clothing. it was the minister. the man of the cloth, inspiring from the pulpit. burying the faithful periods he officiated over my son. counseling over the troubled. he was so good at understanding how to comfort other people. what if the minister is expected to be not a man of god at all? the minister role? the minister role. he was hiding behind that hat. a stranger in robes, caring got the devils business. i believe he prayed on vulnerable people. laying on hands where he said it. he would right into their bedroom. just who was he? reverend shermer was a small- town methodist preacher in eastern pennsylvania. he was our friend, our confident. just an all-around, good guy. he had seen the fresh young pastor going to an accomplished pastor. all the things he held my friends with the years. he watched his friend raise his family. they sang together many, many times. it seemed like the all-american couple. my mom and dad were people who
to try to justify, i believe, the severe injuries that she sustained. he made it sound that the vehicle spun out of control and that she went flying because she was unrestrained. all of a sudden, there is a tear, you swerve. 45 minutes away, who doesn t know anything about himself, that would be normal. and you were taking the account of the methodist minister? that s correct. they have photos from the crime scene. when he pulled them up, he immediately noticed they did match the story told by the pastor. the car was only minimally banged up. the airbase hadn t even deployed. it turned out the officer who had written a the report got that important detail wrong. and the department wondered why they didn t see any tire marks
dashboard, so there is no explanation for that. as for the blood on the passenger seat, the defense maintained that it was not blood from a beating that occurred before she got in the car, as the prosecution charge. when you hear that testimony, there was a point in time where her head was actively bleeding. the defense attorneys assailed the analysis of the blood in the garage. if a.b. schirmer had in fact cleaned up , the pastor would have done a much better job. would he really have left blood drops in the garage for the world to see? he could have really cleaned this up if he wanted to clean it up. it was not cleaned up. what s more, he said, the experts had exaggerated the amount of blood found on the garage floor. they took photos that were out of focus. yes. the defense attorney argued that the investigators had been too quick to denounce the
a.b., he said, responded the only way he knew how. there is an underlying violence within him that comes out. violence that had been mapped out in blood on the floor of the parsonage garage. he had a theory about how the crime had occurred. she was beaten in the house, beaten to the point of brain death. he takes her and dresses her and carries her. she is only about 100 pounds, out the door and into the garage. what happened next, the prosecutor said, became increasingly clear as investigators of the pt cruiser into the garage. they marked pink dots where blood had been found. later, investigators created this diagram that shows a trail of blood leading from the garage door to the passenger side. he walks around the side of the car, sets her down, opens the door, puts her in the car,
prosecutor tried to expose schirmer, the sinister minister. he is kind of like a predator. he will look at people s vulnerabilities and try to get in their heads. the prosecutor offered one final clue that he said was a death blow to the pastor s story. look closely at the photos of the accident scene, the prosecutors said. one investigator had noticed something was missing, something that betty would ve had with her. she goes to the hospital, what should we do? she would grab her purse. i stopped and i said wait a minute. it was a crucial prop, the prosecutor argued, that a.b. had forgotten to throw in the car. but the defense attorney in his final statement told the jurors that this was no fake scene. he urged the jurors not to punish the reverend because of his self-confessed sins.