Trial begins in Bucks County church shooting

In a church setting where love and humility are taught, Mary Jane Fonder was a jealous, self-centered bomb waiting to explode, a Bucks County jury was told yesterday.

The spark that lit her deadly fuse was a guileless, mentally troubled woman named Rhonda Smith, a prosecutor said as Fonder's murder trial began in Bucks County Court.

In his opening statement, First Assistant District Attorney David Zellis said Fonder, 66, was enraged at the attention being lavished on Smith by Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Fonder's church for 14 years.

So enraged, Zellis said, that on the morning of Jan. 23, as Smith worked alone in the church office, Fonder walked in with a handgun and fatally shot her in the head - then left to get her hair done.

"At that moment, the fuse that had been started detonated in a complete and utter catastrophe," Zellis said.

Smith, who struggled with bipolar disorder for half of her 42 years, was alive when found two hours later. She died that evening.

Fonder, of Kintnersville, is charged with first-degree murder. She denies the charges, saying she was at a hair salon in Quakertown, not at the church in rural Springfield Township.

The case has proven so notorious that it took two days to select a jury of seven men and five women.

Fonder's lawyer, Michael Applebaum, is expected to give his opening statement this morning before the first witness is called.

Zellis introduced the case by introducing Smith, a mentally fragile woman from Hellertown who was embraced and supported - emotionally and financially - by the Trinity congregation.

"She had found a home and a place at this church," Zellis said. "She found friends there, people who cared."

All of that ticked off Fonder, Zellis said.

"This case has to do with a woman who was egocentric," he said. "She thought the whole world should revolve around her."

On Jan. 13, the prosecutor said, Smith stood during Sunday worship and openly thanked the congregation for the kindness shown her.

"What she didn't know," Zellis said, was that as Fonder listened, "a fuse was lit inside of her."

Fonder's rage grew, he said, when she saw a gathering that week that she mistook for a church birthday party for Smith. And on Jan. 21, Fonder unhappily discovered that Smith was helping out in the church office while the pastor was away - a duty that Fonder had offered to do.

Two days later, Zellis said, Smith was in the office when Internet activity on the church computer halted at 10:54 a.m. At 12:45 p.m., he said, a woman who had come to clean the church found Smith bleeding on the floor.

Smith was still making gurgling sounds when paramedics arrived. Meanwhile, Zellis said, "Mary Jane Fonder was getting her hair washed and set in Quakertown."

In the ensuing weeks, Zellis said, Fonder sent sympathy cards to Smith's loved ones. In early March, Fonder brought Smith's parents an apple pie, and accepted two pairs of the victim's shoes as a gift.

By then, Fonder knew she was a suspect. Police had grilled her about a .38-caliber handgun she had purchased in 1994.

That gun eventually turned up, discarded on the banks of Lake Nockamixon. Tests linked it to the fatal shots.

After the slaying, Zellis told the jury, Fonder "had expected everything to go back to normal at the church."

Instead, she was arrested April 1.