48 Hours - Death In The Parsonage

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

According to Pastor A.B. Schirmer, both of his wives had died in tragic accidents. His first wife fell down the stairs and his second wife was in a car accident. But when a parishioner was found dead from a gunshot wound at the church, police decided to reinvestigate those supposed accidental deaths. “48 Hours" Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 1/17/2015. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On October 29th, 2008, there was a suicide that occurred at the Reader's Methodist Church. The church secretary arrived for work and found Mr. Mousante behind the reverence desk. Joseph Mousante was a parishioner at the church, and he was slumped over the chair, and it was a very bloody gruesome sight. He had shot himself with a handgun. My mom sat us down and she just said, your father decided he didn't want to be here anymore. I love my dad. He was one of my greatest role models.

Oh my God. I know what his kids meant to him. That's why people couldn't believe that he would do that. My name is Rose Cobb. My brother is Jomey Sanny. About a week after Joe's suicide, Rose Cobb calls our police department. I knew that something was not right. She said that Joe discovered that his wife, Cindy, was having an affair with the Reverend A.B. Schumer.

She was the assistant to the pastor. I found some text messages on her cell phone from A.B., him telling her that he loved her and how nice she looked. and he couldn't wait to see her. How could my mom ever do something like this to our family? I feel now that she was very vulnerable, and I feel as though he seduced her. He knew exactly what he was doing. I didn't think that he was following the rules of the church.

I just had a lot of questions about who he was. Rose also alerts us to the, that the Reverend has lost now two wives. His first wife fell down the stairs and died. And then his second wife dies from being in a car accident. That's strange. The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up. I thought he was a fraud.

Something was wrong. It was a horrible, shocking, traumatic thing to have somebody not only shoot themselves, but shoot themselves in. shoot themselves in a church. Couldn't believe it. You couldn't believe it. It was October of 2008

when Rose Cobb learned of her brother's death. It's hard still, yeah. Joe Mousanti died in the church office, sitting at the pastor's desk, a single gunshot wound to the head. He left behind his wife of 18 years and two children.

My brother was dead. and I didn't know what happened to him. Soon, Rose learned there were a lot of things she didn't know. When she arrived in the tiny town of Reader's Pennsylvania for her brother's memorial service, she noticed how quiet things were at Joe and his wife Cindy's house. And I asked Cindy about that. I said, how come there's nobody here?

That's when she told us what was happening. Cindy told Rose what everyone else seemed to know, that she had fallen in love with her boss, who was the family's pastor. First I asked her, are you having an affair? And she said, well, that depends on what you mean by an affair. And then she explained that it was emotional. What did you make of it?

I guess I just felt like she just was so in love with him. It was the last thing Rose expected to be talking about to her brother's widow on the eve of his memorial service. She was very giddy. giddy, kitty, yeah, very childlike. It's a strange timing for that sort of thing. Yeah. Rose was learning a lot about her sister-in-law's new boyfriend,

Arthur Burton Shermer, who most people called A-B. Cindy told her that three months before Joe's death, Pastor Shermer's wife, Betty, died after a car crash. So what happened? And she said, a deer ran out in front of the road. He swirved to have missed him. the deer and hit the bridge or something, and she ended up dying. Rose was suspicious of all the deaths surrounding Pastor Shermer.

She dug deeper and learned Betty was Shermer's second wife. His first wife, Jewel, had also died suddenly. She said, oh, she fell down some stairs. You know, something about a sweeper or something. Really, she dies from falling down the stairs. and then his second wife dies from being in a car accident where the deer never even hit the car. It's like, well, what happened?

It just struck me as funny that so many bad things was happening to him. Imagine what Samantha Mousanti had to deal with when she discovered her mother was having an affair with her pastor. She was my best friend. She took me to all the horse shows, and she loved the horses just as much as I did.

I kind of felt betrayed that I found something like this out. Sam was just 16 when she found those text messages between her mother and Pastor Shermer. Were they that explicit that you knew what was going on? There was no doubt. It wasn't a I love you in Christ type of text message. Not something that you'd expect your employer to be sending you. Or your pastor, presumably. Yeah. Sam was afraid her father would be crushed.

Joe was struggling with his own troubles and had turned to the church for comfort. My dad had struggled with alcoholism his entire life. He finally decided that he had to get it together. So we started going to church. Joe was a carpenter and worked hard repairing the church, not realizing his own home was falling apart. Sam did what she could to end the affair. I ended up sending AB an email from a fake email account, telling him that, you know, someone knew about what he was doing and that he should stop.

