Forensic Files - Season 3, Episode 7 - Grave Evidence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[music playing] [gun firing] NARRATOR: Two friends spent a summer afternoon skeet
shooting in rural Pennsylvania. [gun firing] Only one returned home. The other died of what was determined to be an accident.
What happened that day sent shockwaves through a small town and launched a mystery that would take 20 years to solve.
[music playing] Montrose is a quiet rural area in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania.
It's a small, close-knit community with stately homes, one traffic light, and the courthouse
that dominates the town square. In 1976, Montrose was home to 30-year-old Martin Dillon, his wife, Pat, and their two young children.
Marty Dillon was a very popular man in town and his father was the local mayor. I mean, everybody knew him and really liked him.
NARRATOR: On June 2, 1976, Martin Dillon left work early to go skeet shooting at his family's hunting camp,
a secluded place called Gunsmoke. His good friend, Dr. Stephen Scher went along.
Stephen Scher was one of the town's doctors and a close personal friend of the Dillons.
Martin asked some other friends to go with him that day, but they all had other plans.
And I said, Marty, I can't go. I said, I got just so much going on I just can't get away.
And he-- I just didn't go. NARRATOR: A few hours later, Martin Dillon lay dead. FRANK ZANIN: Martin Dillon was laying on his back
with his arms outstretched, his clay pigeons under the one arm. The wound itself was dead center into the chest,
right into the heart. There was no mistaking that it went straight into the heart.
NARRATOR: Dillon's ear protectors and sunglasses were lying on the ground near his body.
The shoelace of his right boot was untied. Dr. Scher told police that he and Dillon were headed
towards the cabin when Dillon spotted a porcupine, grabbed Scher's loaded shotgun, and ran to shoot it.
[gun firing] Scher said Dillon apparently tripped over his shoelace and fell on his gun, which went off accidentally,
blasting a hole into his chest. Scher attempted to perform CPR, then went next door to get a neighbor.
STEPHEN SCHER: Saw a porcupine, and he grabbed my gun. He ran into the-- NARRATOR: He smashed the shotgun against a tree
in a fit of rage, saying the gun would never kill anyone again. State policeman Frank Zanin took the photographs of the scene.
And I says, wait he was running from where? He said, down the path. He ran up the path here after a porcupine.
I said, well, this doesn't make sense because his bootlaces are untied. Says, yeah that's what he tripped over.
I says, no, take another look. I said the boot itself is tight to the leg. I said, if he had been running, that boot
would have been wide open. NARRATOR: And Zanin was concerned about another part of the story.
Well, he said he rolled him over, he tried to perform CPR. I said, CPR? There's a hole right through his heart.
I said, it's dead center in the chest. I says, he's a doctor. He didn't give him no CPR.
He's dead. NARRATOR: Martin Dillon's body was taken to the county morgue in the basement
of a funeral home in Montrose. On the death certificate, the coroner, who was a political appointee, ruled the manner
of death an accident. The funeral took place in the same church where Martin Dillon was married.
Dr. Scher was one of his pallbearers. For Martin Dillon's father, Larry, sadness was overshadowed by suspicion and doubt.
He did not believe his only son's death was an accident. A few months after the shooting death of Martin Dillon,
Dr. Stephen Scher divorced his wife, Anne. Some said it was the stress of the death of his best friend,
others said trouble had been brewing between Scher and his wife for some time. Either way, Stephen Scher moved from the small town
of Montrose, Pennsylvania, and eventually settled in North Carolina. A year and a half later, Stephen Scher remarried.
His new wife? Pat Dillon, the widow of his best friend, Martin Dillon. When Larry Dillon learned that his daughter-in-law and his two
grandchildren were moving in with the only witness to his son's death, he grew increasingly suspicious.
He questioned the conclusions of his son's autopsy, which was done by a family doctor who was not
trained in forensic medicine. So Larry Dillon went to visit this man, Stu Bennett, a friend
of his son's and the former police officer who was running a small company in Montrose specializing
in accident reconstruction. He felt that he was murdered. He did not tell me specifically why, or he couldn't.
He just felt in his heart that it was not the way it was reported was correct. NARRATOR: Bennett studied the autopsy photos
and read the report. The first thing he noticed was that Dillon's wound was 1 inch by 1 and 1/2 inches in size,
but the internal diameter of a 16-gauge shotgun is 5/8 of an inch. A contact wound made by that gun would be the same size, 5/8
of an inch and not any larger. To find out for sure, Stu Bennett conducted an experiment.
He stretched some pigskin over a mannequin and used the same make and model 16-gauge shotgun
with the same ammunition used in the accident. In order to create a wound the same size,
the gun had to be 3 to 5 feet away from the pigskin. Now, when I say the firearm is 3 to 5 feet away,
I'm talking about the end of the barrel where the shell actually comes out. Now, you have another 40 inches, 36 to 40 inches
