Some stories seem engineered to rattle even the most jaded archivist of oddities. The emerging details of a pastor’s murder in Arizona — and the suspect’s matter-of-fact confession — slot uneasily into that rarified category, buffeting the senses with just enough ritual, logic, and unfiltered strangeness to make one wonder if the entire thing was unearthed from a misplaced case file.

A Plot Charted in Blood and Geography

Adam Christopher Sheafe, 51, confessed in a series of jailhouse interviews to not only killing 76-year-old Pastor William Schonemann, but doing so in a haunting performance of crucifixion, according to AZFamily. Sheafe described arriving at Schonemann’s New River home in the pre-dawn hours, executing him, and then nailing the pastor’s hands to the wall. He capped off the tableau by pressing a handmade crown of thorns onto Schonemann’s head — with thorns, he casually pointed out to journalists, that he’d gathered from the desert himself.

It wasn’t a random violent act, at least by Sheafe’s account. During his interview with True Crime Arizona’s Briana Whitney, which AZFamily detailed, Sheafe calmly reported that this was the opening act in what he styled “Operation First Commandment.” This plan, he claimed, involved the crucifixions of 14 religious leaders across ten states, a journey looping from Arizona back again, as if he were striving not only for impact, but for symmetry as well: “Starting in Arizona, where I was born,” Sheafe told Whitney. “Where it starts is where it ends, like the Garden of Eden.”

He listed his intended stops with a kind of grim itinerary: Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle, Billings, Detroit, New York, Charlotte, Mobile, Beaumont, El Paso — and several Arizona cities. Sheafe told The Independent’s Andrea Cavallier that he attempted to kill a Phoenix priest after Easter services, abandoning the plan when two women unexpectedly entered the priest’s garage — a moment that, if nothing else, serves as a bizarre hinge: the fluke interruption that sent him toward Pastor Schonemann instead.

Motive, Rationale, and Grim Consistency

Sheafe’s explanations for his actions draw lines few will want to follow. As outlined in The Independent’s coverage, Sheafe insisted he wasn’t motivated by hatred of Christians or any past trauma. Instead, his goal, delivered with the certainty of a man reciting a shopping list, was “to punish religious leaders who, in his view, were misleading followers.” He zeroed in specifically on those “preaching that Jesus is God, essentially, the Trinity, a concept created by man,” a position that feels straight out of a particularly fractious theological message board.

Reporters from the New York Post noted Sheafe’s insistence: “I don’t hate Christians. I’m after the pastors that are leading them astray.” Asked if he’d ever been mistreated by clergy, his answer was simply, “No,” and he characterized his childhood as positive. As for remorse, Sheafe told both Whitney and Fox 10 News, in language matched across outlets, that he felt “nothing” and had no regrets — though, in a surreal twist, he did express a kind of conditional sorrow: “I will apologize to them [Schonemann’s family] in that aspect. I’m sorry that they got caught in the crossfire. Will I apologize for my actions? Absolutely not.”

When pressed by Whitney on how he could justify such acts while preaching about God’s forgiveness, Sheafe responded: “Absolutely he will forgive my sins. He is a forgiving God and loving God.” He draped his rationale in scriptural reference, stating, “It’s a commandment to rid Israel of evil,” per both AZFamily and The Independent, squaring the circle in a fashion that might perplex even the most ambitious theologian.

Chilling Details and Surreal Calm

The specifics of the crime, as authorities and Sheafe himself described them, hardly dull with repetition. Footage and interview transcripts reviewed by AZFamily show Sheafe calmly recounting, “I drove from there (Phoenix) to Bill’s house… and I executed him.” The Independent highlights that Schonemann was found during a welfare check, hands nailed to the wall beside his bed, a crown of thorns on his head — a gory reimagining of the iconography that would, in another context, be reserved for devotional paintings.

Asked by Whitney what he would think if someone crucified him, Sheafe’s reply was starkly deadpan: “Good luck trying.” Even the prospect of the death penalty left him unshaken. “I want the death penalty because I want to show that you can’t kill God’s son. The whole story is B.S.,” he reportedly stated, echoing sentiments documented by both AZFamily and The Independent. For Sheafe, it’s as much performance as prosecution, a “show on the road” with cosmic stakes only he perceives.

The logistical aftermath mirrors the chaos of Sheafe’s plans. After Schonemann’s killing, Sheafe told The Independent he traveled to Sedona to continue his spree, before authorities intercepted him — initially on charges connected to burglary and a car chase rather than murder. He currently remains in Coconino County Jail, pending extradition to Maricopa County for charges related to Schonemann’s death, as confirmed in coverage by both the New York Post and The Independent.

Family and Community Concerns

The whirl of attention and the suspect’s willingness to detail his crimes have created fresh distress for Schonemann’s family. As the New York Post documents, the family released a statement expressing deep concern about Sheafe’s “increasing notoriety and possibly gaining a following,” criticizing the decision to provide him a public platform from jail. They noted, “What we have seen over the last week is this suspect enjoying the attention. His side of the story is half of the whole story, and we see the need to cover it however challenging that may be for us.” The family’s sense of unease only compounds the horror — not just of the crime, but of its public stagecraft.

Law enforcement, too, appears to be navigating the complexities of a case both “tragic and bizarre,” as Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan succinctly described during a press conference, according to the New York Post. The web of pending charges, two-county coordination, and a suspect far from reticent keeps this tragic episode firmly in the public eye.

Where Does This Fit in the Canon of Strange?

With a suspect who regards his murder confession as a kind of sermon, and a plan that rides the rails between disturbed logic and ritualistic spectacle, one wonders: How do you even file a tale like this? Is it simply another grim footnote in the annals of American crime, or something stranger — a contemporary myth-in-the-making, shaped almost as much by media transfixion as by the acts themselves?

Is there a lesson hiding in the margins, or is this just a vivid illustration of belief’s power to leap the tracks? If the aim was terror, the rationale remained as cryptic as the symbols he borrowed. If the motive was “correction,” as Sheafe insisted to both AZFamily and The Independent, the outcome is only senseless loss and a community left with questions that echo long after the press conferences fade.

Do incidents like this say more about the isolating pull of conviction, or the sometimes absurd ways in which tragedy and performance entwine? There’s a peculiar humor, albeit the darkest kind, in the notion of a would-be executioner hoping for a quick death to make a metaphysical point.

For archivists of the extraordinary — and those compelled by the intersection of the strange, tragic, and inexplicable — it’s a reminder that the boundaries between the weird and the horrific are, perhaps, always a little thinner than we like to imagine.