But Sam's plan didn't work. Cindy and A.B. figured out who sent the email. They took me into his office and told me that I was wrong and that nothing was going on and how dare I accuse them of an affair. What did you say to them? Okay. You're talking to your mother and the pastor of your child. church and they're telling you something and who are you to disagree. Sam didn't believe them, but she kept quiet until her father started asking questions. And then she told him she was pretty

sure Cindy and Shermer were having an affair. He said, does she love him? And I just said, you know, I think so. That's probably one of the most horrible things that you can hear. How did your father react? He didn't have a lot to say, but I could tell he was devastated. Joe confronted Cindy, and she promised to end the affair. But then just days later, Joe discovered she was making secret phone calls to the pastor. The day before Joe died, Cindy moved the kids to a relative's house and refused to allow anyone to answer Joe's calls. My dad had called several times. My mom told me that I shouldn't answer my phone.

The next morning, Sam checked her messages. He had left a voicemail. What did the voicemail say? If you love me at all, please call me back. That was the last time that I heard from him. That same morning, Joe Mousanti was found dead, slumped over the pastor's desk. Joe had built that desk with his own hands.

I didn't trust what was going on. Did he really kill himself? As Rose saw it, Musanti was now the third dead body linked to one shady pastor. She alerted the bishop to A.B.'s affair and Shermer was forced to resign. But Rose also felt she had to call the police. There were just too many red flags to ignore. Detective Jim Wagner also believed there was more to this story. I suspected that it was very possible for Joe's...

death to be at the hands of Mr. Shermer and or Cindy because it made it very convenient for them to be together. Joe discovered that his wife and Mr. Shermer were having an affair and how convenient that Joe is now gone. To the Pennsylvania State Police, Joe Mousanti's death looked like a suicide, but Detective Jim Wagner wanted another look at the evidence. It seemed to hold up. There was no bloodstains out of place. There was glass fragments found in the bottom of his shoes, which are consistent with him breaking the glass, entering, stepping in the glass. And it turned out, Pastor A.B. Shermer and Mousanti's wife, Cindy, the two people who might have had a motive to kill Joe had airtight alibis. A.B. was an hour away and his alibi

checked out. And Cindy also had an alibi, and she was with the children. Wagner agreed with the state police. Joe Moussanti's death really was. was a suicide. They said that he killed himself, and I just accepted that that he did. There was no longer any question about how her brother died. But Rose had a lot of questions about the other deaths that surrounded Pastor Shermer. I thought it was strange that a man loses two wives in a relatively short period of time. It certainly needed to be investigated thoroughly.

So Detective Wagner turned his investigation to the death of Shermer, Second Wife, Betty, who died about three months before Joe's suicide. How was Betty's death classified? It was classified as an accident due to a motor vehicle collision, and the coroner determined that no autopsy would be necessary, and Betty Shermer's body was cremated the very next day. Case closed. Correct.

It all began early on the morning of July 15, 2008. Shermer said he had to rush his wife Betty to the hospital with jaw pain. Mr. Shermer told the responding officers that he was traveling 50 to 55 miles an hour when a deer jumped out in the roadway, and he went swerving through the roadway, lost control, and struck the guardrail. Where was the car, sort of here? Right, the car was sitting here with its front end up against this guardrail. Stan Dickerson was driving home when he spotted Pastor Shermer's,

P.T. Cruiser alongside the guardrail, and he stopped to help. I said, are you okay? What's going on? What happened? He said, yeah. He said, I'm fine. But I don't think my wife is. The odd thing was his attitude. He turns on the light. There's a lot of blood in the car. She's obviously her. She's seemingly unconscious. And it was odd. He seemed indifferent. Did you ask him if he had called 911? Yes. I was one of the first things I had. had asked him, and he just said, no, I haven't. So Stan called. 911, what is your emergency? Somebody hit a guardrail. There's a woman here, she's hurt.

There's two people in car, but the guy seems okay. Ambulances arrived within minutes, and Betty Shermer was rushed to Lehigh Valley Hospital. What was your first thought when you heard? No way. Horrible. Julie and Amy are the daughters of Shermer and his first wife, Jewel. Betty was their stepmother. I could tell he was crying and he just said, I don't know what to do. I remember it was hard to hear.

I don't know what to do. Shermer described Betty as his best friend. They married in 2001, about two years after Jewel died. It was just a relief to know that he had someone he could talk to and share with and hang out with. I heard past her, so I was happy for her. Sandy and Tina are Betty's sisters.

