Former Lebanon County Pastor Sentenced to 20 to 40 Years for Killing Wife

By Howard Sheppard
Fox 43
September 11, 2014

http://fox43.com/2014/09/10/former-lebanon-county-pastor-sentenced-to-20-to-40-years-for-killing-wife/


LEBANON, Pa (WPMT)-Former Methodist pastor Arthur “A.B” Schirmer, 66, is sentenced to 20 to 40 years for killing his first wife Jewel Schirmer in April 1999. The couple had been married for 31 years.

The prosecution contended that Jewel Schirmer was beaten in the head multiple times with a crowbar or something similiar. Schirmer claimed his wife died from injuries as the result of her falling down the basement stairs of their North Lebanon Township home. The cause of her death was at first declared Undetermined.

In 2011, the Lebanon County District Attorney’s Office, using an outside biomedical engineering firm, came up with tests results that proved Jewel Schirmer’s injuries were not the result of a fall down a flight of stairs.

In January 2012, the manner of her death was changed from Undetermined to Homicide.

On June 30, this year Schirmer entered a no-contest plead to third degree murder. President Judge John Tylwalk handed down his sentence in Lebanon County court late Wednesday afternoon.

Schirmer was already convicted and serving a life sentence in Greene State Prison for staging a car crash in Monroe County to cover up his second wife, Betty Jean Schirmer’s death in 2008. Judge Tylwalk’s sentence is consecutive to Schirmer’s Monroe County life sentence.

Schirmer had served as pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church of Lebanon for 22 years.