to the trigger housing itself. So now, you're up to 6 feet away, between 5 and 6 feet
away from the trigger housing to discharge the firearm, which means that you'd have to employ a stick or some other type
of string or-- to have the gun discharge. NARRATOR: And there was no gunpowder residue
on Dillon's shirt, which would have been present if it had been a contact wound.
And there was no blood from the wound found on the shotgun barrel. Stu Bennett suspected homicide and shared
his feelings with Larry Dillon. It didn't surprise him. In fact, the family broke down and cried.
NARRATOR: And the Dillons, like others in the small town of Montrose, began to hear rumors
that Dr. Scher and Martin Dillon's wife, Pat, were having a sexual affair before Martin's death.
Pat Dillon had been a nurse at Montrose General Hospital, the same hospital where Dr. Scher practiced.
There were rumors going on by employees in the hospital of open caressing, that sort of thing going on.
NARRATOR: Maria Eftimiades described this clandestine relationship in her book, "Secrets
from the Grave." They just didn't seem to care. They didn't care if anyone knew, if anyone saw them.
When they were caught, they just sort of just went back to their work, and, you know,
it would just happen again. NARRATOR: Seasons passed, then years. And, in time, law enforcement agencies
moved on to other cases. But questions remained. What really happened at Gunsmoke that day in June of 1976?
For almost 20 years, those questions remained unanswered. Martin Dillon's parents never gave up
their fight to have their son's death reinvestigated. They were convinced that the autopsy was incomplete
and the manner of death incorrect. The state policeman who photographed the accident scene
agreed with the Dillons and was never convinced it was an accident. It's very frustrating when people don't want to listen
and you know something's wrong. And see, back then, the state police-- I mean I love the state police.
I was with them for 20 years, but they have-- back then, especially-- a philosophy
whereas if you have less time on the job than another man, you don't know anything, all right?
Senior men always ruled. NARRATOR: In 1991, 14 years after the accident, Frank Zanin
and others helped convince the state police to send the evidence to the FBI lab in Washington DC.
And they also sent the evidence to this man, Herbert MacDonnell an expert in blood spatter.
The first thing he analyzed were the boots Dr. Scher was wearing on the day of the accident.
Dr. Scher said he was 150 feet away from where Dillon tripped, fell, and accidentally shot himself in the chest.
But on Dr. Scher's boots McDonald discovered a very fine mist of blood, which she identified as high-velocity impact spatter.
High-velocity impact spatter results when something, such as a bullet or shotgun pellet, strikes
a source of blood, like a body. As a result, the energy breaks up blood into very small spots.
The little droplets are almost atomized or vaporized. NARRATOR: High velocity impact spatter was also
found on the side of the tree stump closest to Dillon's body and on the instep of Martin Dillon's left shoe.
This indicated that Dillon was squatting near the tree stump when he was shot, not running after a porcupine.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Isidore Mihalakis was also asked to look at the evidence.
He noticed another inconsistency in the photograph of Dillon's body. The legs of his trousers were pulled up, exposing his socks.
Indicating that somehow, he had been either in a seated or in a squatting position, otherwise,
why would the cuffs ride up? NARRATOR: Dr. Mihalakis also noticed what is called scalloping on the edges of the gunshot
wound, evidence that the shot pellets had started to spread as they traveled through the air
before striking the skin. Scalloping does not occur around a contact wound. Once the Dillons heard of this new information,
they filed a petition to exhume their son's body for a second autopsy. This time, Dr. Mihalakis performed the autopsy.
Dr. Mihalakis discovered that the direction of the wound track was in a downward direction,
at a 45-degree angle. The shot came from the right of Martin Dillon and went through Dillon's heart and left lung.
ISIDORE MIHALAKIS: The wound track is wrong. If the gun had dropped and then shot him
it would either have it perfectly backward or an upward wound track. Here, this was a sharply downward and very
angulated from right to left. NARRATOR: Authorities could no longer ignore the evidence,
and on June 26, 1995, Martin Dillon's death was formally declared a homicide. The next day, Dr. Stephen Scher and his wife,
Pat, returned to Pennsylvania to hold a news conference. Scher told reporters he was innocent and still maintained
that Dillon was chasing a porcupine and fell, accidentally shooting himself in the chest.
The last I saw Marty Dillon alive, life he was moving away from me up the end of this trail towards where we had just been.
And I just waited there for him to come back or to tell me to do something else.
I heard a click and a shotgun blast, and I think I yelled out, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, teasingly, and then nothing.
Steve is not capable of the things they've accused him of. I've known him and lived with him for 17 years.
He's not capable of this. REPORTER: Is it true that you two had an affair? Absolutely not.
Absolutely not. Claim that they've got a murder case. They've had 19 years to investigate it.
