Sunday, July 9, 1995<\/p>\n
Page: 1A
\nBy DAWN SHURMAITIS<\/p>\n
It’s lunchtime at Public Avenue Deli in Montrose and the talk over turkey
\nclub sandwiches, as usual, concerns the doctor, the lawyer, the wife and
\nthe shooting.<\/p>\n
The latest buzz among the secretaries lined up at the register is the
\ngraying doctor’s tearful challenge to state police to charge him — after
\n19 years — with murdering his best friend, the doctor.<\/p>\n
“You have no idea how traumatic it’s been. Arrest me so we can go on with
\nthis trial and I can forget the last 19 years,” Dr. Stephen Scher pleaded
\nJune 27 at a press conference in Waverly.<\/p>\n
The day before, Susquehanna County Coroner Robert Bartron announced
\nprominent lawyer Martin “Marty” Dillon did not die in a hunting accident in
\n1976 but was a homicide victim.<\/p>\n
The suspected killer? Scher, the husband of Dillon’s widow, Patricia.<\/p>\n
The rumored motive? Sex.<\/p>\n
Scher insists he is innocent but says townspeople already have convicted
\nhim in their hearts and in the local press of killing Dillon so he could
\nmarry Dillon’s wife, the prettiest girl in the Montrose High School Class
\nof \u201865.<\/p>\n
Attorney Peter T. O’Malley of Scranton vigorously defends Scher, his client
\nsince 1976, and is already threatening to sue just about everyone — state
\npolice, the county coroner, even the district attorney’s office — for 19
\nyears of “fabrication, lies, harassment, mental torture.”<\/p>\n
“Two men go into the woods and one comes out. Someone has to pay for it,”
\nsays O’Malley, a barrel-chested, chain-smoking defense attorney who came
\nout of retirement this year to help vindicate Scher and quell the rumors.<\/p>\n
Wednesday, O’Malley took another bold step. He filed a petition on Patricia
\nScher’s behalf asking the court to exhume her former husband’s body a
\nsecond time for a third autopsy.<\/p>\n
The Susquehanna County Court will have a hearing July 21. If approved,
\nO’Malley plans to hire Dr. Cyril Wecht, a nationally known pathologist, to
\nconduct the autopsy.<\/p>\n
“The widow of the deceased … wants her own autopsy to remove any shadow
\nof a doubt that her husband, who has been accused by innuendo, committed a
\nhomicide,” O’Malley says.<\/p>\n
When a death — sudden, messy, complicated death — comes to a small town,
\nresidents seize the story, exchanging rumors as easily as they would
\nrecipes.<\/p>\n
“This story’s got everything — sex, drugs, violence, conspiracy and
\ncover-up,” says Chuck Ficarro, co-publisher of the Susquehanna County
\nTranscript.<\/p>\n
The weekly newspaper has devoted much of its front page to the Dillon case
\nsince April 26, when the dead man’s father persuaded a judge to dig up
\nDillon’s body from Holy Name of Mary Cemetery for a second autopsy, which
\nresulted in the homicide ruling.<\/p>\n
Ficarro, like most people in Montrose, is convinced the doctor is “guilty
\nas sin.” But he’s equally certain Scher will never be convicted.<\/p>\n
“There were so many screw-ups,” Ficarro says, “the state police and the
\ncommonwealth are going to have a hell of a time proving anything.”<\/p>\n
Damaging evidence<\/p>\n
Still, many Montrose residents are betting Scher will be arrested within
\nthe month.<\/p>\n
If a trial occurs, O’Malley admits chances of his winning an acquittal are
\n“not strong.” He ticks off the most damaging evidence:<\/p>\n
Dillon was shot with Scher’s gun.<\/p>\n
Scher said he and Dillon were shooting clay pigeons just before the
\naccident, but the fatal shell was not the type used for target shooting.
