Bucks County investigators 'disappointed but undaunted' after searching murderer's former home for clues in '93 disappearance

A steady rain beat down on two Bucks County investigators Tuesday as they scoured the ruins of a murderer's home for any sign of a man who hasn't been seen in 25 years.

Detectives from the county paid a visit to the former residence of Edward Fonder III, an 80-year-old who was reported missing from rural Springfield Township in 1993. Ultimately, after about 30 minutes of scanning the foundation of Fonder's recently demolished home with ground-penetrating radar, the detectives came up empty. At least for the time being.

"While this is, of course, superficially disappointing – you always want to hit pay dirt if there is pay dirt to be found – this is a process of elimination," Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said at the scene. "This is a very old case. We have a lot more ground to cover. This is a huge property."

Interest in the cold case was reignited this year after John Brunner, a longtime neighbor of the Fonder family, purchased its 12 acres of land and gave investigators full run of the property. The homestead had gained infamy even after Fonder's disappearance: His daughter, Mary Jane, was convicted in 2008 of the murder of a fellow churchgoer.

Weintraub said nothing "obvious" stood out to detectives Tuesday as they used the radar, on loan from the Middle Atlantic Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network in Newtown. The device, about the size of a lawnmower, was set to detect displacements in the packed earth a maximum of five feet below the surface.

After more carefully reviewing the data from the radar, Weintraub said the investigators may return with metal detectors and possibly heavy construction equipment to break apart the concrete slab that Fonder's house formerly sat upon.

"We're disappointed but undaunted," he said. "We'll keep going."

Weintraub praised Brunner, whom he called a "good Samaritan" who has provided unfettered access to the county investigators.

"Without a search warrant, without probable cause, we had no way of getting back on this property," Weintraub said. "This has been a mystery for 25 years, so it's great to revisit it while we can, to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.

"Hopefully we can keep striking until we find something, or settle this mystery one way or another," he added.

Brunner, in an interview last week, said he purchased the Fonder property through a lawyer to whom Fonder's children had granted power of attorney.

He took her up on the offer to buy it, he said, partially to increase his privacy along the road he's lived on since the 1970s, but also because he has his own questions about Fonder's fate.

"Someone out there is guilty, and they need to be held responsible," Brunner, 75, said. "Make no mistake, he was murdered. He didn't walk away, and he ain't missing. No one deserves that."

Officially, Fonder's disappearance is not considered a homicide. He was declared legally dead in 2000, under a Pennsylvania law that makes such rulings mandatory.

Still, neighbors say the retired machinist struggled to walk after two hip replacements and doubt he could have wandered too far from his home years ago.

Weintraub shares that belief, calling it "common sense," as he detailed the further resources his office plans to devote to the search on the property.

"I'm hoping at some point that we can either find Mr. Fonder or completely eliminate this property as the location of his death, one way or another," he said.

So far, he hasn't received any help from the last person to see Fonder alive: His daughter.

Mary Jane Fonder, now serving a life sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, has declined to speak with investigators about her father's disappearance in light of the renewed search of her former home, Weintraub said.

In 2008, Fonder murdered Rhonda Smith in the false belief she had been having an affair with a Lutheran preacher with whom Fonder was infatuated.