd always been there for them now Betty's mom and most of her
eight brothers and sisters had gathered at her bedside she looked all tubes bandages and swollen bruising we were all in shock it was just horrible Betty's youngest sister Tina was at her bedside in intensive care just two weeks before they'd celebrated the birthday they shared they said their goodbyes after a nice lunch do you remember what the last words were that we have to make sure that we keep doing this every year on our birthday and but she loves us Betty's only son Nate got to the hospi
tal as f fast as he could bringing with him a holiday photo of his mom and happier times mother son and the grandson she doed on she looks so happy with all of us together there on the couch and uh I placed that in her her hand to hold as you touched her hand or fingers were you getting anything back no and as I put the picture in her hand I whispered in her ear that I loved her and [Music] uh hope she can hear me a solemn vigil began a life ebbing away amid intensive care Machinery how are you
comforting one another they're hugging and you know crying together and holding on to each other saying some prayers at the hospital Betty's husband of seven years Pastor AB Shermer seemed to the family at times oddly distant at others overly genial but perhaps they thought he was still in Shar after all he'd walked away virtually unscathed from the car crash that had left his wife on life support no crying no uh praying or anything like that but ab's daughter from his first marriage remembers h
er father was beside himself with grief he was upset he was crying I saw him at her bedside sobbing sobbing with one of Betty's sisters sobbing holding on to her not my bet according to official reports the Pastor said he'd been doing about 50 in his PT Cruiser when the accident happened a dear he said had darted out into the road and he swerved into the guard rail Betty slammed into the windshield an arriving officer noted the airbags had deployed AB told his sister-in-law Tina Betty wasn't wea
ring her seat belt I questioned AB what do you mean she didn't have her seat belt on she always wears her seat belt she would never be without a seat belt but Betty moments before the crash had made the Fateful decision to unbuckle her belt the pastor told arriving officers less than 24 hours after she'd been rushed to the hospital she died Nate's mother was gone the woman who' built sand castles with him who taught him how to ride his bike Nate had loved his mother so much I was overwhelmed wit
h grief crying and uh I was putting my head on her chest just so to hear something but there was nothing there given the pastor's account of a relatively highspeed crash and the arriving officers right up of the wreck the coroner ruled Betty's death and incident caused by severe head injuries there would be no autopsy and ab told Nate that his mother had wanted to be cremated she was actually cremated uh the next day very quick a decision that surprised her family but the decision was properly t
he spouses at the funeral directors AB selected a container for her ashes that caught his eye he had picked out an ear with a deer on it a deer a deer the deer that sent them into the guard rail and calls the car accident yes odd Choice maybe but Nate reminded himself his mother had loved nature she and ab had jogged together at local parks AB said she always enjoyed seeing the deer his Administrative Assistant of the past two years Cindy musanti helped him take care of the funeral arrangements
her daughter Samantha who was 16 at the time remembers it well the morning of the service I actually went over early and was helping her with uh you know the last minute details the church was packed as people Rose to eulogize the Beloved Betty but nothing was heard that day from the pastor AB Shermer he sat in the pews and listened he'd presided over so many funerals but told friends that this was one he couldn't bear to speak at in the receiving line the preacher stood next to a stepson Nate a
s the funeral goers each paused briefly to offer their condolences one of them was Cindy he said Nate I'd like to introduce you to my church secretary this is Cindy and he said to me we have a little inside joke between us at the church here and he said I go by ab and she is known as CD and then he said AB CD and they kind of chuckled together about it do you think that was kind of a cozy jokey thing I just thought that was kind of odd at the time well wondered about the relationship between the
pastor and his assistant Cindy's daughter had some questions of her own she'd noticed her parents drifting apart in the months before the accident did your mom seem different Samantha yes definitely she seemed much more distant from my dad her father Joe who struggled with alcohol had studed himself on the foundation of the church a skilled cabinet maker he'd even made a desk for the pastor's office was it fancy very very beautiful it was uh cherry had three crosses on the front but now he was
back hitting the BFF so his demons were after him again huh was the growing distance between Cindy and her husband Joe the reason why she and her boss the Reverend AB Shermer seemed to spend so much more time together she needed somebody to talk to you know what better than your pastor but Samantha would soon wonder whether the pastor's ministering was not so much Godly as up close in [Music] person coming up Samantha plays teenage detective and is surprised by what she finds I was looking throu
gh my mom's phone and I found text messages things like I love you I can't wait to see you you looked really nice normal when dat line continues in the weeks after the death of the pastor's wife in a car accident Samantha musanti wondered why her mother was spending so much time with her boss the Reverend AB Shermer what in the world was going on I was being a nosy teenager um and I was looking through my mom's phone and I found text messages things like I love you I can't wait to see you you lo
oked really nice today um and I'm sorry that that isn't normal even at 16 Samantha knew it wasn't right for her mother to be trading flirtatious texts with a recently widowed Pastor Samantha became little misf fixing she decided to set things all right in her family by confronting her pastor in a kind of roundabout way using a who you are and know what you're doing kind of messages basically you know just said that someone knew about what was going on and he was going to he should stop or I was
wanting to take it to the church I did that point um I didn't want to didn't want to expose anybody I didn't want to cause an uproar I just I wanted my family back it didn't take the pastor long to figure out that his assistant Cindy's daughter was behind the threat Samantha was summoned to a meeting in the pastor's office her the Reverend and her mother how tough was that session very very difficult because as the child I had to just keep my mouth shut and say yes ma'am no ma'am two great autho
rity figures in your life telling you you're out of line yeah were they saying that you misinterpreted what that was yes yes we're just friends how dare you Samantha didn't believe a word of what she was being told but she didn't know where to turn with her suspicions of the affair between her mother and her pastor and your dad's in the dark and you know and he doesn't yeah at that point I didn't have any other choice I wasn't going to tell my dad I couldn't at that point um didn't have the prot
ect her dad for so long when Cindy and ab went on a day trip together Joe s got wind of it he called me and he said what's going on what's going on with ABY and your mother it's very you know what do I you know what do I say um and at that point you know he's like he said is she in love with him I said I think so Joe waited in the parsonage driveway for them to return and confronted both his wife and ab Samantha's mother came clean telling her husband while she felt an emotional attachment to th
e pastor the relationship had not yet turned physical she said all right yep I'll I'll end the affair and and you know I'll try and work on things my dad was trying his hardest you know to work on things and you know get the marriage back on track but Joe no longer trusted his wife of 18 years his sister Rose found out later that he was monitoring Cindy's every move he was tracking Cindy's me you know telephone messages how long she was talking talking and what numbers she was talking to and Joe
