fine condition except for marks in the back of the bed of the pickup truck. and the truck radio was tuned to a rock music station. melvin snyder never listened to rock music. melvin snyder was well-known in his small town. change partners. just a year earlier, melvin had an affair with a married woman, teresa harshman, who he knew from square dancing. melvin and teresa left their jobs and families behind, and fled to montana. melvin s wife joanne and teresa s husband ron took the opportunity to get better acquainted too. mr. harshman and mrs. snyder struck up a relationship and were intimate with one another.
no one was going to take his property. he became very vengeful, very angry. he was not the kind of person that was going to allow his wife to return home and try to rebuild their relationship. there was no forgive and forget. it was, i will get my revenge, and that s what he did. prosecutors say that the crime was premeditated. the evidence suggests that harshman drove to melvin s home, found him inside the barn and then shot and killed him with his new .25 caliber pistol. the .25 caliber round probably didn t exit melvin s body. prosecutors believe harshman drove home and returned later on his motorcycle.
did not hit him. nothing happened. no one was hurt. melvin didn t want to pursue the matter, and no charges were filed. melvin had expressed a great deal of embarrassment about the whole incident and i think he sort of felt it was, in part, his own fault that it happened. and this was one more interesting twist in the case. melvin and joanne snyder had come to terms with the affair, but the harshmans had not. melvin was trying very hard to make the marriage work. mr. and mrs. harshman on the other hand had a rockier road. although they did attempt to patch things up, eventually in the following spring they separated and teresa filed for divorce.
markings that were present on the primer. but again, it can vary from case to case. under a microscope, firearms examiners discovered this was precisely what happened. the impressions on the shell casing were still clear. and those impressions caused by the breech face were identical to the breech face impressions on the shell casing found in melvin snyder s barn. there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that these two discharged cartridge cases had originated from the same gun. why would he have shot his gun on mr. snyder s property? there was no reason for that except for the fact to kill him. based on the ballistic evidence, prosecutors charged ronald harshman with first-degree murder. melvin snyder disappeared on may 25th, exactly one year to the day from when melvin started the affair with teresa harshman. mr. harshman is the kind of man that no one was going to tell him what to do.
shell casing was discovered in melvin s barn on the day he disappeared. police searched harshman s home and found ammunition for a .25-caliber weapon, but no gun. i asked him where the gun was and he said, you will have to ask teresa. she is the one who took the gun, she liked it and she took it. so when we asked her, she said no, it s a lie, i don t even like guns. i don t know anything about the gun. during their investigation, police also learned that ron harshman and melvin snyder once had an unpleasant confrontation over the affair that melvin was having with ron s wife. he learned that mr. snyder was coming to his home to pick up his wife and he crashed his car into him. he had a gun with him at that point, shot at him.