Does pastor’s story about wife’s fatal crash hold up to the evidence? | Forensic Files

Mr Shermer had told the police officers at the scene what had happened that he was traveling 40 45 50 m an hour
somewhere in that range the deer jumps into the roadway and he swerves violently and hits this guard rail uh
looking at the photographs of the accident scene I immediately noticed that it was a low- speed impact there
was not much damage to the PT Cruiser the airbags didn't even deploy there was no evidence of braking uh there were no
no evidence of evasive maneuvers in the roadway there was an excessive amount of
blood in the car obviously the accident photographs clearly showed that Mr shermer's vehicle struck the guard rail
straight on at a minimal speed in fact Mr shermer's vehicle could have been driven from that
scene we had accident reconstruction experts from Penn State reconstruct the crash at speeds of 20 mph and 40 mph
they take information from um crashed dat factors within the vehicle itself uh soil composition structural Integrity of
the guard rail and all those things are factored into the computer to reconstruct an animated crash they're
compiling all of that data to come up with an accurate reenactment of the actual crash at that location at 20 M
hour the vehicle impacted the guard rail and slowly came to a stop uh at 40 m an
hour the vehicle traveled completely through the guard rail and into the woods the Reverend uh clearly made the
the crash SE as though was more violent uh higher speeds 50 to 55 mph violently out of control Betty's head went flying
throughout the vehicle and these reconstructions uh certainly told us that the impact with the guard rail was
certainly at a lower speed than he wanted us to believe I think the car was going anywhere between 18 and 22 M hour
when it impacted the guardrail if he had been going faster than that speed he would have completely sailed right
through the guard rail and into the woods and that's not how we found the vehicle

What’s wrong with these pictures? Pocono Township Det. Jim Wagner uses crime scene photographs and crash scene reconstructions to analyze the story of Betty Schirmer’s fatal car crash.

Brief Summary

Mr. Shermer's car accident speed was significantly lower than claimed, based on expert reconstruction analysis.

Key points

Crash Reconstruction Insights. Experts reconstructed the crash, revealing it was at a lower speed than claimed.

Episode highlights

Crash Reconstruction InsightsExperts reconstructed the crash, revealing it was at a lower speed than claimed.“The impact was certainly at a lower speed than he wanted us to believe.”1:42Jan 3, 2014

Episode quotes

The impact was certainly at a lower speed than he wanted us to believe.

Discussing the crash speed and Mr. Shermer's claims.

1:42WatchJan 3, 2014

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