The pastor, the nice guy, the everything, he just seemed like he was perfect for her. When they got word of the accident, they rushed to their sister's side. I was just in shock over what Betts looked like. Betty had a wound to the left side of her head and two gashes on the right side. It was unbelievably sad. The doctors said Betty's injuries were so grave that she would never recover. She was taken off life support the next day. He came out to the room where we had to wait, and he just opened the doors and said,

Betz has passed. That's it. He wasn't crying. He wasn't. It was just so bizarre. Shermer's daughters say their father sometimes hides his emotions. There were probably times where he appeared calm on the outside, but I would say inside he was a wreck. And at times when there wasn't a crowd of people around, he was not okay. At the hospital, soon after Betty died, the coroner asked Pastor Shermer for details of the accident.

He told the coroner that the vehicle spun violently out of control, struck the guardrail, and actually hit the rear of his car, almost sounding as if the vehicle was rotating and flipping, and Betty's body went flying about the vehicle. Shermer said Betty was so badly injured because she wasn't wearing her seatbelt. The coroner's office quickly closed the case, unaware there were questions about why Betty wasn't buckled in. Here's what Shermer told his daughters. He told me that he was wearing his seatbelt, but that she was uncomfortable and had just at that point removed. her seatbelt to get more comfortable.

And that's when the deer ran out. Did that make sense to you? Yeah, I think that could happen. Yeah. Yeah, I think that happened. I believe that is what happened. Yeah. Yeah.

But this is what he told Betty's sister. He told me that she didn't put her seat belt on. Like immediately, I'm like, she always wears her seat belt. You know, what do you mean she didn't have her seat belt on? And he told me that, well, lately she's just, Well, lately she's been doing a little game when she gets in the car. She doesn't put her seatbelt on and she waits to see how far we go down the road before she hears the ding sound. And I said, that is crazy.

He said, I know. That doesn't sound like bets. But that's what she was doing. I don't get the game. You ever heard of that? No, that's... I don't understand. She was trying to see if that bell would go off if she took the seatbelt up?

I think Mr. Shermer was trying to offer an explanation because the sisters knew that Betty always wore her seatbelt. Her sisters also wondered why Betty was cremated almost immediately. She was against cremation. And then here's A.B. telling us that she chose to be cremated. And we didn't question. At the time of Betty's death, in the midst of the shock and the sadness, no. No one thought to ask any questions. But then Joe Moussanti committed suicide.

And suddenly, almost everything looked suspicious. In my opinion, a conscious person seated in that passenger seat would never sustain a kind of head trauma that Betty did. Had we caught this right away, had the officers suspected some foul play in the beginning, we would have had a lot more evidence. Four months after Betty Shermer's death, Detective Jim Wagner began noticing things about that car crash that nobody noticed before. He looked at photos of the scene and thought something was missing.

No skid marks from rotating tires violently out of control. No evidence of braking whatsoever. And pictures of the car showed it was in remarkably good shape. Was the front end damaged at all? There was a little damage to the front of the car. The airbags had not deployed. It was very obvious that this was a low-speed impact. Mr. Shermer's vehicle was actually functional.

He could have backed up and continued to drive his wife to the hospital. It was drivable. It was. And yet, the story was Betty died in this crash. Betty sustained such severe head trauma that just wasn't consistent with this type of a crash. Detective Wagner was already plenty suspicious of past. Mr. Shermer's story, and then he noticed there were blood stains that seemed obviously out of place. There were numerous blood drops on the seat cushion that had a diluted or absorbed look to it,

as if she had been sitting in that blood for some length of time. Well, that would raise some questions, right? If I'm sitting in a car being thrown around, there might be blood all around here, but there wouldn't be blood on my seat. Not underneath your body, no. And the fact that it was absorbed and saturated, meant that she was placed in it. Now, Wagner wanted to know more about the death of Shermer's first wife, Jewel. She died in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and Wagner called the police there.

I found out that her death was in 1999, and it was from a fall down a flight of stairs. Shermer said Jewel was vacuuming the stairs when she somehow tumbled to the bottom. Doctors initially said it looked like she had a heart attack, but the medical examination who did Jules' autopsy back then said, We have a problem. That can't be true. The pathology was totally negative for heart disease. And the problem is we've got to make sure this isn't a homicide.

