The accused killer’s demand for a fast death sentence has not brought quick closure in the case surrounding the 2025 death of William “Bill” Schonemann.
NEW RIVER, Ariz. — Nearly a year after the killing of Pastor William “Bill” Schonemann shook this desert community, the murder case remains unfinished, even after the man charged in the death stood in court and urged a judge to move him faster toward execution.
For residents here, the story is not only about the defendant’s words in a Phoenix courtroom. It is also about the long aftershock left by the death of a 76-year-old pastor many knew by sight, by first name and by habit. Schonemann led New River Bible Chapel and was remembered as a steady figure in a place where routine matters. His killing turned a familiar landscape of homes, dirt roads and church life into the backdrop for one of Arizona’s most disturbing homicide cases. The court fight now determines not just punishment, but how long that uncertainty will continue.
The shock began on April 28, 2025, when two members of Schonemann’s congregation went to his home on Calvary Road to check on him and found him dead. Deputies arrived that evening and soon said the scene suggested foul play. Later accounts from prosecutors described a body positioned with arms outstretched, similar to a crucifixion. The details spread quickly across New River, where many people knew the victim simply as Pastor Bill. Friends and relatives described him as someone who made people feel seen. Reports from the weeks after his death painted him as a pastor, hobbyist and community regular whose life reached beyond the church, from car culture to daily conversations with neighbors.
That image of ordinary community life is part of what made the crime land so hard. Accounts from people who knew Schonemann described New River as a place where residents often felt secure enough to leave doors unlocked. His death cut into that sense of ease. What had first looked like a local tragedy soon widened into a case with startling allegations. Prosecutors later said the killing was part of a broader plan by Adam Sheafe to target 14 Christian leaders around the country. Authorities also connected the pastor’s death to a run of other alleged crimes in Cave Creek and Sedona involving burglary, a stolen pickup truck and evidence recovered from a backpack and the vehicle. The local grief was suddenly tied to a much larger and darker narrative.
When Sheafe returned to court on March 12, 2026, he tried to redirect the story toward speed. Representing himself with advisory counsel, he first sought a no-contest plea and then said he wanted to plead guilty to all counts. He argued there was no reason to delay because he had already confessed and because, in his telling, the aggravating factors were obvious. He said the crime was intended to be heinous and urged the court to sentence him to death. But the judge did not grant the immediate outcome he wanted. Instead, she kept the case moving under the normal rules and set another hearing for April 24, a sign that even a defendant asking for the harshest penalty cannot bypass the steps of a capital case.
Those steps have become central because the case is no longer only about what happened in one home on one night. A grand jury in July 2025 indicted Sheafe on multiple charges, including first-degree murder, three counts of attempted first-degree murder, burglary, kidnapping, theft of means of transportation and criminal trespass. In October, prosecutors formally noticed their intent to seek the death penalty. That filing made the case heavier, slower and more exacting. Questions of voluntariness, competency, aggravation and sentencing procedure now matter as much as the defendant’s insistence that he is ready to die. The law requires a record that can withstand scrutiny, especially where execution is on the table.
Meanwhile, the community is left in the space between memory and process. Schonemann’s congregation and those close to him have spent months honoring the life he built while waiting for a legal system that does not move at the speed of grief. The defendant’s remarks about closure may have been meant to sound final, but for New River they were another reminder that finality has not arrived. The next hearing may answer procedural questions, yet the larger wound remains the same: Pastor Bill is gone, and the town that knew him is still measuring what that loss changed.
The case now heads toward its April 24 hearing with the capital notice still in place, the charges unchanged and no immediate end in sight. For New River, the next court date is less a conclusion than another point on a calendar that has stretched far beyond the night residents first learned their pastor had been killed.
Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.