Two criminal cases that received plenty of press and had ties to Northern Blair County were disposed of in the Blair County Court of Common Pleas this year.
First, the family of 20-year-old Shari Lee Jackson of Hollidaysburg had a sense of closure when two girls accused of killing the woman were sentenced to life in prison.
Kristin Marie Edmundson, during the first part of the year, entered a guilty plea to first degree murder and was sentenced by Judge Jolene Kopriva to spend the rest of her life behind bars.
Then, in June, 21-year-old Marie Louise Seilhamer was convicted by an out-of-county jury of first-degree murder, but was spared the death penalty when the same jury recommended a life incarceration sentence.
During Seilhamer’s trial, testimony revealed the killing centered around a relationship Jackson was allegedly having with Edmundson’s roommate. Blair County District Attorney David Gorman said Edmundson was jealous over Jackson’s motive and enlisted the help of Seilhamer to devise a plan to kill the woman, then carried it out.
The murder occurred on May 6, 2001.
Gorman claimed Edmundson and Seilhamer took up to a week to plan the killing, going so far as to map out the area and gather the tools and items necessary to carry it out.
On May 7, 2001, Jackson’s burnt body was found in a clearing just off state Route 453, more commonly known as the Janesville Pike, just north of Tyrone. Within hours, the girls were apprehended and brought in for questioning.
According to state police, the girls admitted to the killing. Police said the pair drove Jackson to a pull-off spot along SR 453 and once isolated, began arguing with her. Police said Edmundson was physically fighting with Jackson when she summoned Seilhamer to help her. Police said Seilhamer struck Jackson with a baseball bat, afterwhich Edmundson slit the victim’s throat with a box cutter-style knife.
Gorman claimed the plan to kill Jackson, dismember her body then burn the body parts, but the plan went a different way because Edmundson forgot to bring along a hatchet and the shovel handle broke in the tightly-packed earth.
Tyrone resident Nichole Zimmerman testified that Edmundson and Seilhamer arrived at her home in the morning of May 6. She told Seilhamer’s jury that the pair had another girl along with them, but couldn’t identify her.
She said the trio left home, but returned two hours later without the unknown girl. She said Edmundson and Seilhamer were acting very strangely and Edmundson had blood on her arm. She said Edmundson claimed to have punched the girl in the nose.
In the other case, a 56-year-old former Tyrone doctor entered guilty pleas in October to two felony counts of involuntary sexual deviate intercourse, felonies of prescribing or dispensing medicine outside his practice and conspiracy to deliver cocaine and ecstasy and soliciting for purposes of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and misdemeanor crimes of corruption of minors and selling/furnishing alcohol to minors.
The state’s Attorney General’s Office, who prosecuted the case, dropped 33 other charges in the case.
Recently, Bender petitioned the court to withdraw the guilty plea citing his attorney, Thomas Dickey of Altoona, was too wrapped up in another case to give him proper representation. Judge Kopriva denied the request and sentenced him to serve 10 to 20 years in a state correctional facility.
The charges centered around a more than 20-year investigation that revealed Bender would supply illegal drugs and alcohol to young boys in exchange for sexual favors.
In March, Bender’s accomplice, Gilbert Stevenson, 30, of Avis, entered an open plea of guilt to six charges of delivery of cocaine and single charges of delivery of ecstasy, delivery of PCP, conspiracy to deliver controlled substances and corruption of minors. In exchange, the state “nolle prosed,’ or dropped, several other charges against Stevenson, including sexual exploitation of children.