didn't like what he saw and even though she told him and you that she was going to yeah put an end to this there she was calling him yeah Joe drove his daughter out to the horse barn for a talk he was having panic attacks you know he said I just don't know what to do and I was young I didn't know what to tell him um at that point he knew that I think he knew that things just weren't going to work out for a man who had struggled with depression all his life the world was becoming an even darker
place I think at that point uh for for my dad family was very important and my belief is that he thought my mom was going to leave him his kids were going to get taken away and um I think without his family he wouldn't have had any reason to live the next afternoon Samantha says her mother called her in a panic the pastor reportedly told Cindy Joe had called him threatening to kill not only himself self but maybe Samantha and her brother too she told me that my dad had taken uh his gun out of hi
s dresser and taken it to work Samantha says Cindy instructed her not to go home that night that she may be in Mortal danger the 16-year-old didn't know what to think she had always been a daddy's girl loved him beyond measure but she was frightened and so she obeyed her mom and took Refuge at an aunt's house Joe gets home that night and the kids are gone and and Cindy's gone so he keeps calling Cindy and begging her you know I would never hurt you for the kids you know that Cindy we can only im
agine the storms that were thrashing Joe's mind on the night of October 28th 2008 alone brooding he drove to readers United Methodist Church he smashed a rock into a glass panel of the rear door of the church then he sat down in the reverend's chair and took out his gun sat right to that desk M that he' made that mate yeah is it possible Rosie was going to kill the pastor yes or at least threaten him but the pastor wasn't coming Cindy had reportedly phoned AB to warn him that Joe was armed and o
n the Move AB left town and so then he went to a motel because he thought the angry husband was coming looking for him with a loaded gun right who knows how long Joe musanti sat in the pastor's chair before he pulled the trigger but they found him the next morning slumped the bullet had gone through his skull and deflected off the upper part of a window frame Joe's sister knew something terrible had happened when her husband walked into her office that morning he said Joe killed himself what how
could that happen it was like someone just put a hole right through your heart and you just like G and I just couldn't believe that anything like that could happen Cindy broke the news to Samantha and her brother she said your Dad decided that he didn't want to be here anymore and um my brother said well where'd he go um it it it didn't sink in and then I said wait what and she said you your your your father took his life at the office in the church yes in the pastor's office what a dramatic st
atement that is yeah definitely the biggest statement he could have made Samantha would learn later her father in his last hours was on the verge of submitting a formal complaint with the church that could get AB shurmer fired Joe musanti didn't leave behind a suicide note but there was something he wanted people to know especially his daughter he put his briefcase with all the cell phone records the contact for the bishop of the church and and his cell phone and his camera under my bed so kind
of his case he was building against the pastor yeah um I I definitely took it as a sign you know figure this out Rose didn't need to see inside Joe's briefcase to understand what had happened she says Cindy shamelessly told her about the love triangle the night before Joe's funeral I watched her face and I felt like she was a woman that was awakened in some way that had not felt that ever before in her life she evidently loved this guy Rose could not believe it this is a pastor he can't step bac
k and let the two of them work it out he can't help himself I mean how could he do this I mean what's wrong with this guy the pastor was about to face more than a crime of the heart I was afraid for other parishioners they should investigate him to find out if he's done this to other people Rose was about to take up her brother's dying wishes and set in motion an investig ation that could not only get AB bounced from the parsonage but could also potentially put the Hy singing preacher away for a
very long time had he broken not only the seventh commandment the one about adultery but the sixth commandment as well the one forbidding Murder coming up well I just think he has no conscience you know he has no he doesn't care about anything but his own self Rose starts digging into the pastor's pth and is stunned by what she discovers there was these things that make the hair on your back of your neck stand up when dat line continues Cindy musante seemed to be moving on very quickly after th
e suicide of her husband Joe in late October of 2008 her family said it wasn't 2 weeks before she packed up his belongings and taken them to the Salvation Army the pastor's assistant was now free to be with the man she loved her boss the Reverend AB Shermer he'd been a widower since losing his wife in a car wreck that summer Cindy's daughter Samantha says her mom and ab picked up together just days after her dad's suicide my mom went away the next weekend to go see him so it's very difficult to
be hurting and have just lost your father and have your mom M go off visiting her lover I guess that's healing the wounds pretty quickly yeah very Joe's Sister Rose a onetime counselor tried not to judge her sister-in-law but she was obviously head over heels for the pastor still she thought the pastor had a lot of explaining to do basic things like why hadn't he called the police when Joe musanti had threatened to kill himself and possibly even his family time you threaten somebody's life or yo
u threaten your own you're you're supposed to call the authorities you've been a counselor you've been there mhm so I picked up on that and I thought geez being a pastor he you know he didn't even do that instead Rose says he'd left the desperate husband to spiral out of control Rose was haunted by thoughts of her brother's Final hours he folded he couldn't stand the pressure and I felt really bad that he sat in that room by himself you know I knew how much his guts were turned inside out Rose w
as determined to give her dead brother a voice 7 days after Joe's suicide she drafted a letter of complaint to the bishop he has violated his pledge to be a man of God she wrote and asked that the Reverend be held accountable for his negligence it wasn't a Witch Hunt it was never you know we're out to get you my aunt simply wanted it investigated you know there's something fishy when a pastor of a church has an affair with one of the parishioners there's something wrong a week later AB was summo
ned for a meeting with the bishop Rose says he didn't even try to defend himself he resigned from the church and he was a Broken Man when they left her office and he was done with the church that was it he had to surrender his license and he had to get out of the parsonage within a certain length of time and he wasn't supposed to talk to any of the parishioners he wasn't supposed to make contact with them or anything he was was just supposed to leave and that was it but there was one churchgoer
he couldn't stay away from Samantha's mother months after withdrawing from the pulpit the one time Reverend shurmer was dropping by Cindy's house for dinner she said oh maybe he's going to come over for dinner he said I think I have to work that night you didn't like shmer I had a lot of hostile feelings I felt as if you know my family was invaded and before Samantha knew it dinners were turning into overnight days he started bringing overnight bags and the overnight bags didn't leave you know u