Dr. Wayne Ross also noticed something odd about Jules' injuries. She had several skull fractures, but no other broken bones. Did Jules Schumer have any significant injuries below her neck? No. Dr. Ross says if Jewell really had fallen down a flight of stairs, she should have had other injuries. So he classified the cause of death as undetermined. Undetermined means it's open, and it certainly could be a homicide. He urged investigators to look into Jules' death, but they never did.

And Schumer's daughters have always believed their mother's death was an accident. There were no questions. I had no questions. I wasn't questioning anything. I didn't think it was uncommon for people to fall down steps. No. And I still don't. I think vacuuming steps with a shop vac is very dangerous for anyone. Jules' case had been closed for nine years when Detective Wagner called and asked for the file. What opinion are you forming of the Reverend?

That he's a murderer. Partly because of what Wagner learned about Jules' death, The investigation into Betty's death was heating up. So in December of 2008, five months after Betty died, Wagner got a warrant to search the parsonage. We had a team to search for any evidence whatsoever of an assault, any blood anywhere. They found what they were looking for in the garage. As soon as I walked in the back door, I saw blood drops on the floor,

the concrete floor of the garage. Wagner and his team used the chemical luminal that glows in the dark when it reacts with blood. The luminal actually lit up quite a bit of mysterious blood leading to the passenger side door of the car. So there was a trail? Yes. From the back door of the garage to the car? Yes. And the blood that led to the car stopped at the car.

Tests later confirmed what detectives. Wagner suspected from the beginning. The blood was Betty's. She was bleeding prior to getting in that car, and she was assaulted and put in that car and placed in that car seat. While Wagner and his team were searching the parsonage, state police were interviewing Pastor Shermer, asking about the blood.

First, he denies that she ever bled in the garage. He then comes up with a story that, they were moving some wood. Wood stacked in the garage that had fallen on them. It actually had cut both of them. Schumer said he and Betty were moving the wood outside, and detectives did find a wood pile in the backyard. And at the bottom of that wood pile were some local newspapers,

and the date on those local newspapers were September 2008. And that tells you what? It would be impossible for Betty to have helped to move that wood because these papers were dated after her death. One year after Betty died, detectives were still building their case, and while Shermer had been forced to give up his job as pastor, he did not give up his relationship with Cindy,

Samantha's mother. He started to spend the night, and he'd spend the weekend and go home, when pretty soon he wasn't leaving at all. A few months after Shermer moved in, Samantha moved out. I actually moved out on my 18th birthday. And that's when she found out her mother's boyfriend,

the former pastor, was being investigated for murder. Did you ever mention to her that he could be dangerous, that maybe this was a guy to stay away from? No. She was just so smitten with him. Then, in the summer of 2010, Samantha received a startling text message from her mother. She texted me and she said,

AB bought me a ring. My next phone call was to the Pocono Township Police Department. Why did you call the police? I was worried for her safety at that point. She was going to be wife number three. And the first two didn't have a whole lot of luck. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries

is a weekly podcast hosted by me and Kailan Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying, true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. When Samantha contacted our office, she was fearful for her mother. She was afraid of what would happen.

Detective Wendy's surface of the Monroe County. Pennsylvania DA's office was as worried as Samantha. Pastor Shermer had already buried two wives, and no one wanted to see if Cindy would be the third. I don't think she was safe at all. I think it was a matter of time before whatever his trigger was would surface in their relationship too. It had been two years since Betty Shermer died after the Carpher

after the car crash. This case was a long time building because there were so many gaps in time that we had to fill. But the police decided they now had to act quickly. And so, in September 2010, just a few weeks after he proposed to Cindy, the former pastor was arrested and charged with murdering wife number two, Betty.

Who would suspect a minister of doing such awful things. The minister was locked up, but the case was not. Betty Shermer had been cremated without an autopsy. So investigators asked Dr. Wayne Ross, who performed Jules' autopsy in 1999, to look at Betty's medical records from the car crash. My most obvious thought was she had died of traumatic brain injury, and it was a homicide. How could we ultimately figure this out?

Dr. Ross used Betty's cat scans to make these 3D renderings of her wounds. He says the most startling thing about Betty's injuries is that they looked just like Jules. These tears are what we refer to as linear tears, which means they look like lines. And you'll notice that they're on the right side of the head, just like Jules Shermer, deja vu all over again. Here we are. Dr. Ross does not believe in coincidences. Let's use common sense.

