<\/p>\n
The suspect in the crucifixion-style murder of a beloved Arizona pastor is asking the court to put him to death.<\/p>\n
As CBN News reported last year, 76-year-old Pastor William “Bill” Schonemann was found dead in his New River, AZ home in late April in a scene that was described as unsettling after the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office responded to a 911 call.<\/p>\n
The suspect, Adam Sheafe, has confessed in court to killing Pastor Schonemann, entering a “no contest” plea and asking for the death penalty to be given to him.<\/p>\n
Sheafe is accused of killing and mutilating the elderly pastor, placing a crown of thorns on his head after positioning his body with his arms outstretched, similar to a crucifixion.<\/p>\n
In court, the accused said, “It’s an undisputable fact that the victim, Pastor Bill Schonemann, was over 70 years old. It’s an undisputable fact that the crime was heinous in nature. I intended it to be heinous. … That’s why I’m saying, why do we have to drag this on and on and on? Why can’t we just go to sentencing? I’m not contesting anything.”<\/p>\n
Sheafe said last week he wants to speed up the process to put an end to the whole case. But he told AZ Family in a jailhouse interview, “If my father puts me in an authoritative position on this earth, I will execute every single priest and burn every church to the ground… I want the death penalty because I want to show that you can’t kill God’s son.”<\/p>\n
The suspect’s father, Chris Sheafe, told AZ Family last year his son had an extensive criminal background, but recently had become obsessed with the Old Testament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office reports that Pastor Schonemann’s death was part of a larger plot by Sheafe to kill 14 Christian leaders around the country. He reportedly decided to start the killing spree in Arizona where he was baptized as a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sheafe reportedly told officials at his arrest that he intended to kill the pastors for “breaking the first commandment” by declaring that Jesus is God.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sheafe has already been indicted by a grand jury on six felony charges, including first-degree murder, related to Schonemann’s murder. \u00a0He was caught in Sedona, where authorities say he was planning to kill a second pastor.<\/p>\n
His next hearing is April 24.<\/p>\n
***Please sign up for\u00a0CBN Newsletters\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to receive\u00a0the latest news from a Christian perspective.***<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The suspect in the crucifixion-style murder of a beloved Arizona pastor is asking the court to put him to death. As CBN News reported last year, 76-year-old Pastor William “Bill” Schonemann was found dead in his New River, AZ home in late April in a scene that was described as unsettling after the Maricopa County<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3331,6643,1737,238,753,983,1738,6190,3416,2832],"class_list":{"0":"post-22738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jesus","8":"tag-asks","9":"tag-crucifixion","10":"tag-death","11":"tag-gods","12":"tag-hes","13":"tag-pastor","14":"tag-penalty","15":"tag-prove","16":"tag-son","17":"tag-suspect"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}