m that's when Panic really s in for me Samantha's Aunt Rose would later view AB with disgust for spending more and more time with their dead brother's family seemingly without a thought of the man who had died by Suicide at his desk well I just think he has no conscience you know he has no he doesn't care about anything but his own self but what AB didn't know was that Rose hadn't just r him out to the church a few days after she'd mailed that letter to the bishop she'd made a call to the police
she had a hunt she told investigators not about her brother Joe's suicide but about that car accident that killed the pastor's wife Betty people had sort of filed that away hadn't they yeah that the Reverend had lost his wife in a car wreck yeah Rose says it was Cindy who had originally told her about the accident that killed Betty the pastor's wife he was taking her to the hospital early in the morning and a deer ran out and you know he swerved and I said did the deer hit the car and she said
no I said the story of the car accident that killed Betty struck her as odd and the more she uncovered the more suspicious she became there was these things that were really disturbing you and make the hair on your back of your neck stand up one of the cops to receive Rose's call was detective James Wagner of the Pocono Township Police Department who was assigned to investigate I immediately thought that I needed to look at this to see if there's any signs of Foul Play the patrolman's report see
med cut and dried Betty had died after hitting her head during the car wreck but the key witness had been Betty's husband Reverend AB shurmer the man the detective was told to take a look at at the hospital the pastor had given a vivid account of the crash to a deputy coroner what's his story as he tells it he told a very similar story that he told the officer investigating but he put a a major Twist on it to try to justify I believe the severe injuries that Betty sustained he made it sound to t
his corner that that vehicle spun out of control and Betty went flying because she was unrestrained passenger very plausible story that is cor all of a sudden there's a deer you try and swerve and you lose it and a God awful thing happens for a coroner who's located 45 minutes away who doesn't know anything about the accident scene itself that would seem normal and he taking down the account of a Methodist Minister that's correct Wagner kept digging and discovered in the Department's archives a
cash of photos from the crash site when he punched them up on his computer the detective immediately noticed they didn't match the story told by the pastor the car was only minimally banged up the airbags hadn't even deployed it turned out the officer who' written up the original accident report got that important detail wrong and the detective wondered why he saw no tire marks on the road there were no signs or evidence of evasive maneuvers uh at all should have been and there weren't there wer
e not to his eyes there was Zero evidence in the photos indicating a highspeed collision had ever occurred and yet Betty's injuries had been simply horrific she'd suffered multiple skull fractures and two huge gashes on her head it just didn't fit for the detective there's no way a conscious person sitting in that passenger seat would sustain the kind of head trauma that she did did you say this thing stinks yes I did coming up investigators noticed something else odd about the quarters in the c
ar's change holder the Imp where they' been correct and it wasn't just the coins that didn't seem to add up I got to a photograph of the blood in the seat and I immediately noticed that this Blood doesn't make sense I had one of those moments where it's oh my God this this is it when Date Line [Music] continues it was hard to believe that this modest Church in the Poconos had become the setting for a murder investigation detective James Wagner was delving into the shermer's late night car accide
nt wondering why pictures of the supposedly high-speed crash didn't seem to match the account of the driver Reverend AB Shermer whose wife Betty had died he Tracked Down the passer by who called 911 the night of the accident to see if he had any further information that might help explain the discrepancies just by looking at the car from when we walked up on it there didn't seem to be any real damage the Good Samaritan motorist's Impressions confirmed what the detective had concluded from the ph
otos Betty's injury seemed way out of proportion to the minor fender bender she'd experienced she was shivering um she wasn't really conscious even at the time he remembered thinking it strange that the pastor was staring out the windshield making no effort to help his wife he made no attempt to get out of the car or really even to speak to her or comfort her which isn't something you'd expect from somebody who's who's with their wife who's potentially dying and even more unusual detective Wagne
r realized the pastor relied on the motorist to call for help he could have dialed 911 himself Mr shmer had a functional cell phone and never made a 911 call Wagner kept looking at the photos the stains I got to a photograph of the blood in the seat and I immediately noticed that this Blood doesn't make sense I had one of those moments where it's oh my God this this is it Betty's car seat was spattered with blood but the detective thought it shouldn't have been if she was initially injured while
sitting in the passenger seat how did it get under her if Betty did sustain a bleeding wound from that particular crash she would have been bleeding on herself there would be a void from her body her legs and her butt in that seat the only logical way to explain the blood on the passenger seat the detective thought was if Betty had been injured and bleeding before she got into the car what I saw is that uh evidence that told me immediately that she was bleeding prior to that crash that had noth
ing to do with a deer and slamming into the windshield absolutely not could AB have done something so monstrous as to Stage a car accident as a cover up for murder it was shocking to contemplate as the investigation was ramping up members of Betty's family were wrestling with the past reliving Betty's final days things just weren't adding up Betty's son Nate was bothered by one of the last phone calls he had with his mother I could tell there was something wrong I just couldn't put my finger on
it but when he SI it through a box of momentos his stepfather had given him well after the funeral he found a birthday card AB had written to Betty only a couple of weeks before she died tucked inside it was a Post-It note the Post-it note said for all the pain I have caused you I am sorry someday I hope you will be free to laugh again free to sore truly free and the word free was underlining some sort of an apology what's going on how do you read this obviously there was something going on behi
nd the scenes or behind closed doors that no one else was aware of and Betty's family had been taken apack by what they saw as ab's lack of emotion at the hospital did you see any tears in him that night never no they thought at times he'd acted more like a party host than a grieving husband just out of the blue just like this he go hey Billy come on in and see your sister you know like like they just had a newborn baby or something and when two months after the accident Tina took AB out to lunc
h she was surprised to find her newly widowed brother-in-law so happy whole time lunch was going on he was texting he called Cindy he said her name's cidi my name is a and having a good time with that so did you wonder who this CD Cindy woman really was yeah it was he just was having too much fun two other things stood out for Betty's family things that seemed out of character for their sister ab's story about Betty not wearing her seat belt just didn't ring true my mom would always uh say to me
seat bels save lives if I wasn't wearing a seat belt she would always make sure that I put it on before we'd go so did it make sense to you when he said that she was not buckled up I didn't know what what to think cuz that wasn't like my mom and then there was ab's decision to have Betty cremated did that surprise you it did my mother chose to cremated my sister Bets did not agree with it back in the Poconos the state police had been pulled in to help detective Wagner with the case the team too
