A cold-case prosecutor and familiar face takes over as Bucks County’s DA

For the first time since 2016, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is under new leadership. But a familiar face is in the top seat.

Jennifer Schorn, her predecessor Matt Weintraub’s former first assistant and a longtime prosecutor in the county, was sworn in by him on Jan. 5 to fill out the remaining two years of his term after he was elected county judge in November.

Schorn, a 25-year-veteran of the office, said in a recent interview with The Inquirer that she plans on continuing Weintraub’s legacy of closely working with the county’s 39 local police departments to quickly respond to criminal activity and hold the people behind those crimes responsible.

But she said she has a specific interest in protecting who she called the most vulnerable residents under her jurisdiction: children and the elderly.

“When you hear from victims, when they explain how you or the office impacted their lives positively, I want to continue to honor those that go through such tragedies and have to face the perpetrators of those crimes,” she said.

Schorn, 51, spoke candidly about how her own life experiences guided her to become a prosecutor and how some of the most fulfilling moments in her career have been interacting with the families of victims at the center of the cases she’s handled.

Schorn is a native of Upper Southampton Township, the Lower Bucks municipality that, coincidentally, borders Weintraub’s hometown, where her future boss played basketball against her older brothers in his youth. After attending Archbishop Wood High School and St. Joseph’s University, she said she mulled getting her master’s degree in social work to fulfill her goal of advocating for children in need.

But a then-prominent Main Line defense attorney, whom she befriended through a summer job as a nanny, convinced her she’d have more impact from the front of the courtroom.

“I didn’t know I wanted to become a lawyer, necessarily, but I knew I wanted to seek justice for victims,” Schorn said. “I didn’t have anyone in my family who worked in the legal profession, and I didn’t fully comprehend the ability that a prosecutor would have to make a difference in those cases.”

She switched gears, getting a degree from Widener University Law School in Delaware and interning with the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office.

Fresh off that internship in 1999, Schorn was hired as an assistant district attorney by then-Bucks County District Attorney Alan Rubenstein. Being “given that shot,” she said, was a dream come true.

“Having the ability to prosecute cases, regardless of whether the victim is a child or adult, or even the community as a whole, has been the most rewarding,” Schorn said. “And to do it in the county I grew up in made it even better.”

Schorn rose through the ranks during the two decades she spent in the office, becoming, at various points, its chief of special investigations, chief of trials, and chief of the grand jury division.

True to her personal goal of protecting the most vulnerable, Schorn has successfully prosecuted dozens of high-profile cases against child predators. In 2021, she aggressively pursued the prosecution against James Carey, a former Warminster Police officer who sexually assaulted four teenage boys he befriended through his role with the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program.

Schorn called Carey a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” after he was sentenced to 24½ to 55 years in state prison, and commended the bravery of the now-adult victims who had trusted her with a secret they had been burdened with for decades.

She also took an active role in helping revitalize cold cases in the county. In the last seven years, Schorn was a member of a team that charged suspects in at least five decades-old murders, including the 1991 killing of Joy Hibbs, a Croydon mother of two who was strangled and stabbed in her home. The suspect in that case, Robert Atkins, has a bench trial scheduled to begin Jan. 29.

One of the cases that lingers the most in Schorn’s memory, she said, combines her vow of protecting children and her eagerness to close cold cases.

In 2015, George Shaw was arrested for murdering 14-year-old Barbara Rowan three decades prior. Schorn and her colleagues broke the case after Shaw’s accomplice and former drug buddy, Robert Sanders, confessed to helping Shaw dispose of Rowan’s body.

When Schorn met with Rowan’s parents to tell them that their daughter’s killer had finally been arrested, her father took a framed photo of her off his living room wall and handed it to Schorn. He asked her, she said, to find justice for his only child.

The photo now hangs in Schorn’s new office, next to one of her own children.

Shaw was later convicted and sentenced to 13½ to 27 years in prison.

Weintraub, in passing the torch to Schorn, was long in his praise for her. He clearly wasn’t alone in those feelings: Her swearing-in ceremony was standing-room only, a crowd that even the largest courtroom in the Bucks County Justice Center couldn’t contain, with well-wishers craning to see the proceeding from out in the hallway.

Those attendees included U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, acting state Attorney General Michelle Henry (a former prosecutor in Bucks County), as well as defense attorneys that often square off against Schorn.

“As a prosecutor, she is the total package,” Weintraub said. “Mercy and redemption for most, and that special place for those who truly deserve it.”

Chelsea Jackman, a former Bucks County prosecutor who worked alongside Schorn for years called her a “protector of children” who treats victims the same way she does her own family.

“Today is the culmination of 25 years of sacrifice, determination and grit,” Jackman said of her longtime friend.