How likely is it to have two women married to the same guy, two lacerations to the right side of the head, both dying of traumatic brain injuries, both under suspicious circumstances, how likely is that? Well, you tell me how likely that is. I think it's extremely unlikely. A few months after Shermer's arrest for Betty's murder, Dr. Ross went with investigators to the parsonage, where Shermer's first wife, Jewel, was fatally injured.

They wanted to test Shermer's story that Jewel fell down the stairs. We videotaped the whole thing. So they pushed crash test dummies down the stairs over and over again. We put chalk all over the head to help us analyze where the head strikes occur. Dr. Ross says Jules' injuries were not caused by a fall down the stairs. What do you think happened to her? Well, I believe that she was beaten. And it's my conclusion she was beaten with an object, such as a pipe or maybe crowbar,

or something along those lines. This simply wasn't scientific. It was silly. Brandon Reich is Schumer's attorney. Really, these were bad tests. This was junk science. When you look at anthropomorphic test dummies being pushed downstairs, They were not designed for this purpose.

There's no scientific studies. There's no peer-reviewed articles. There's nothing really that accepts this. Well, but doesn't it make sort of common sense that, you know, if you wouldn't push a person down the stairs to find out how she would be injured? I mean, why not? Well, you wouldn't push just a log down the stairs to find out how a person was injured either. All the test dummies showed in this case was that somebody who fell down those stairs,

could have hit their head multiple times. That's what happened. Somebody fell down the stairs, hit their head multiple times. Still, after those tests were completed, Jules' death certificate was officially changed. The manner of death, which was undetermined, was now homicide.

Jules' daughters, Amy and Julie, got the news that police now believed their father had murdered their mother. A detective... Came to your door. I came to my front door to give me the news personally. He said, your mom's death has been rolled a homicide. We know she didn't die from falling down the stairs

and she didn't have a heart attack. Here's my card and left. Well, I think I said thank you and probably closed the door. Well, when you closed the door, what was your first thought? I was angry. I'm still angry. You can tell. I'm angry.

Because again, I don't believe. I don't believe that he can know she didn't fall down the steps and that her injuries aren't from that. I have to ask you, what about the medical examiner who said that both your mother and Betty had remarkably similar wounds to their heads? I actually don't believe him. You don't believe him? I don't believe what he's saying is truthful. One man is saying that. But he's the medical examiner.

I'm sorry, I don't believe what he has said. I just don't. I read something where it said that my mom had 12 blows. to her head. And I do not believe that to be true. But it is true, at least according to the autopsy, Dr. Ross says he found 14 areas of impact to Jules' head. And in September 2012, A.B. Shermer, already in custody for Betty's murder, was indicted for murdering wife number one, Jewel.

The prosecutors and the police have asked repeatedly, what are the chances two women married to the same guy would die in similar fashion. Is this a coincidence? It's a coincidence. People die. Coincidence has happened. Accidents happen. They happen every day. Shermer would be tried for killing Betty first.

And prosecutor Mike Mancuso knew this would be a tough case. There's a lot of unknowns out there with the case because it was circumstantial, entirely circumstantial. So as a prosecutor building a case, like that, you're not exactly sure that all the little pieces of evidence you need are going to be admissible in court. And there's one big chunk of evidence Mancuso wants to present the circumstances of Jules' death. Schumer's attorney is fighting to keep all of that out.

It's not fair. It's not meant to get before the jury. It wasn't anything that was proved. It still has yet to be proven. Even the allegations have nothing to do with this case. Oh, that's hogwash. No, it's it's relevant. It's relevant as proof of motive, identity, and in this case, most importantly, a lack of accident.

It should be admissible because the trial is a search for the truth, after all. And the judge agrees. The jury will hear about Jules' death, and now the fallen pastor will place his hand on the Bible one more time. This time, to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing goes. but the truth. On January 8th, 2013, almost four and a half years after Joe Moussanti's suicides started all the investigations, the former pastor went on trial for Betty Shermer's murder.

And prosecutor Mike Mancuso was ready to present all his evidence against the man he has called the sinister minister. In this case, there was such a pattern of deception with Reverend Shermer. His whole life was based on deceit, pretense. Wolf and sheep's clothing or basically a wolf and shepherd's clothing is more apt. Joe's sister Rose.

Well, I think that he finds vulnerable people, and he grooms him for himself, when he gets pleasure out of this. You're not describing a pastor, you're describing a predator. Right. You think that's what he is? I know that's what he is. Even defense attorney Brandon Reich concedes that his client was far from the perfect pastor. Are you concerned about a conviction?