k a second look at the PT Cruiser speed that night the pastor had told the responding officer he was traveling between 50 and 55 mph when the crash occurred but in one of the accident photos investigators noticed something on when they looked at the change holder they saw that almost all the quarters remained neatly in place the impact was so minor that they didn't go flying out all over the place so they were just where they'd been correct and an expert in Crash reconstruction who looked at the
case concluded that the PT Cruiser's speed at the point of impact was maybe half of what Shermer had claimed at the time he collided with that guard rail it was less than 25 mph this was a lowish speed accident correct investigators now believe the pastor had staged the accident to cover up the killing of his wife so 5 months after Betty's death one set of investigators asked the pastor to come down to the state police barracks for a talk while a separate team of officers and crime scene tchs h
eaded for the parsonage to have a look around at the place where AB had lived with Benny he wanted to hear what he had to say for sure but as important was putting him under a roof and knowing where he was correct we didn't want to compromise anything by him finding out that we were there and searching uh the parsonage the Cs were about to blow the case wide open who do you think he is a very sick sick man do you think he's killer they do yeah they do coming up a break in the case I walked in th
e back door of the garage it was unlocked and I immediately noticed passive blood drops near the post right above the stairwell and I was shocked I could not believe it but turns out there's someone who I called uh uh one of the Troopers who was nearest I said I had blood here um and they we we all could not believe that there was visual blood there and not just one or two blood drops Wagner could see clusters of blood visible to the naked eye and it looked to him as though someone had been tryi
ng to clean it up I could see evidence of washed blood how did it show itself it looked deluded it looked uh you know faded from water or clean up efforts when investigators sprayed the garage with lumino a chemical that glows when it interacts with blood they said a ghostly trail of blood appeared leading from the back door to where the car would have been parked detective Whitner could almost see the crime happening in front of him you could see Betty already injured being brought in through t
hat garage door being brought in that garage door and physically loaded and put into that passenger seat but just because there was blood on the garage floor didn't mean it was necessarily Betty's state trooper Phil BTO now retired was also at the scene of course now you have to find out whose blood it is you're seeing yes and the blood is uh documented and then collected for DNA testing and it comes back from the lab as Betty shmer it's all her blood but even before they had that lab confirmati
on the investigators at the parsonage called the Troopers interviewing Shermer the pastor to tell them of their breakthrough discovery as he's sitting across from detectives you're phoning in and saying we got blood out here yes he first denies that Betty ever bled in the garage that Betty ever bled anywhere in the parsonage but when confronted about this blood in the garage he comes up with a story about how she cut herself moving wood sherber told police Betty had helped him move a pile of fir
ewood out of the garage he said the stack collapsed and they both scraped themselves Betty so badly that she needed a bandage and sure enough the investigators did in fact find a pile of wood outside on church grounds but what they found hidden beneath that pile would only raise more questions about ab's version of events coming up did AB make a Freudian slip during his interrogation he subconsciously uh threw out the statement of putting her in the car which uh is what I believe he did did he p
ut her bleeding uh body into that car then another wife and another suspicious accident there were rumors all kinds of rumors about her death and make a troubling Discovery what I found out still pending and undetermined with no outcome when dat line [Music] continues under questioning Pastor AB Shermer told police there was a simple explanation for his wife's blood on their garage floor Betty cut herself while moving wood from the garage to a pile in the backyard forensic Troopers are meticulou
sly going through it looking for potential blood evidence what they find at the bottom of this pile is a stack of newspapers and the newspapers were dated September 2008 so help me on that why is the newspaper important because Betty died in July 15th 2008 and it's impossible for Betty to have helped him move this firewood Betty was dead at the time that that wood was deposited in that location investigators believed they had caught the pastor in an outright lie and there was one more incriminat
ing statement AB made during the interrogation according to the detective something so small Shermer possibly didn't even notice it he subconsciously uh threw out the statement of putting her in the car he used that term I put her in the car which uh is what I believe he did he put her bleeding uh body into that car investigators told Shermer he was free to go they were done with him for now after 7 hours of interrogation the by then former Pastor was apparently ratted next message he tried to g
et Betty's sisters Tina and Sandy on the phone to alert them that the police would be calling the call to Sandy went to voicemail s please give me a call it's very important very important that you call me please thank you bye we called him back and we said AB you can't leave a message like this for heaven's sakes I said you got to meet us they met with AB the same day did you ask him then did you kill our sister as soon as we sat down he asked if we wanted coffee or anything and he said Sandy I
did not kill your sister detective Wagner called Betty's sisters the day after the interrogation and was surprised to find out that AB had already contacted them I just thought that was very interesting that he was already playing that manipulation uh game and beating us to the punch so to speak the detective thought AB was certainly acting as though he had something to hide but as convinced as investigators were that the pastor had staged the car accident to cover up the real cause of Betty's
death there were still huge holes in their case so now you have a theory that Betty was killed here on the grounds of the church did you have a weapon did you know where we did not had no idea where it took place or what instrument might have been utilized to cause those injuries and there was a huge setback when investigators brought Betty's hospital records to a medical examiner for review the Fran of pathologist said that Betty's injuries uh are what he would expect to see uh in a motor vehic
le collision a motor vehicle accident just as the Pastor said an investigative stumbling block but there was another lead for the detective still to explore remember Betty wasn't the only wife AB had lost his first wife of 30 years Jewel had also died there were rumors all kinds of rumors about her death the pastor had told some of Betty's family that his first wife had died after an illness he had told me that she had passed away from cancer his first wife died of cancer yes but other family me
mbers heard it differently they believed juwel had died after tumbling down a flight of basement stairs I didn't know what had happened down there and I needed to find out whether Jewel's death was suspicious in any way Kathy secrist knew the story better than most a good friend of juwes she was in the pews for most of ab's 10 at the Bethany United Methodist Church in Lebanon Pennsylvania how'd the congregation receive him great great they loved him they left him and he was reinstated over and o
ver again and ab and Jewel's daughters remember their parents being devoted not only to the church but to each other did you see little affections holding a hand yes soft voice a caress here and there yes yes definitely and their dad adored them Julie and Amy remember how he was the one who got them off to school in the morning he would come in he' say Amy you're soon going to get up andd be like okay he didn't do that for you he'd kind of touch me and run and run and yet beyond their devoted da
