On a cool summer day 21 years ago, the man Dr. Stephen Scher is accused of murdering finally asked the question to which all of Montrose, Pa., seemed to already know the answer.
Are you having an affair with my wife?
“He was looking me right in the eye,” Scher testified Monday. “What could I do? I said yes.”
Scher then told the jury that he had lied for years — that Martin Dillon had not stumbled while chasing a porcupine and accidentally shot himself, as he had told authorities.
In truth, the two men had started arguing, Dillon grabbed a shotgun, they struggled and the gun fired, Scher said, testifying in his defense.
“I wasn’t looking him in the eye at the time, then I heard a scream or a yell, and I saw he had the 16-gauge in his hand,” Scher said. “I knew I had to get that gun away from him. There was a struggle and the gun went off.”
It was a stunning admission in a case familiar to many in Montrose. Prosecutors have said Scher’s interest in Patricia Dillon, the victim’s wife, was obvious to everyone from the paper boy to her hospital co-workers.
Scher is charged with first- and third-degree murder. By testifying that he struggled with Dillon, he raised the issue of self-defense, which could be key in avoiding a first-degree murder conviction.
He said he lied to protect Dillon’s widow, whom Scher married two years later, and the dead man’s two children, whom Scher raised.
“Because of the pain. . . . The pain Pat and the children would have had because of what happened,” Scher said.