They've had investigators, all the state police, they've had their autopsy and everything else.
Their move next, and we challenge them. NARRATOR: The challenge was accepted. Dr. Stephen Scher was arrested and charged with the murder
of Martin Dillon. Two decades after his death, Martin Dillon would finally get his day in court.
21 years after the shooting death of Martin Dillon, Stephen Scher sat in a courtroom on trial
for the murder of his former friend. According to the prosecution, Martin Dillon
knew that Scher was having an affair with his wife and told him that day while skeet shooting that he had
talked it over with his wife, Pat, and that she agreed to end her affair with Scher.
Scher would not accept this. Scher was obsessed. And he said to himself, it's not gonna be this way.
It's not gonna be this way. I'm gonna get what I want one way or another, and you have to die.
[gun firing] Nice shot, man. Yeah, I've still got it. NARRATOR: While Martin Dillon was reloading the machine
with clay pigeons, Stephen Scher placed a special ammunition into his gun, moved to within 5 feet,
and fired a single shot into the center of his chest. The shot entered Dillon's chest at a 45 degree
downward angle directly into his heart. The blast caused high-velocity impact spatter
to land on Scher's boots and onto the side of the tree stump nearest to Dillon's body.
Scher then removed Dillon's ear protectors and sunglasses and untied his shoelace, making it appear
that Dillon tripped and fell. Scher then invented the story about Dillon running
after a porcupine with his gun. Right here. NARRATOR: When Scher returned to the scene with the neighbor,
he picked up the gun and smashed it against a tree in a public display of grief.
In court, when Dr. Scher learned of the forensic evidence against him, he changed his 21-year-old story.
He finally admitted that he had been having an affair with Dillon's wife, Pat, at the time of the accident.
He also admitted fabricating the porcupine story. But he still claimed Martin Dillon's
death had been an accident. Scher said he and Martin argued over the affair. There was a scuffle, and the gun went off accidentally.
Scher said he didn't think anyone would believe him, so he staged the accident scene and made
up a story about the porcupine. But prosecutors didn't believe this new version either.
The only reason he put himself in proximity to the deceased at the time was because of the overwhelming evidence
we had of the blood spatter on his boots. NARRATOR: The angle and direction of the wound track,
the hiked up trousers with the sock showing, and the size and location of the blood spatter
all pointed to only one conclusion, that Martin Dillon, while kneeling near the tree
stump from approximately 5 feet away, was murdered by Stephen Scher. The motive, Stephen Scher wanted Pat Dillon all to himself.
He had essentially been dumped. Pat Dillon said, no, I'm-- I'm staying with my husband.
I'm not leaving him. I'm not divorcing him. NARRATOR: Martin Dillon's children, whom Dr. Scher had
raised since they were small, stood solidly behind their stepfather during the trial,
even contributing a part of their father's life insurance proceeds for his defense.
But the forensic evidence was too great. The jury convicted Dr. Stephen Scher of first degree murder
and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. ISIDORE MIHALAKIS: It's a case in which originally somebody
took somebody's word and believed it and did not look any further, and there was no no in-depth investigation
done at that particular time. The Dillons had some peace of mind is what, really, I wanted
to see, was the Dillons relieved of the burden that had been hanging on their shoulders for all those years,
and I was happy for them. NARRATOR: The verdict was a long fought victory for the parents
of Martin Dillon. REPORTER: Larry, what kind of thoughts went through your mind when the first degree verdict came back?
Were you thinking of Marty? Yes. REPORTER: What thoughts were going through your mind?
Well, I really did it for him. REPORTER: Did you ever think this day would come?
I've been praying for it. NARRATOR: After Dr. Scher spent 20 months in prison, the Pennsylvania superior court overturned his conviction.
A judge said the state's 20-year pre-arrest delay caused substantial prejudice to his right to a fair trial.
In 2002, that decision was overturned. Dr. Scher was retried in March of 2008. A jury deliberated just two hours before finding
him guilty yet again. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars. [music playing]

Stephen Scher and Martin Dillon went skeet shooting on a beautiful Spring day. Martin was shot dead but his friend maintained it was a freak accident. It took more than 20 years for the truth to surface.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode details the murder of Martin Dillon and the conviction of Dr. Stephen Scher after years of investigation and forensic evidence.

Key points

A Summer Tragedy. Two friends go skeet shooting, but only one returns home, leading to a mystery.
Suspicion and Doubt. Larry Dillon questions the circumstances of his son's death, believing it was murder.
The Verdict. After years of fighting for justice, the jury convicts Dr. Scher of murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Only one returned home.

A tragic twist in a summer outing.

0:17WatchJun 24, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.