Corry man guilty in brutal killing of pregnant Amish woman, jury says

Yahoo

13-06-2025

After deliberating for just over three hours on Thursday, a jury of 12 Crawford County residents found Shawn A. Cranston guilty in the murder of 23-year-old Rebekah Byler of Spartansburg and her unborn child during a burglary on Feb. 26, 2024.
When he encountered Byler inside her residence in a rural area south of Spartansburg just after 10 a.m., Cranston brutally stabbed her, inflicting nine knife wounds to her neck, then shot her in the lower left forehead, according to testimony and evidence presented at the four-day trial. He then left her on the floor of her home as her 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son remained nearby. Byler's female fetus, which was approximately 21 to 25 weeks along, died about four to six minutes later.
'It is hard to fathom conduct more heinous than brutally killing a young expectant mother and her unborn child in her home,' Attorney General Dave Sunday said. 'Our homes are supposed to be our safe haven — this defendant violated the sanctity of home to commit these truly evil acts.'
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General took over the case from the short-staffed Crawford County District Attorney's office last fall due to its additional resources.
The verdict came after prosecutors piled on evidence, calling 19 witnesses and showing jurors more than 120 supporting exhibits. Among the evidence were shoeprints and tire impressions consistent with shoes and tires used by Cranston; GPS logs, cellphone data and security camera videos offering extensive details of his activities on the day of the murder; testimony from another jail inmate who said Cranston confessed to the crime; and a small piece from a synthetic rubber glove bearing Cranston's DNA that was found in Byler's kitchen trash can.
In the end, the sheer quantity of evidence pointing to Cranston's presence in the home, his alleged history of similar burglaries at Amish homes and his apparent attempts to cover up what he had done far outweighed any doubts raised by the complete absence of the gun used in the attack, the lack of a definitive identification of the knife used to stab Byler, and the fact that there was no evidence of Byler's blood being discovered on Cranston's shoes or other items of his found by police.
In a closing argument that lasted approximately 45 minutes and was accompanied by a slideshow presentation, Assistant Chief Deputy Attorney General Evan Lowry led jurors through a systematic review of nearly three full days of testimony. Moments after defense attorney Louis Emmi had tried to question the significance of the glove scrap and the methods used to collect DNA from it, Lowry highlighted the item.
Putting on rubber gloves of his own, Lowry held up to the jurors the black material covered with what witnesses described as a fish-scale pattern.
'This puts that man at the crime scene,' he said, his intensity and volume increasing. 'This puts that man inside Rebekah Byler's home.'
Describing Cranston as 'cold beyond cold,' Lowry reminded jurors of the savage nature of the attack that killed Byler and said that Cranston could simply have turned around and left upon encountering Byler in a house he expected to be empty.
'Think about how cold this is,' he told the jury. 'We have a word for this — cold as cold can be — people who can do this in front of two children and then go to a gas station' as though nothing had happened.
After repeatedly pointing to Cranston as he reviewed the evidence, Lowry revealed the word he had in mind as he finished his presentation with his arms extended wide to each side like a concert conductor marshaling the force of all the players in front of him.
'It becomes clear that the defendant is a murderer,' he concluded, 'and we would ask you to find him guilty of all charges.'
Through much of Lowry's closing statement, Andy Byler, the husband who found his wife, Rebekah, upon returning home shortly after noon on the day she was killed, leaned forward on a bench in the courtroom behind the jury, nearly doubling over as he held his head in his hands.
Lowry's methodical march through the state's witnesses came after Emmi rested the defense's case without calling any witnesses or offering any evidence. In a 23-minute closing argument that immediately preceded Lowry's presentation, Emmi led jurors on a meandering journey through reasons to be skeptical of certain evidence and possible alternative explanations to the interpretations of events offered by the prosecution.
Acknowledging that it was a 'hard question,' Emmi directly addressed the question he assumed jurors must be asking themselves: 'Why is that glove there?'
After questioning the methods used to collect the DNA and drawing attention to the presence of a small amount of DNA from an unknown person that was on the glove scrap along with Cranston's DNA, Emmi raised another question about the glove.
'There's something interesting about that glove and no one talked about it, not even me,' he said. 'Why, if it's such a horrific, violent scene, is there nothing of Rebekah Byler's on it?'
Apologizing with a brief look to the nearly 40 spectators who filled the courtroom, many of them Amish, Emmi remained focused on the bloody nature of the crime scene and contrasted it with the piece of synthetic rubber glove found in the trash can.
'But again, no blood,' he said of the scrap. 'Why not? Why isn't there blood on that glove? Why isn't there blood on those sneakers?'
He later returned to the sneakers as well. If Cranston, a Corry resident, was driving around the rural areas surrounding the city for hours disposing of evidence, as the prosecution suggested, why wouldn't he also dispose of sneakers that might have blood on them? And if Cranston did indeed wear the sneakers when he killed Byler, why didn't the sneakers have blood on them?
Having raised various questions without offering an explanation for why a piece of glove with Cranston's DNA on it was in the Bylers' kitchen, Emmi reminded jurors, 'It's not my job to prove anything, not my client's job.'
Even the extensive security video that the state compiled of Cranston on the day of the murder should raise questions, Emmi argued to the jury, pointing to video of Cranston at a Country Fair convenience store in Corry later that day. The supposed perpetrator of 'this heinous murder' appears in the video with 'no blood on his clothes,' Emmi said, and appears 'very calm' as though he is on 'a walk in the park.'
Emmi made a similar attempt to appeal to the jury's skepticism in recalling Joseph Burch, the witness who told the jury Cranston described the killing to him when both were imprisoned in Crawford County jail.
'Is it logical that he's going to go into a jail and tell a person he doesn't know, 'I did all these things?'' the defense attorney asked.
But where Emmi spent most of his effort raising questions, Lowry encouraged the jury of seven women and five men to use their common sense in addressing any skepticism they might experience.
'His DNA was at the residence because the defendant was at the residence,' he said, later adding in a voice that steadily rose in intensity, 'We have an abundance of evidence that all points and all fits that he killed Rebekah Byler.'
In the end, there seemed to be little skepticism on the part of jury members. Just two hours and 20 minutes after beginning their deliberations — a period that included the designation of a foreman and a working lunch — jury members emerged with several questions regarding the difference between first and second degree charges of murder of an unborn child.
'Does the perpetrator (alleged) have to know she was pregnant to get charged for murder in the first degree in fetal case?' Judge Francis Schultz said, reading one of the questions.
The attention to the distinction suggested the jury had already arrived at a guilty verdict on the murder of unborn child charge and was merely trying to settle on the particular grading of the charge.
Less than 45 minutes later, the jury was back in the courtroom with its verdict. At 2:37 p.m., the foreman announced that Cranston was guilty of a first-degree felony in the murder of Rebekah Byler and a second-degree felony in the murder of Byler's fetus. He was also found guilty of burglary, a first-degree felony, and criminal trespass, a third-degree felony.
A sentencing hearing in the case will be held July 28 before Schultz.