d maybe there was a side to AB that his daughters and even most of the church members didn't see Kathy SEC husband and ab were bowling buddies he often would come home and say what a horrible temper he had really the Reverend AB shmer he said he would kick the aisle where the balls come back if he bowled badly and it wasn't just the Reverend supposed flashes of temper at the bowling alley that caught the eyes of ab's buddies Kathy says his constant flirting with women slowed the game down when i
t was his turn to bowl he wasn't there and they'd have to wait around that would make the guys upset because it made them later to go home so the men had a different perspective on AB yes well my father too was there and he would say things are fishy something doesn't feel right referring to what is she look back at with ab and they'd see him with more than one woman there that was fishy and even at church Kathy noticed AB seemed overly attentive to female members of the congregation in the mont
hs leading up to ju's death she said there was one woman in particular parishioners were Whispering about at that point one female in the church that you would see him with in a corner talking um well while juel was taking care of everything else in the church meanwhile as Kathy saw it her best friend juel was frozen out of the pastor's affection I never saw anything affectionate from him to Jewel I don't think I ever saw him kiss he never hugged her I don't know if I ever saw him hold her hand
actually one disappointment towered over the others for months Kathy says juwel had been looking forward to a big 30th wedding anniversary treat a trip to New York City to see The Phantom of the Opera she'd bought tickets to surprise AB but when the time came he announced that he wasn't going AB had a wedding to officiate did that break her heart a little bit when he said I'm not y I think pretty much she called me up and she said I can kick and scream all I want and he's not going to care and h
e's not going to come so will you come with me sure I will during 's favorite song in the Broadway show Kathy remembers juel calling AB so he could listen in but she couldn't reach him she tried to call him to see where he was and to tell him this is the song and this is you know I wanted you to be here he didn't answer and it was later in the evening and she asked me do you think that if he did have a wedding and was invited to the dinner afterwards that he would be home by now and I just agree
d with her yes I would think he would be was the mouse playing while the cat was away Kathy had her suspicions did you ever talk to Jewel about the things that you were starting to think yourself were going on with a I did not I did not I I didn't want to hurt her but the whole issue of ab's suspected cheating soon became moved not long after that trip to New York City juel was found sprawled at the bottom of the basement steps in the parsonage a vacuum cleaner cord wrapped around her leg AB tol
d the EMTs he discovered her when he came back from running Jewel was taken to the ER with multiple fractures to her skull Kathy immediately went to the hospital how did she look terrible her head was huge and it was all wrapped up with gauze you really couldn't have known it was her her daughters kept vigil at their mother's bedside it was horrific it was terribly shocking and I guess you knew there wasn't going to be a good outcome yeah I pretty much got that feeling I still prayed for miracle
s and but yeah I had that feeling there would be no miraculous recovery for the 51-year-old wife and mother juul's injuries were insurmountable Julie and Amy remember their father falling apart as the decision was made to turn off the life support machines he and I walked outside and I remember it was a sunny day and and he said it was a beautiful day but it was not a beautiful day and he wanted his wife back for some reason that just really sticks out in my mind because I think the way it was t
he way it was said he was just so sad Jewel was buried and mourn by the congregation Sundays at the church were never quite the same for Kathy without Jewel behind the organ she and her sister told AB a few weeks on how much they missed her we talked about how sad it is that she's not there and we miss all the music and everything that she did and his statement to us was well you're just going to have to get over it and the Reverend apparently took his own advice two years later he decided it wa
s time to move on a new chapter of his life with a new Parish in the Poconos and a new wife Betty Kathy met her just one time she was jogging with him and I was thinking wow maybe she's good for him because juwel didn't like to jog and he found someone that has his likes but as I walked away I thought wow already yet the rumors about ab's first marriage the freak fall down the stairs didn't mean much to detective Wagner until he called his counterparts down in Lebanon with a question had anyone
there ever inquired about juel shermer's death what I found out was was very shocking they told me that the case was uh left still pending and undetermined with no outcome and the closer he looked the more he started to see some chilling parallels with Betty's death what do you think you've got here this is very surprising for a a minister what would the story of the autopsy reveal about how juwel Shermer died coming up they didn't rule it an accident they didn't rule it homicide they ruled it a
s we don't know but perhaps there was one person who did know when Date Line [Music] continues the Reverend shermer's second wife Betty had succumbed to multiple head injuries in 2008 and investigators were curious to learn that so had his first wife jeel in 1999 do you have a pattern of behavior yes of wives who turn up suspiciously dead yes assistant district attorney Mike manuso found the old juel Shermer case troubling something about the story just didn't add up it's weird that this woman j
uel uh would according to her son uh vacuum these steps twice a week every week for 14 years one step at a time nice and slow and then she not only fall but suffer 14 different impacts to the head on her way down according to the authorities 2 hours away in Lebanon Pennsylvania where juel died an autopsy had been performed a decade before after she was said to have tumbled down a set of basement stairs the forensic pathologist was Dr Wayne Ross you did the original autops I did what was your opi
nion about what had happened to her traumatic brain injury Dr Ross's report told the prosecutor that even back then there had been doubts that juul's injuries a massive trauma her ahead were consistent with the story of a fall Jewel's manner of death had been listed as undetermined they didn't rule it an accident they didn't rule it homicide they ruled it as we don't know in fact the pathologist had been so concerned about his findings that he had suggested authorities take a closer look but tha
t never happened a local coroner mistakenly as it turned out told police that juel had fallen down the stairs after suffering a heart attack there was a heart attack they decided to close the investigation a decade later that old case was suddenly very relevant and later in the investigation a prosecutor would make an interesting move he'd asked Dr Ross the pathologist who' performed juul's autopsy to analyze both juel and Betty shermer's records there wasn't much for Dr Ross to work with unlike
juwel Betty hadn't been autopsi but CAT scan images of her brain had been taken at the hospital the pathologist would be definitive in his conclusions the injuries noted to Betty Shermer are wholly inconsistent with this low speed traffic accident which no airbags deploy and which Mr Shermer had absolutely no injuries at all Dr Ross said there were two wounds on the right side of Betty's head that could not have been caused in that car accident an opinion that became even stronger when he exami
ned these computerized 3D models of Betty skull these two images here are huge Dr Ross was convinced Betty had been murdered and brutally so she's got fractures in the right side of her skull and directly underneath that she has swelling and bleeding to her brain that's a lot of force going through there and what kind of murder weapon would the killer have used Dr Ross had an idea it was my opinion that she had been struck multiple times on her head with a long cylindrical object with a lot of w
