Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Pleasant Valley, Springfield Township, Bucks County, became the unlikely scene of a murder when Mary Jane Fonder murdered fellow church member Rhonda Lynn Smith, of Hellertown, in the church’s office on Jan. 24, 2008. The murder was committed because Fonder–who was 65 at the time–wrongly viewed Smith as a rival for the affection of the church’s pastor.
A woman who became infamous for her murder of Hellertown resident Rhonda Smith in an Upper Bucks County church office nearly a decade ago has died in prison at the age of 75, according to published news reports.
Mary Jane Fonder shot and killed Smith, 42, while she was working alone inside the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church office in Pleasant Valley, Springfield Township, in January 2008.
Rhonda Lynn Smith was a 1984 graduate of Saucon Valley High School.
Police and prosecuters said Fonder killed Smith because she mistakenly viewed her as a rival for the affections of the church’s minister, for whom Fonder had an infatuation.
Fonder threw the murder weapon–a .38 caliber revolver–in nearby Lake Nockamixon and kept a hair appointment after she killed Smith, police said.
Before Fonder was arrested in March 2008, the case terrified the small, close-knit communities of Upper Bucks County, where murders are rare.
Fonder was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in December 2008.
The case was later profiled by true crime television shows such as Dateline NBC and was the subject of a 2012 book, “Love Me or Else: The True Story of a Devoted Pastor, a Fatal Jealousy, and the Murder that Rocked a Small Town,” by Lehigh Valley journalists Colin McEvoy and Lynn Olanoff.
Fonder remains a suspect in the 1993 disappearance of her 80-year-old father, Edward Fonder III, and the search for the elder Fonder will continue according to authorities investigating that case, WFMZ reported.
According an entry on the missing persons website The Doe Network:
Edward Fonder, a retired machinist, disappeared Aug. 25, 1993, from his family’s 11-acre property at 3194 Winding Road, Springfield Township.
The day he disappeared, his daughter woke about 07.00 to set the table for breakfast. Afterward, she went back to bed. From her room she heard her father walk down the hallway to the kitchen, open and shut the refrigerator, and then leave the house. She assumed that he was going to get the newspaper at the end of the driveway. She fell back to sleep, and when she awoke, her father was gone. She checked his bedroom and outside the house, then called police about 11.00.
Search parties were formed, an infrared helicopter camera was used and scent-tracking dogs were brought in to try and find him. An extensive search around his Springfield Township home turned up nothing. A bloodhound tracked his scent from his front door to the road at the end of his driveway before it was lost.
Other than the clothes he was wearing, his wallet, and the antique rosewood cane he used for walking, Fonder left behind all his belongings. His wallet was found by postal officials in Allentown nearly a year after he went missing.
His children were interviewed by police as persons of interest, but they were never considered suspects. His adult daughter had moved in to care for him and his wife before her death.
Just three weeks ago the Morning Call reported that police plan to use ground-penetrating radar to search the property on which Edward Fonder lived and from which he disappeared, which is located in Kintnersville.
Fonder’s death Monday was due to cardiac arrest and occurred in the infirmary at the State Correctional Institute at Muncy, where she was known by her inmate number, #ON6520, according to court records.
Smith, who was born in Fountain Hill, is buried in Union Cemetery in Hellertown.
Her father Francis W. “Jim” Smith, who passed away in 2012 and with whom Rhonda Smith resided, is also buried there, according to online cemetery records.
At Saucon Valley High School–Rhonda Smith’s alma mater–there is a scholarship awarded annually in her memory.
The Saucon Valley Class of 2018 will graduate this Friday, June 8 at 7 p.m.
