Expert links defendant, gun in murder case

A ballistics expert testified yesterday that the fatal bullet recovered from the body of a receptionist killed inside a Bucks County church came from a gun owned by Mary Jane Fonder, a fellow congregant on trial in the slaying.

Every gun leaves a unique set of marks, akin to fingerprints, on the bullets it discharges, said Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. Mark Garrett. A microscope examination revealed the signature marks of Fonder's .38-caliber revolver clearly upon the slug that killed Rhonda Smith.

"They were a match," Garrett told the jury.

Smith, 42, was alone in the office of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield Township when someone shot her twice in the head on Jan. 23. That someone, prosecutors say, is Fonder, 66, a church member allegedly jealous of the friendship and financial help Trinity members extended to Smith, who had bipolar disorder.

Fonder, of Kintnersville, is charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Garrett's findings are the strongest physical evidence linking Fonder to the murder. She purchased the handgun in 1994, but told investigators that she discarded it years earlier.

A young boy fishing with his father found the revolver, barely rusted, in shallow water along the shore of Lake Nockamixon on March 29. Garrett performed his analysis the following day at a police lab in Bethlehem.

The results led to Fonder's arrest on April 1.

By then, police had seized and impounded Fonder's red Ford Escort. A forensics expert testified yesterday that gunshot residue was found on the turn-signal knob, driver's-side door armrest, and driver's seat of the vehicle.

Prosecutors say Fonder left her home on the morning of the killing, shot Smith about 11 a.m. at the church, then drove to Quakertown to have her hair done.

While Smith lay unconscious and dying on the floor behind her desk, Fonder signed in at Holiday Hair at 11:22 a.m., a registration sheet showed. The salon is eight miles from the church, about a 15-minute drive.

Veteran stylist Cindy Moser, who worked on Fonder's hair that day, testified that nothing seemed amiss when Fonder arrived without an appointment to have her hair shampooed and set.

Fonder parked in the handicapped spaces of the strip shopping center, Moser said, and signed her name on the waiting list when she arrived. She typically showed up with a wig on her head, which she removed during the appointment and took with her when finished.

Nothing memorable was discussed that day, Moser said. The only blip, she testified, was when Fonder forgot to take her brown wig with her; state police eventually seized it as evidence.

By the time Fonder returned for another shampoo and set on Feb. 13, police suspected her. Salon employees had been instructed by police not to discuss the wig with her if Fonder asked about it, said Bridget Wolters, Fonder's stylist that day.

Fonder showed up with a different wig, Wolters testified, and never asked about the first one. She seemed more concerned about the sign-in log.

"She questioned me" about it, Wolters said. "She asked if we still wrote it down when someone got a wash and set," and whether the daily log was destroyed afterward.

"I didn't answer her back," Wolters said. "I let her come to her own conclusion."

The answer became clear in court yesterday. The Jan. 23 salon log was introduced by prosecutors as evidence.