\nThe shell in Dillon’s chest was the kind used for hunting.<\/p>\n
The rumored affair between Scher and Patricia Dillon.<\/p>\n
An FBI report says Scher’s boots and pants were covered with blood
\n“spatter.” The FBI, which state police consulted, concluded Scher must have
\nbeen within 3 feet of Dillon when the gun fired, another apparent
\ncontradiction to Scher’s story.<\/p>\n
O’Malley, however, plans to introduce another element if the case goes to
\ntrial: suicide.<\/p>\n
He says Scher gave Dillon samples of anti-depressant drugs because he was
\nsuffering from crying jags and moodiness. Scher and Pat Dillon were the
\nonly ones who knew Dillon was depressed and threatening to drive his car
\ninto a wall.<\/p>\n
Dillon’s former secretary, Bonnie Mead, calls the theory bunk.<\/p>\n
“There was no depression in that man. He was so busy he didn’t have time
\nfor a cup of coffee,” Mead says, recalling Dillon’s enthusiasm for his job
\nand love for his kids and his dad.<\/p>\n
The three — Larry, Marty and little Michael, used to spend weekends at
\nWatkin’s Glen race track in New York.<\/p>\n
“He was truly a joy to work for. A joy,” Mead says.<\/p>\n
The rumors fly<\/p>\n
Publicly, most residents are reluctant to call Scher a killer. But if you
\npromise not to use their names, they lean in close.<\/p>\n
“Most people believed this was murder way back when,” says a former
\nemployee of the district attorney’s office. “There was a sloppy
\ninvestigation and a cover-up. Why? That’s what everyone wants to know.
\nPeople want to put this to rest.”<\/p>\n
Ficarro has a theory, one his newspaper has hinted at but has never proven
\nor substantiated: The doctor and the lawyer had inside information on a
\ngroup of influential and politically connected Montrose residents possibly
\ninvolved in something illegal, possibly drugs.<\/p>\n
Or, he says, maybe it was because Dillon and Scher knew about the infamous
\n“Key Club.”<\/p>\n
Back in the \u201870s, says Ficarro, a small group of married Montrose men and
\nwomen would travel to the Holiday Inn in nearby Binghamton, N.Y., and throw
\ntheir hotel keys in a basket. After a night of drinking, the husbands would
\nchoose keys — and subsequently a wife — from the basket.<\/p>\n
When Dillon died, Ficarro’s theory goes, no one wanted police asking
\nawkward questions about rumored affairs, so anyone who knew anything
\nclammed up. The Investigation dwindled to nothing.<\/p>\n
It was only at the constant urging of Dillon’s father, Lawrence “Larry”
\nDillon — a two-term Montrose mayor — that state police kept the shooting
\ninvestigation officially open.<\/p>\n
But little was done until this year, when police fueled by the exhumation
\nhearing and latest autopsy report began asking fresh questions in Montrose
\nand in New Mexico, where Pat Scher moved after marrying the doctor in 1978.<\/p>\n
Today, the couple lives in Lincolnton, N.C., where the popular Scher, now
\n56, opened his second allergy practice. His wife, 48, teaches Sunday
\nschool. Newspapers there quote supporters as calling the investigation a
\n“smear campaign.”<\/p>\n
Most of Pat Scher’s relatives followed her to New Mexico. But her aunt,
\nlife-long Montrose resident Edith Karveller, has suffered local gossip for
\nyears. She says she strongly supports her niece and the doctor.<\/p>\n
“The story is just a crock of bull,” Karveller says.<\/p>\n
State police investigating the shooting are refusing comment. Michael
\nJordan, commander of State Police Area 2, agrees more could have been done
\nin 1976 but refuses to elaborate.<\/p>\n
“We have to be very careful not to judge an investigation that’s 19 years
\nold by the standards we use today,” Jordan says. “But certainly, that
\ninvestigation, in my opinion, could have been better conducted.”<\/p>\n
Popular family<\/p>\n
Montrose — population 1,987 — hasn’t changed much in the last 19 years.<\/p>\n