eight to it a crowbar or something and he was swinging for the fences uh essentially and and hit her hard at least twice in in this area and cause that damage and the real stutter for the pathologist the injury was eerily reminiscent of that other Shermer case he'd seen so long ago I mean it's self-evident there's two lacerations here oh my goodness it looks exactly like Joel shmer Dr Ross compared the two wives injuries side by side when you compare the two of them the similarities are striking
the similarities are to the right side of the head on both juel and Betty um in terms of the lacerations it's all happening right here it's both women it's all happening right side of the head both women in death the doctor thought they could have been Twins and investigators also found what they believe were other similarities between the two cases signs they thought of a cleanup scrub blood stains in the parsonage garage in the Poconos and a story of scrub blood stains at the foot of the base
ment stairs in Jewel's case back in 1999 detectives learned Jewel's brother had been so alarmed by the sight of his sister in the ICU that he went over to the parsonage to see just what had happened he thought the blood had been cleaned up he confronts Shermer what happened to all the blood Shermer says the EMT stayed behind and and cleaned it up and he said uh that's uh that's bull um I ran ambulance I know that that didn't happen and shmer doesn't respond investigators thought the other simila
rity in the two deaths were the rumors in both about ab's Behavior with other women your opinion is that Jewel the wife was aware of his infidelities painfully aware of and the prosecutor thought divorce could have been a problem for the pastor I think it would have been maybe a stain on his reputation uh you know and and he was very conscious of his how he appeared to others because remember he's up on high he's counseling you he's everybody's person that is looked up to so he certainly wouldn'
t wanted that and when detectives looked at the pastor's computer they saw that he had a secret life was it part of a motive for murder a reason to get rid of not one but two Wives coming up a strange Pastime for a pastor he was addicted to pornography obsessed with sex obsessed with it when Date Line continues he stood before his congregation as a man of the cloth and Betty's devoted husband but behind closed parsonage doors authorities believed AB shurmer had been keeping some dark and toddy s
ecrets you have a wolf in sheep's clothing for more than a year a team of investigators had been working to build a case against the former Pastor AB sherper darl Cox was still singing with a reverend out on the gospel service and said his friend didn't understand why he was being targeted by investigators AB would tell me they're investigating Betty's death he told me he didn't know why he said there's nothing there they won't find anything there's nothing to find but investigators thought they
were finding plenty by now they were trying to connect the dots between the death of his second wife Betty and his first wife juwel and zeroing in on a motive for murder after they examined a hard drive on the reverend's computer obsessed with uh sex obsessed with it thousands of porn sites more than Playmate Dy pictures ran a gamut an all kinds of other perverse behavior and seasoned investigator Trooper Phil barletto says the sheer volume of ab searches was telling he was um addicted to porno
graphy as evident by his computers addicted to the chase of sexuality and as they took deep they found emails indicating to them that ab's sexual targets were not virtual but sometimes very real female church members Kathy secrist would tell investigators about ab's suspected Affairs during his first marriage to juel and detective Wagner says it was proof AB had run around on Betty too he was counseling women who were very vulnerable for many different reasons maybe troubled marriage alcohol abu
se something of that nature uh and he would uh basically Council his way right into their bedrooms investigator Wendy surf says she could see the trail of women extending back for decades there's never a period in this man's life where he's not got some woman on the hook we look back you know into the 70s and into the 80s and it's a constant you know you can see the pattern repeating itself over and over again but even if the pastor was a chronic philanderer as investigators thought why was that
a reason for killing his wives it seemed to them he'd been cheating on them for years why resort to murder investigators speculated something must have changed whatever it was there was a sense Betty was a troubled woman just before the car accident a month or two before her death there was a noticeable lack of an outgoingness um with the church um that that they took note of and remember this posted note the pastor had attached to Betty's last birthday card the one her son Nate had come upon a
s he looked through a box of keep the one that said he was sorry for all the pain he had caused her but soon she could soar free how do you read that it could only mean in the context that there was a an understanding that the marriage was at an end that was datable to her last birthday which was the end of June 2008 and she was ashes by July 17th but still they had to wonder if they believe the pastor had staged a car crash on a dark Rural Road and by now they did then why maybe they theorize t
he timing had to do with Cindy was Betty on to her husband's interest in his assistant what if she asked the pastor for a potentially career crushing divorce he's wrapped up in the aura of the pulpit he's a a man of the cloth he doesn't want to jeopardize it and the breakup of his marriage a divorce anything nasty Fair wise he didn't want to tolerate that and the prosecutor thought Cindy's affections for the pastor were becoming maybe dangerously apparent she was infatuated with the Reverend jus
t mentioning his name a big smile would would come across her face and two days after Betty's car accident in the summer of 2008 Cindy sent her condolences to the pastor signing her email love you the mushy CD AB replied love you too prosecutor cusa was also struck by this photo of Sher he says was taken the weekend of Betty's memorial service you don't see a man who's uh destroyed and devastated lost and alone uh he's uh smiling uh there's one photo in particular where he was cooking up a lot o
f grapple and he has a very self assured look on his face relaxed at ease but a few months later things would get more complicated on that October night when Cindy's husband Joe shot himself at the pastor's desk heartbroken that his wife was in involved with the Reverend his suicide allowed Cindy and the pastor to finally be free together by going through the pastor's records investigators surface track what she saw as the couple's increasingly steamy relationship following Joe's death it just i
t seemed to me too sudden I don't understand how you g where where did you grieve like where was your grieving time she said their credit card receipts revealed Rendevous in local hotels they're having an intimate relationship we all also see then there's hotel stays overnight hotel stays you know things like that there were also smoldering emails to each other Cindy wrote unimaginable is the only word that even comes close to describing last night I have occupied this body for 40 something year
s and trust me this is not normal for me and ab wrote am very hungry for you your body is fantastic and Shermer even confided in Cindy how happy he was now with her he said his relationship with Betty had been missing something for the last 2 years we did not have sex he wrote Betty is menopausal not interested in sex they were not intimate he was tired of her she was no good anymore so goodbye Betty hello Cynthia that would be the timing yes and it was not only hello Cindy but hello Samantha an
