True Crime Brewery · Tiegrabber Podcasts

The Doctor, the Wife, & the Set-Up

·1 hr 52 min

The story begins quietly. On a dirt road in Brackney, Pennsylvania, two best friends go skeet shooting in the woods, and one of them, Marty Dillon, never comes home. The first account sounds like an accident. Marty is a respected attorney, a husband, and a father, while Dr. Stephen Scher tells authorities that Marty tripped after chasing a porcupine and his gun went off. The lie holds. The episode follows how that explanation lasts for years and how the truth stays buried while friendship, marriage, and public respectability keep propping it up. The affair does not stay hidden for long. By the spring of 1975, Scher and Pat Dillon are in the middle of a full-blown relationship, and they tell their spouses they are headed to an allergy conference in Canada. Ann Scher sees the strain right away. She begs her husband not to go, and later she finds a vial of yellow Nembutal capsules in the bathroom and fears he has left them there hoping she will use them on herself. That moment lands hard. The episode keeps moving through the family's travel and social life, from Toronto relatives to a resort in Wyoming, where the two couples are supposed to be attending another seminar while the affair keeps spilling into view. The tension keeps building. When Ann finally asks Scher whether he is in love with Pat, he dodges the question at first, but the answer becomes impossible to miss as Marty and Ann keep catching pieces of the truth. Marty sees enough to want out. At a pool in Wyoming, he notices Scher massaging Pat's legs, and the quiet shock of that scene becomes one more sign that the marriage and the friendship are already wrecked. The betrayal runs deeper. The story also shows how the killer later marries the widow and raises her children as his own, which makes the long concealment feel even more twisted. Jill and Dick keep it conversational. What they leave behind is a patient, grim retelling of obsession, manipulation, and a murder that sat in plain sight for decades.

As heard by us

A grim Pennsylvania case where an accidental shooting gives way to affair, marriage, and murder.

True Crime Brewery follows a grim Pennsylvania case with a calm, orderly hand. It opens with the accident explanation, then carefully traces how that account gives way to affair, marriage, and manipulation.

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Why you'd press play

A murder that was ruled an accident, then slowly unraveled into something far darker.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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