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First Posted: 3/14/2008
MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer
MONTROSE — A doctor whose own attorney called him a liar and adulterer was convicted anew Thursday of murdering his best friend three decades ago so he could marry the friend’s wife.
A jury convicted Dr. Stephen Scher, now 67, of first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of attorney Martin Dillon, 30, who was killed while the pair were skeet shooting in Northeastern Pennsylvania in 1976.
Scher lied for decades about the circumstances surrounding his friend’s death, at first claiming that Dillon tripped and accidentally shot himself while chasing a porcupine, then saying that the shotgun went off during a struggle.
Scher married Dillon’s widow in 1978 and moved to North Carolina, where he built a successful medical practice and raised Dillon’s two children as his own.
The jury’s verdict in the retrial, which came after just two hours of deliberations, thrilled Dillon’s family.
“I hope that this time they throw away the key,” said Dillon’s sister, Joann Reimel, 59. “We’ve been through enough. We’re very, very grateful to the jury.”
Scher, who will be sentenced today, faces an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. He had no reaction as the verdict was read. Defense attorney Joshua Lock said there would be an appeal.
Scher was also convicted of first-degree murder in 1997, but an appeals court ordered a new trial in 2004.
Dillon was killed on June 2, 1976, while he and Scher shot clay pigeons at Gunsmoke, the Dillon family’s hunting camp near Montrose.
For more than 20 years, Scher maintained that Dillon tripped and shot himself. The doctor changed his story in 1997, after prosecution witnesses at his first trial testified that his boots had blood spatter on them and that a tiny piece of Dillon’s flesh was found on Scher’s pants leg.
Jury foreman Norman Breese said Thursday that Scher’s guilt was obvious.
“All of the evidence was very clear. We had no problem deciding,” he said.
In his closing argument, Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Blessington cast Scher as an arrogant man with a God complex.
According to Blessington, Martin Dillon confronted his wife about the affair shortly before his death, telling her to choose between him and her lover.
Patricia Dillon chose to stay, a decision that Scher refused to accept, Blessington said. The couple later divorced.
Police initially ruled the death an accident, but reopened the case in the early 1990s under pressure from Dillon’s family. Murder charges followed a second autopsy in 1995.
Defense attorney Lock argued the shooting was the result of a love triangle.
“In 1976, the local people made the right decision. Two men, same woman, out in the woods, some drinking,” Lock said. “It was not an intentional killing. It simply was not.”