d her little brother the children came too more than a year after Joe's suicide Samantha remembers the pastor being there almost all the time what was he like around the house very moody very kept to himself didn't want to you know really be bothered with my brother or I Rose Samantha's Aunt watching from afar was distressed by the thought of the pastor living with her dead brother's wife and children he has my brother's house and he can be with his son and he can sleep in his bed the decisions
he's making and his behaviors don't add up because you just don't do that but the new couple was making big plans later that summer in August 2010 Cindy and ab announced their engagement daughter Samantha was terrified she called the police frantic that her mother would become the third late Mrs AB sherber investigators agreed and decided they couldn't wait any longer to arrest the former pastor with what they saw as another potential woman at risk they decided to make their move on September 13
th 2010 detective Wagner knocked on the front door of Cindy's house Cindy M's son came to the door and I asked him where Mr Shermer was and he said he was in the kitchen and as I started to approach into the kitchen area uh he went out the back door and ran right in the trooper mayard he's trying to make a getaway huh it appears so but AB Shermer did not resist he was cuffed and read his rights charged with the murder of his second wife Betty the deepest secrets of the Reverend sh were about to
be revealed to all he would stand trial in a case that would leave a small Pennsylvania town a buzz with its ungodly charges coming up prosecutors seem to have a strong case but don't underestimate the defense did a lot of things that weren't appropriate in the case it doesn't make him murder when dat line continues the prosecutor had no doubt the pastor a Sherman was a dangerous character I believe he's a sociopathic type of guy who will do whatever he he wants to do and he has um and that incl
uded murder in this turn of the century courthouse in the Pocono Mountains AB Shermer would stand trial for killing his wife Betty he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and and sitting behind him in the courtroom would be his daughters they had no doubt that their dad was innocent you're four square behind your dad people shouldn't miss that is that right that is correct you've never had a whisper of the D no it had been more than 4 years since Amy and Julie's stepmom Betty shurmer had be
en found bleeding and unconscious in their dad's car now it was time for a jury to hear the evidence against AB Shermer and decide whether he was a murderer a lot of the prosecutors case was circumstantial there was no murder weapon no eyewitness no confession to the crime but even though the case had its challenges the prosecutor had won a key Victory before the trial had even started now the former Pastor wasn't on trial for Jewel's death but a judge ruled that the prosecutor could still tell
the jury about it and point out the similarities between how she and Betty died blond Force drama to the Head brain damage brain dead um injury patterns uh remarkably similar it was from the same type of object a long cylindrical object this is the deck of cards being turned over again and just replayed out right while the prosecutor would describe for the jury the crushing blows he believed killed both wives this trial would focus mostly on Betty all in all it was tough testimony for Betty's fa
mily to listen to without going to Pieces Just going stop crying how how long did she sit and suffer in pain the prosecutor asked the jurors to use their common sense about ab's version of events he played them these computer animations of the car crash as reconstructed by experts remember AB had told police he'd been traveling at around 50 mph when the accident happened at 35 M an hour the car would completely travel right through the guard rail through the guard into the wood correct the prose
cutor said the accident reconstruction proved the pastor was driving slowly when the car struck the guard rail too L for Betty to have been fatally injured more proofy argued that the so-called accident had been staged by the pastor who attacked his wife somewhere else a bogus wreck would also explain his strange behavior in the car no call to 911 no attempt to Aid his injured wife and there was his inappropriate behavior at the hospital the prosecutor said like this remark to a nurse the defend
ant says what a Pretty Woman vs was and then he makes uh the bizarre statement and she had a nice ass too the prosecutor declared that the Reverend meant anyone's test of a sinner on a frequent basis his computer was weighted down with searches for porn according to a prosecution witness one person testified that sheat had an ongoing Affair of many years with him it was just a shock to me one of them he actually was still sleeping with 2 weeks after he murdered my sister the womanizing the emoti
onal entanglement with his church assistant it all added up to a crumbling marriage the prosecutor told the jury and ab he said responded the only way he knew how there's an underlying violence within him that's well massed that comes out violence that had been mapped out in Blood on the floor of the parsonage garage according to the prosecutor he had a theory about how the crime occurred she was beaten in the house beaten to the point of brain death unconsciousness he takes her he dresses her h
e carries her she's only about 100 lb uh out the back door along the cemetery line and into the back door of the garage and what happened next the prosecutor says became increasingly clear when investigators pulled a PT Cruiser the type of car the Reverend had been driving into the garage they parked the car in place and marked pink dots where blood had been found later investigators create this diagram it shows a trail of blood leading right from the garage door to the car's passenger side he w
alks her around the side of the car to passenger side sets her down opens the door puts her in the car Landing backs out he goes off and he concocts his little crash but after 7 Days of testimony it was finally the pastor's defense attorney's turn to present his case you think he didn't do it right Brandon rice told the jury that sometimes accidents just happen and he argued that some of the prosecution's forensic analysis wasn't based on sound science the blood evidence in the car he said didn'
t even match the prosecution's version of events if there was so much bleeding that Betty shmer was loaded into this car after being bludgeoned with a crowbar there should have been blood sprayed across the entire windshield the defense's own pathologist told the jury that Betty's head injuries were inconsistent with a blow from something like a crowbar and that Betty had suffered internal injuries unique to a car wreck there's this deep injury to the right lung that can only be caused uh in a c
ar accident this is from a chest the right side of the chest hitting a dashboard that there's no explanation for that by the Commonwealth as for the blood on Betty's passenger seat the defense maintained that it wasn't blood from a beating that occurred before she got in the car as the prosecution charged when you hear the testimony from the EMTs who extricated Betty there was a point in time when her head was clearly over that seat and there was a point time when there was active bleeding and t
he defense attorney assailed the prosecution's analysis of the blood in the garage if AB Shermer had in fact cleaned up after killing Betty he argued Pastor would have done a much better job would he really have left blood drops in the garage for the world to see you could have really cleaned these up if you wanted to clean these up they weren't cleaned up once Mor said the prosecution's experts had exaggerated the amount of Betty's blood found on the garage floor they took luminol photos that w
ere out of focus this representative jury what they had yes and the defense attorney argued that investigators had been too quick to Discount ab's explanation about Betty getting a scratch from the woodpile and he said it didn't matter that the woodpile examined by investigators was sitting on a newspaper dated after Betty's death they were simply looking at the wrong stack of wood Mr Shermer told them to look in the wood line for the wood they didn't do that uh one of the Troopers said that he