It’s still the seat of the county government and home to the only traffic
\nlight in Susquehanna County.<\/p>\n
The year Dillon graduated — 1964 — is remembered more than three decades
\nlater because that was the year the Montrose Meteors took home the state
\nbasketball championship. Residents still point proudly to the championship
\nbanner hanging in the high school gym.<\/p>\n
The Dillons and the Karvellers — Pat’s family — were average,
\nmiddle-class, well-liked. Marty Dillon’s dad was councilman, then mayor,
\nand a used car salesman. Pat Karveller’s late father taught school.<\/p>\n
According to the yearbook, Pat, like Marty Dillon’s kid sister, was a
\ncheerleader.<\/p>\n
Instead of spending his senior year in Montrose, Marty Dillon left that
\nJuly for a year’s study in Germany. So special was Dillon’s trip abroad,
\nhis yearbook picture was twice the size of any other student’s and set off
\non its own page.<\/p>\n
Marty Dillon and Pat Karveller knew each other in high school but didn’t
\nstart dating until college. Marty graduated from Villanova Law School in
\n1971. Pat got her degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania in
\nPhiladelphia.<\/p>\n
By 1976, Marty and Pat had two children, Michael and Suzanne. Marty had
\njoined the law firm of Robert Dean, considered the “dean” of Montrose
\nlawyers. Marty specialized in divorce and real estate. Pat worked as a
\nnurse at Montrose General Hospital.<\/p>\n
Back then, the Dillons’ best friends were Stephen and Edna Ann Scher.<\/p>\n
Scher, a Toronto native and University of Michigan graduate, moved to
\nSusquehanna County from Miami in 1968. He says he chose the rural community
\nbecause his wife raised dogs and Montrose was near the dog show circuit.<\/p>\n
It was tough going at first. Scher says that’s because he was an outsider.
\nA Canadian. And a Jew.<\/p>\n
Scher says he introduced himself to Dillon because he wanted to befriend
\nanother young professional. The men enjoyed beer drinking, hockey games and
\nskeet shooting.<\/p>\n
Soon, the Schers and the Dillons were vacationing together in Wyoming and
\nLas Vegas. When the Dillons bought a home, the Schers gave them a beer tap
\nas a housewarming gift.<\/p>\n
“We did everything together,” Scher says.<\/p>\n
Before long, Pat Dillon was working as Scher’s nurse at the hospital. And,
\nby all accounts, Marty Dillon — Lion’s Club member, family man, local kid
\ndone good — was on the fast track. The year he died, supporters had
\nalready printed bumper stickers that said “Dillon for DA.” Some predicted
\nhe’d be on the county bench before age 40.<\/p>\n
In December 1975, the doctor decided to end a crumbling marriage and asked
\nDillon to represent him. In his divorce papers, Scher accused his wife of
\nhatred, neglect and malicious insults.<\/p>\n
The worst of those insults, according to the papers, were “false
\naccusations of an affair with Patricia Dillon.”<\/p>\n
Everyone in town whispered about Pat and the doctor, according to Mead, the
\nformer secretary. She says Dillon knew about the talk but was too fearful
\nof public embarrassment to confront his wife. Divorce was out of the
\nquestion.<\/p>\n
“That man was born and raised Irish Catholic,” Mead says. “Divorce? Never.”<\/p>\n
The shooting<\/p>\n
Every other Wednesday in the mid-’70s, Scher and Dillon went skeet shooting
\nwith a group of three other young professionals at a hunting camp 20
\nminutes north of Montrose at the end of a series of winding dirt roads.<\/p>\n
Dillon’s father owned the woodsy camp, which he named “Gunsmoke” after the
\ntelevision show featuring sheriff Matt Dillon.<\/p>\n
The afternoon of June 2, 1976, three men canceled, leaving Scher and
\nDillon. The doctor says he didn’t want to go either, but Dillon insisted.<\/p>\n
As usual, the men took turns drinking beer and shooting clay pigeons.