He's innocent. He hasn't been the best person. He's not a murderer. Nobody ever says how much he loved his wives, but he did. And he does. You said he does. You use the present tense. He still does?

I'm sure he still loves them. Absolutely. No cameras are allowed in the court, as the prosecutor, works through the evidence, the blood trail in the garage, the saturated blood on the car seat, and coins that somehow remained neatly stacked on the car's console after what was supposed to be a violent crash to avoid that deer. You'd think in a 45 to 55 mile an hour crash,

the change would have went all over the car, or, you know, it wouldn't just kind of just kind of, just kind of pop out and lay in the place where it had originally been. And Detective Wendy's surface found Shermer's choice of where to store his wife's remains? Peculiar. We learned that the Reverend Shermer had chosen the urn for Betty, and he chose one with a deer on it. A deer on it? A deer on it?

Yes. And one of the things I found odd was he remarked, oh look, a deer, isn't that funny? But Samantha Moussanti is the emotional centerpiece of the prosecution's case with her moving testimony about how she discovered the affair between her mother and her pastor. I stared at him from most of my testimony. Testifying actually felt empowering to be able to look him in the eye after so many years. What he did to RAP to my family. It was amazing her composure.

I've never, I've rarely seen a witness. who you can't take your eyes off of. Then, in a surprise move, A.B. Schumer takes the stand in his own defense. The first thing I saw was that he actually moved his chair and positioned it to face the jury. Only professional witnesses do that, but he did that. He did well.

He's always been consistent. This is what happened. Is he going to show emotions? Is he going to break down? Is he going to cry? He didn't. He portrayed this as the most... outrageous crash that there was swerving and Betty was flailing about the car and

do you think the jury was believing him no mr. Sherman you believe the jury believed you I think he was one of our best witnesses the defendant was one of your best witness I think so the jury deliberates for just 90 minutes the Shermer family nervous right now just everybody's nervous I'm nervous did you look at them I think I watched them come in Unhappy juries usually mean guilty. And how did they look? They looked unhappy.

Reich read them right. A.B. Shermer, a pastor in the past, is a convict now found guilty of murder for killing his second wife, Betty. The first word that came in mind was, yes. Guilty of murder in the first degree. That carries a mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I hope he suffers, and I hope he is in pain and rots in there. I expected to be so happy, but it was actually, it was really, really difficult. At the end of the day, it doesn't bring back my dad, and it doesn't bring back Betty. She was the absolute sweetest person ever. She never said anything bad about anybody. How close do you think A.B. Shermer came to getting away with murder. Very, very close. If not for Rose Cobb, she put this case into a little ball and showed us from the very start what kind of person A.B. Shermer was.

And what pushed Rose to push the police to bring Shermer to justice? She believes it was the memory of her brother. I just felt like I'm only doing what he couldn't do for himself. You're only doing what he couldn't do himself. That's what made you call the police and stay on them. I wouldn't have done it ordinarily. I couldn't do that. But Shermer's daughters have never lost their faith in their father's innocence, not even after his conviction.

I cried. I was frozen. I didn't know what to do. I just sat there and cried. I couldn't believe it. And Sam's mother, Cindy, who has clearly borne the stress of the trial. continues to see the disgraced pastor. They never married, but she has embraced his children and grandchildren as her own.

Cindy's a very giving person. Spends a lot of time with all of our kids and just, my daughter calls her Mimi now and very close relationship. But Cindy's bond with her own daughter is broken. What about your mother? What's a relationship like with her now? I don't have a relationship with her. I can't really say that she's my mother. She's not the woman that raised me.

I wish she could see A.B. for who he really is. A. year and a half after his conviction for the murder of his second wife, Betty, A.B. Shermer struck an unexpected deal with prosecutors. He pled no contest to the charge that he murdered his first wife, Jewel. At his sentencing, Shermer still insisted he was innocent. He claimed he only took the plea to spare his family the trauma of going through another murder trial. And Jules' own daughters still stood by their father. He's a good man who did not murder his wife, either of his wives.

But Jules' brother, John Bainey, told the court, Shurmer, is an evil man. Every time I looked at him, I remembered what I saw in my sister. room in the hospital, and he was responsible for that. Shermer was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, the maximum allowed, on top of his life sentence. Today's ruling ensures Arthur Shermer will never get out of prison. He's getting what he deserves. He should have been put away in 1999, and I would have my dear sister with me. It's closure.

It's over. A.B. Sherman will die in prison, and that's where I was after.