did that but if you look in the background of his own photo you can see a wood pile in the tree line what's more the defense attorney maintained that everyone was misconstruing ab's Behavior at Betty's bedside ab's own daughters told the jury how it was their father's work as a rever that accounted for his demeanor that day he'd been a pastor to many people who'd gone through tragedy he is so good at understanding how to comfort other people they said their father was overcome we walked with him
through the grief we walked with him through it we saw him and remember that photo of ab smiling while he cooked scrapple just days after Betty was gone it was far from being evidence the lawyer argued of his indifference to Betty's death that's a snapshot that's not a total picture of the whole time no it's taken out of context in fact Betty and ab's marriage was strong argued the defense the relationship seemed good and we were able to established that there wasn't a problem there were no all
egations of of violence in that marriage no but remember that Post-It note that AB had written to Betty apologizing for pain he caused her and hoping she could soon soar free while the prosecutor said the posted showed that the marriage was on the brink the defense attorney said they were rather the words of a caring husband one who knew that his job was preventing his wife from seeing her family as much as she'd like AB shermer's description of why he put that in there is simply I wanted to exp
ress to her that I I had caused her hardship and Pain by having this job in readers you're so far away from your children your grandchildren bottom line argued the defense attorney AB loved his wife and had no reason to want her dead I argue that there was no motive made no sense we talking about a ton of money from insurance or something there's no life insurance and the only thing AB was guilty of as lawyers said were some All Too Human mistakes but that in his opinion was not a motive for mur
der he did a lot of things that weren't appropriate in the case it doesn't make him a murder you'll do the walk of shame but it doesn't make him a killer is that the argument right and perhaps the best person to convince the jury of that was none other than AB Shermer himself he did what defendants don't often do in criminal cases took the stand in his own defense the pastor turned his chair to face the jury perhaps the last opportunity he'd have to preach he admitted to being a sinner having an
affair but he denied killing his wife his daughters watched how do you think he told his story I think he did well he was sincere was truthful Betty's son Nate Novak was less convinced I was full of anger I I knew um he wasn't telling the truth truth the finding of facts that was the jury's job the time was at hand to see what evolved coming up the verdict but first the prosecution offers one final clue to prove the pastor was a killer it's something that Mr shmer forgot being a typical Bale wh
en dat line [Music] [Music] continues Reverend AB Shermer stood accused of a brutal crime bludgeoning to death his second wife and staging a car accident to cover his tracks and he'll manipulate them and he'll get in their good graces and he'll play with their heads and the prosecutor offered the jurors one final clue he said was a death blow to the pastor's story it's something that Mr Shermer forgot being a typical mous look closely at the photos of the accident scene the prosecutor said his i
nvestigator Wendy Surfas had noticed something was missing something Betty would have had with her all right she's going to the hospital what would she do she gets dressed grabs her purse and I stopped and I said wait a minute there's no purse it was a crucial prop the prosecutor argued that AB had forgotten to throw in the car when he staged the car accident but the defense attorney in his final statement told the jurors this was no fake scene he urged the jurors not to punish the Reverend beca
use of his self-confessed sins murder he said was not on that list they needed to focus if they were willing on the forensics and not be brought into the idea that he's a bad person and therefore he did a bad thing now it would be up to a panel of strangers to decide the pastor's fate while the jury deliberated Betty and Jewel's children waited ab's stepson was convinced of his guilt the evidence is just there it's overwhelming but ab's daughters were adamantly convinced of his innocence they ha
d lost their mother Jewel would they now lose their father too what's happened to your family do you say why us do you have self-pity we don't have self-pity God is good he's walked beside us through everything regardless of what's happened ab's fiance Cindy waited anxiously too so did the prosecutor I never know what a jury's going to do you always worry when a jury's out right juries can your line of work anything yes Anything Could Happen absolutely after an hour and a half of deliberation th
e jurors had reached a verdict Betty's family took their seats in the courtroom we're all all huddled together in the in the seats and uh we all had our heads down then the verdict guilty of first-degree murder we immediately hugged few of us shouted out and U started crying for Betty's family the moment was bittersweet fresh waves of grief for Betty's loss and their brother-in-law ab's betrayal so he was a stranger to all of you this this was deceit right from the beginning do you think now yea
h I do sitting at your Thanksgiving tables and stopping by and seeing the grandchildren was all up front I I think it was Sandy what did AB Shermer do to your family I think he physically broke our hearts and poor mom you know without a daughter and she really careed for that guy and and it has to turn out to be like this on the other side of the courtroom ab's daughters could not believe it it it was another tragedy to hear that I just I'm still I was just so sad just cried devastated I still h
ear it in my head replaying and the verdict the verdict and I don't agree with the decision we know regardless of what any jury says that he'd never hurt Betty how are you feeling right now the pastor's fiance Cindy had no comment for reporters after the verdict no reaction at all she was still standing by her man she still loves him gives him $600 a month while he's been incarcerated Samantha muan says her relationship with her mother is strained Samantha how do you conjure up a new motherdaugh
ter relationship ship I love her it's plain and simple she's family you know um she could wrong me in every way possible but at the end of the day she's still my mother you love her yeah but the parent Samantha is really living for these days as her late father she says she dedicates every day to making him proud everything I do is for him now you know um I hope he's proud of me in a sense of getting Justice yeah going to everything going to school um being successful anything I wanted to do he
believed I could do it Samantha sishi has found forgiveness for the man who could have become her new stepdad but Betty Sun Nate wasn't there yet I don't think I'll be able to say those words who is this guy Nate the Sinister Minister present himself as a pastor pillar of the community but we all know now there were skeletons in the club CL ET and uh things going on behind the scenes AB Shermer was sentenced to life in prison without parole his defense attorney appealed the verdict arguing among
other things that the death of ab's first wife Jewel should never have been allowed to be a part of Betty's trial I think the admission of the first wife's circumstances surrounding the death of jel shmer uh did Prejudice the case denied his appeal but as the former Pastor was being felt strangely calm and he couldn't understand why he felt so relaxed you know he's been carrying this thing with him for many years you know these these the old broide the truth will set you free terrible secrets a
nd he felt that that relief forgiveness is the Providence of the church Justice is the duty of the state in 2014 AB Shermer the disgraced Pastor received an additional 20 to 40 years in prison for the murder say he is innocent saying he took the plead to spare his family the pain of a second trial that's all for now I'm Lester Hol thanks for joining us
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