\nEventually, Scher says, talk turned to the rumored affair. Scher, adamant
\nhe was innocent and disturbed by the small-town gossip, told Dillon he was
\nleaving Montrose.<\/p>\n
“He told me I was a big chicken,” Scher says.<\/p>\n
After two hours of shooting, Dillon complained of a sore shoulder and asked
\nto borrow Scher’s gun, which was lighter. During another break, Scher says,
\nDillon walked off alone to look for a pesky porcupine that had been
\nburrowing under the camp trailer.<\/p>\n
The doctor says he heard a click, then a shot.<\/p>\n
“I wandered up the path and found him lying there. I flipped him over and
\nblood squirted everywhere.”<\/p>\n
Scher says he stuck his hands in Dillon’s chest and tried heart massage.
\nWhen resuscitation failed, he wandered around for a while, in shock, before
\nrunning through the woods to a farm to call an ambulance.<\/p>\n
Dillon, his heart blown apart by tiny pellets from a 16-gauge shotgun, bled
\nto death.<\/p>\n
With the farmer and ambulance crew as witness, his friend already dead,
\nScher smashed the gun against a tree, saying “This gun will never kill
\nanyone else.”<\/p>\n
A distraught Scher told investigators Dillon must have shot himself
\naccidentally. Investigators decided Dillon tripped over an exposed root or
\nhis own shoe laces, which were untied.<\/p>\n
Instead of the hospital, the ambulance took Dillon’s body to Bartron’s
\nFuneral Home. The next day, the county coroner, who is now dead, declared
\nthe death accidental. His ruling was largely based on Scher’s account.<\/p>\n
The day of the shooting, Pat Dillon was at home on Kelly Street with her
\nkids and parents. She remembers her dad was mowing the lawn when she got
\nword.<\/p>\n
Dillon was 30 when he died. That same day, says Pat Scher, his insurance
\ncompany approved changing the beneficiary of his $100,000 life insurance
\npolicy from Pat to the children, then ages 5 and 2. Dillon had made the
\nrequest two weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
Pat Dillon inherited the house and the couple’s assets.<\/p>\n
Thirty-six hours after the shooting, after giving state police his bloody
\nclothes and a statement, Scher hired O’Malley. He says he got the referral
\nfrom Pat Dillon.<\/p>\n
Case gets another look<\/p>\n
From the start, word around town was the shooting was deliberate.<\/p>\n
Seven days after Dillon’s death, according to documents submitted during
\nthe exhumation hearing, county detective Willard Collier wrote to then
\nDistrict Attorney Ed Little.<\/p>\n
In his letter, according to the County Transcript newspaper, Collier said
\nthe scene and the trajectory of the shot didn’t support the theory that
\nDillon fell, firing the gun into his own chest.<\/p>\n
Collier, now dead, also wrote he suspected Scher because of the look on the
\ndoctor’s face, his explanation of the accident and the destruction of the
\ngun.<\/p>\n
Nothing happened.<\/p>\n
Within seven months, his divorce final, Scher moved to Las Cruces, N.M., to
\nopen a practice. Pat Dillon moved to Philadelphia with her children to
\nteach nursing.<\/p>\n
Soon, the two were communicating long distance.<\/p>\n
“Steve was a friend to me when I was alone with two babies,” Pat Dillon
\nScher says. “He was one of the few people who helped me. He sent winter
\ncoats. He wrote me notes.”<\/p>\n
Their romance, says Scher, started the latter part of 1977. They’ve been
\nmarried 17 years and, 10 years ago, adopted a son, now 14.<\/p>\n
In 1991, the Schers moved to North Carolina. Scher says Los Angeles
\nmotorcycle gangs were making New Mexico too dangerous a place for kids. The
\ndoctor and his wife raised the two Dillon children, Suzanne, now 21 and a
\ncostume designer, and Michael, now 24 and managing his stepfather’s
\npractice in New Mexico. Twice a month, Scher flies west to see his
\npatients.<\/p>\n
