A Blair County jury of six men and six women yesterday convicted a 21-year-old Ashville RD woman of first-degree murder.
The verdict ended a two-week court battle, which included five days of jury selection and another five days of testimony inside the walls of the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg.
The jury believed District Attorney Dave Gorman’s accounts of that fateful day in May of 2001 when Shari Lee Jackson, 20, of Hollidaysburg was viciously beaten to death at the hands of Seilhamer and co-defendant Kristin Marie Edmundson, 22.
According to testimony, the event centered around a relationship Jackson was allegedly having with Edmundson’s roommate. Gorman said Edmundson was jealous over Jackson’s motive and enlisted the help of Seilhamer to devise a plan to kill the woman and carry it out.
The murder occurred 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 burning 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 they 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 six times with a box cutter-style knife.
Gorman claimed the plan was to kill Jackson, dismember her body then bury 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 the jury that the pair had another girl along with them, but couldn’t identify her.
She said the trio left her 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.
The prosecution’s last witness, Dr. Sara Lee Funke, a forensic pathologist, testified the wounds that eventually killed Jackson came from a blow with a baseball bat. She testified that the slashing with the box cutter would have been enough to kill Jackson, but she was already near death when the slashing occurred.
Seilhamer’s defense attorney, Thomas Dickey of Altoona, claimed it was solely Edmundson who was responsible for the murder. He claimed his client didn’t know Edmundson was planning to kill Jackson and when it did happen, it sickened her.
Dickey’s most important witnesses to take the stand were 20-year-old Amanda Speicher of Boswell and forensic pathologist Paul J. Hoyer of Philadelphia.
Speicher testified that Edmundson phoned her the evening of May 6 and was upset and contemplating suicide. Speicher said her and her boyfriend, 23-year-old Scott Custer, also of Boswell, drove to comfort Edmundson, but when they arrived, she loaded a can of gasoline and a shovel into the vehicle and said she wanted to go for a ride.
Speicher said when they reached the scene, she noticed a body covered with twigs, branches, leaves and other debris. She said Edmundson told her she only beat up Jackson, but when Speicher attempted to get a pulse from the body under the debris, she couldn’t find one.
This, she said sickened her, and as she turned away, Edmundson and Custer set the body afire.
Speicher also to the jury that Edmundson said the blow from the baseball bat by Seilhamer only knocked Jackson unconscious. She said Edmundson told her that when Jackson woke up, she slashed her throat then used a shovel to bludgeon the young woman to death.
For the better part of five hours, Hoyer testified that Jackson’s death resulted from the blows of the shovel, refuting Funke’s testimony that a baseball bat caused the fatal wounds. He claimed the bone fragments found directly under the wound could only be explained with a blow from a shovel, not a baseball bat.
The weary-eyed jury began deliberations Thursday evening around 9 p.m. and continued until 2:30 a.m. Then, presiding Judge Jolene Kopriva dismissed the jury and told them to report to the courthouse at 9 a.m. yesterday to continue the deliberations.
Ninety minutes later, the guilty verdict was read aloud in the courtroom as a visibly upset Seilhamer reached for her defense attorney for comfort.
Following the reading of the guilty verdict, Gorman and Dickey began arguing the penalty phase of the proceedings. Seilhamer could face the death penalty. As of press time, no ruling had been made.
Edmundson saved herself from the rigors of a trial and the death penalty when she signed a plea agreement in January to first degree murder charges. She, nor Seilhamer, testified at the trial.
Speicher entered a no contest plea in January to hindering apprehension and was sentenced to serve two months’ incarceration. Custer also entered a guilty plea for his involvement in the crime and was ordered a “time served” sentence, which computed to about 15 months’ incarceration.
