STROUDSBURG - Nate Novack stood in a corridor at the Monroe County courthouse on Monday, folded his arms and stared stone-faced at the man accused of killing his mother in 2008.
Arthur Schirmer, 64, stared straight ahead, past Mr. Novack and about a dozen more relatives of his second wife, Betty Jean Schirmer, who investigators claim Mr. Schirmer bludgeoned to death in July 2008, loaded her into their PT Cruiser and staged a car crash to explain away her death.
The trial, now in its second week, resumes at 9:15 a.m. today. Meanwhile, the former pastor at Reeders United Methodist Church in Jackson Twp. also is awaiting trial in Lebanon County on one count of criminal homicide for the 1999 murder of his first wife, Jewel Schirmer.
Mr. Schirmer is accused of killing Jewel Schirmer and leading authorities to believe she died in a fall down a set of stairs. The charge in that case arose out of the Monroe County investigation, which ended with Mr. Schirmer's arrest in September 2010.
Moments before the break in Monday's proceedings, Monroe County First Assistant District Attorney Michael Mancuso handed the only child of Betty Jean Schirmer a stack of photos as he sat at the witness stand and asked him to identify the images.
Mr. Novack, 38, broke down immediately, covering his face and composing himself for a few minutes before confirming "Yes, that's my mom."
Though the photos were not shown to the entire courtroom, the images depicted Betty Jean Schirmer "laying there fighting for her life with her head all bandaged up and her eyes all puffy," as her sister, Tina Fultc, of Harrisburg, described Mrs. Schirmer's appearance that night during her own testimony Monday.
Mr. Schirmer holds that his wife suffered those injuries in a car crash on Route 715 in Pocono Twp. after he swerved to avoid a deer and Mrs. Schirmer, who he said had only just taken off her seat belt to reposition herself, was thrown about the vehicle's interior when it hit a guard rail.
That seemed odd to several of Mrs. Schirmer's relatives - "She was very self-conscious," her son testified. "When it came to driving, she used to always say 'Seat belts save lives.' "
But the charges against Mr. Schirmer claim that the crash was only one part of his cover-up, which also included an unsuccessful attempt to clean Mrs. Schirmer's blood from the parsonage garage at Reeders church, where he presumably loaded her into the car that night.
Over the course of the morning of the crash, Mr. Novack and Mr. Schirmer discussed the decision to end life-support for Mrs. Schirmer to fulfill the promise the latter made to his wife that neither would let the other live artificially.
The decision made, Mr. Novack put his ear to his mother's chest "hoping something was there" as she died.
During her testimony, Mrs. Fultc recalled seeing Mr. Schirmer walking "out the double doors - no emotion, whatsoever - and saying, 'Bets has passed.' "
At the memorial service the next day, Mr. Schirmer introduced Mr. Novack to Cindy Musante, his personal secretary at the church, as the two of them stood in the family's receiving line.
"It was kind of odd at the time," Mr. Novack said, adding that Mr. Schirmer shared a joke with him, that he called his secretary "C.D." since he went by "A.B."
By then, Mr. Schirmer was involved in a "full-blown affair" with Mrs. Musante, as Mr. Schirmer's counseling client, Ann Marie Thorsen-Moe of Michaels, testified.
That relationship would ultimately lead to the suicide of Joseph Musante, Mrs. Musante's husband, in October 2008. A carpenter, Mr. Musante broke into the pastor's office, sat down at a desk he built himself and shot himself in the head.
Mr. Musante had known about his wife's wandering for about a month then, after his daughter, Samantha, gave in to his questioning and told him about text messages and emails she had found on her mother's computer and phone.
State police Trooper Scott Sotack and a female detective seated at the prosecution table read a selection of those emails playing the parts of Mr. Schirmer and Mrs. Musante during the electronic forensics investigator's testimony.
Among them was an email sent Sept. 26 from a Jean Smith - an alias - with the subject line "A word of caution."
"This is an anonymous email to warn you to keep it at a professional level with your staff in your office," it began, followed by a promise to report the affair to the authorities if it did not cease.
It did not, presumably because a few days later Mrs. Musante and Mr. Schirmer concluded that the email came from Mrs. Musante's then-16-year-old daughter, Samantha.
"I wanted to keep my family together," the now 20-year-old woman testified Monday.
They scolded her and demanded she not speak of what they held were her unfounded suspicions.
She obeyed for a time, but continued to scan her mother's emails and text messages as the affair went on.
A divorced woman herself, Ms. Thorsen-Moe, Mr. Schirmer's counseling client, asked him why he did not just divorce his wife when he told her of their relationship problems and his affair.
"He didn't want to lose half of everything he had to his wife," she testified.
After Mr. Schirmer told her about state police interrogating him about the events that led to Mrs. Schirmer's death, Mrs. Fultc asked him about an apparent contradiction in his story of the crash.
He had told her that morning that her sister was playing a game, waiting to clasp her belt until the P.T. Cruiser's no-seatbelt alarm went off.
But later Mrs. Fultc heard him tell another relative that Mrs. Schirmer - who Mr. Schirmer claimed to be driving to Pocono Medical Center for pain in her jaw - had taken the belt off to reposition herself when he swerved around the deer.
"I would not hurt her," Mr. Schirmer told Mrs. Fultc in a January 2009 email.
"What did you tell me about the seatbelt, A.B.?" she asked him in her response.
She never heard from him again.
Contact the writer: domalley@timesshamrock.com, @domalleytt on Twitter