For years, the Dillon kids, who kept their father’s name, returned to
\nMontrose every summer to visit their grandparents. The visits and the
\ncommunication stopped last year, says Pat Scher, when Larry Dillon filed
\nthe exhumation petition.<\/p>\n
The Schers say the accusations, rumors and police questioning upset their
\ndaughter, Suzanne, so severely she required psychiatric care.<\/p>\n
“They are hurt, angry and confused,” Pat Scher says. “They can’t understand
\nwhy their flesh and blood wants to dig up their father.”<\/p>\n
Pat Scher was stunned by the result of the autopsy.<\/p>\n
“I thought the truth would win out,” she says. “We’ve prayed and trusted
\nand hoped the system would work and it isn’t.”<\/p>\n
Support for husband<\/p>\n
Pat Scher is still a beauty.<\/p>\n
Dressed in a royal blue blazer, white skirt and low heels, her black hair
\ncut stylishly short, the wounded wife sat still and quiet during the
\n90-minute press conference held two weeks ago so her husband could proclaim
\nhis innocence to a roomful of reporters.<\/p>\n
Pat Scher didn’t move until her husband — shoulders stooped, face drawn —
\ndescribes finding Dillon, pale and bloody, on the ground 19 years, 25 days
\nbefore.<\/p>\n
“I tried to save him. He was my best friend,” the doctor said, his voice
\nbreaking. Pat Scher’s hand trembled as she took a long drink of ice water.
\nTears formed but did not fall.<\/p>\n
When the press conference ended, Pat Scher described her first husband as
\nkind and gentle.<\/p>\n
She uses the same words to describe her current husband.<\/p>\n
“I’ve watched him function as nothing but a healer,” Pat Scher says. “I’ve
\nseen him carry dead patients because he’s worried the undertaker will be
\ntoo rough.”<\/p>\n
Looking for answers<\/p>\n
Most of the Dillon family is refusing to talk to the press out of fear any
\ncomments would jeopardize an arrest.<\/p>\n
“They’re not pointing any fingers,” says Bill Nash, Dillon’s second cousin.
\nNash lives in Choconut near the hunting camp.<\/p>\n
He says the Dillons have devoted years to persuading police to take another
\nlook at the case but “nobody would do anything.” Once the grandchildren
\nwere grown, Larry Dillon decided to aggressively pursue the exhumation.<\/p>\n
“They’d come of age and could form their own opinion,” Nash says of the
\ntiming.<\/p>\n
In April, Susquehanna Common Pleas Court Judge Kenneth Seamans heard 4
\nhours of testimony before approving the exhumation over Pat Dillon’s formal
\nprotests. The casket was dug up at dawn and the body taken back to
\nBartron’s, where it had been prepared for viewing 19 years earlier.<\/p>\n
Today, the Dillons have hope, says Nash. They were heartened by the
\ncoroner’s report and the possible intervention of the state attorney
\ngeneral’s office. Susquehanna County District Attorney Jeff Snyder
\nrequested the state’s help two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“They want their day in court,” Nash says. “They want to get some answers.”<\/p>\n
The Dillons — Larry, Jo and daughter Jo Ann — still live in town. The
\nformer mayor remains a fixture on Public Avenue.<\/p>\n
“People in this community want this put to rest in the proper way,” says
\none of the secretaries in line at the deli. “Ninety-nine percent say it’s
\nabout time. We’ve been living with this thing too long.”<\/p>\n
————————————————————————
\nAll content \u00a9 TIMES LEADER and may not be republished without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday, July 9, 1995 Page: 1A By DAWN SHURMAITIS It’s lunchtime at Public Avenue Deli in Montrose and the talk over turkey club sandwiches, as usual, concerns the doctor, the lawyer, the wife and the shooting. The latest buzz among the secretaries lined up at the register is the graying doctor’s tearful challenge to state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}