Trooper’s testimony: ’76 shooting scene staged

Trooper’s testimony: ’76 shooting scene staged

The defendant is charged with killing his best friend while they were skeet shooting in 1976.

MONTROSE, Pa. (AP) — A state police trooper who responded to the fatal shooting of a lawyer more than 30 years ago said he believed the scene had been staged to make it look like an accident.

Trooper Frank Zanin’s 1997 testimony was read Wednesday in Susquehanna County Court, where Dr. Stephen Scher is being retried for the murder of Martin Dillon.

Zanin has since died, but he testified at Scher’s 1997 murder trial that he disagreed with a coroner’s initial ruling that the shooting was accidental. He noted that Dillon’s body had been moved, and that his headphones and sunglasses had been removed. Zanin said the evidence did not support Scher’s story that Dillon tripped while chasing a porcupine and accidentally shot himself.

Scher, now 67, is charged with killing Dillon, his best friend, while the two were skeet shooting at the Dillon family’s hunting camp in rural northeastern Pennsylvania on June 2, 1976.

Scher was convicted in 1997 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. An appeals court ordered a new trial in 2004.

Prosecutors say Scher killed Dillon so he could marry Dillon’s wife. Witnesses have testified that Scher and Patricia Dillon had been having an extramarital affair before her husband’s slaying.

Andrew Russin, now 96, a neighbor of the hunting camp where Dillon was killed, testified Wednesday that Scher came to his house after the shooting, his hands and face covered in blood.

Russin said he followed Scher back to Dillon’s body, where Scher picked up the shotgun that killed Dillon and smashed it against a tree, yelling, “This gun will never hurt anyone again.”

Scher claimed for more than 20 years that Martin Dillon accidentally shot himself. He changed his story at the 1997 trial. Since then, he has maintained that Dillon confronted him about his affair with Patricia Dillon, and was shot accidentally as the pair struggled over a shotgun.