CHAPTER 8

For a few years after his son’s death, Larry Dillon stopped into the office of Marty’s former partner, Bob Dean, practically every week, begging Dean to encourage the Pennsylvania state police to investigate the shooting. Dean, a revered attorney in Susquehanna County, was active in local politics. His support could make a difference.

But Bob Dean was adamant. Not only was he convinced that Dr. Scher was incapable of murder, Dean had yet another theory on how Marty Dillon died—he thought the young man had killed himself. With all the talk of marital strife and with Marty changing his life insurance, it made sense to Bob Dean. The attorney had an answer for the argument that Marty couldn’t have reached the trigger—he decided his former officemate rigged the gun somehow. Dean also maintained that John Conarton had done the family a favor by ruling the death accidental so that Michael and Suzanne could collect the insurance money.

Larry Dillon never swayed from his certainty that something else had happened at Gunsmoke. From the start, he found staunch allies in Jock Collier and Bonnie Mead. The detective and the secretary felt as strongly as he did that Stephen Scher had killed Marty. Jock, especially, battled enormous frustration in not being able to convince the DA and the state police to examine the case. It exasperated the detective that it wasn’t within his jurisdiction to investigate further. Indeed, the Pennsylvania state police made it clear: The death had been ruled accidental; there was nothing to discuss.

Throughout the summer following Marty’s death, Scher had kept a low profile in town, trying to steer clear of Collier. The detective continued to call him, repeatedly asking him to return for further questioning. For a few weeks, Scher stalled, making tentative appointments, then canceling. Then, on advice of his lawyer, he said he would not speak anymore about that day at Gunsmoke.

Jock kept the pressure on. Every month, just to unnerve the doctor, he’d show up at the clinic and request Scher take his blood pressure. On more than one occasion, when the two passed each other in town, the detective called the doctor a murderer.

Jock was disturbed when Scher moved to New Mexico, and he phoned the local and state police in Las Cruces to let them know that the doctor was suspected of a homicide. Later, when Collier learned that Scher and Pat Dillon had married, he wasn’t at all surprised.

Several times a year, Jock and Larry met for hours in Jock’s cramped office, discussing the facts gathered from the scene, reviewing Scher’s statement, searching for a way to bring attention to the discrepancies. Chain smoking Camels, Jock Collier promised Larry Dillon that one day he’d get the case looked at.

He told Bonnie Mead the same thing. Most mornings he’d see the young secretary when he picked up his coffee and doughnuts at the shop next to Bob Dean’s office.

“Bonnie, I’m fighting an army,” Collier often told her quietly.

Jock was born Willard Collier in the town of Oakland in the northwest tip of Susquehanna County, about twenty-five miles from Montrose. He grew up extremely poor and attended school only through eighth grade. In 1942, just before he was sent to the Pacific to serve in the military police in World War II, he married Alice Fisher, the mother of an eight-year-old boy, Kenny. When he returned in 1945, the threesome moved to the town of Susquehanna, a few miles west of Oakland.

Tall and muscular, his hair prematurely graying, Jock began working in a junkyard, pressing and loading scrap metal, but within a few months the Susquehanna chief of police position came open, and Collier got the job. The town board paid him just $5,600 a year, the same salary he’d receive for the next two decades. But money never mattered to Jock—all he’d ever wanted was to be in law enforcement.

For twenty-five years the taciturn Jock Collier kept the peace in the hardscrabble railroad town. He hauled drunks out of the Susquehanna movie theater, wordlessly lifting them by the seat of their pants with one hand. He apprehended thieves and wife beaters alone, with no backup. On several occasions he ran gangs of gun-toting gamblers out of the county. At home or behind the wheel of his car, he’d squeeze a rubber ball for hours, strengthening his hands.

At the same time, Jock had a gentle side and was beloved by the community. He’d give kids rides in his police car, collect food and toys for poor families at Christmas, and help those he’d sent to jail put their lives together after they were released.

Jock Collier was an ambitious man. He read voraciously, studying history, wars, and anything related to law enforcement. He befriended doctors and learned about medicine. He knew as much about law as most attorneys. In the 1950s he became interested in photography and started taking pictures of crime scenes, developing them in a closet at home. At one time, he took an FBI correspondence course and scored so highly he was invited to attend the academy. He badly wanted to go, but the county couldn’t afford to pay his salary while he was away, and by then, he and Alice had a son, Glenn. With a wife and two children to support, Jock turned down the offer. As it was, the family barely scraped by on Jock’s pay. Most weekends he’d take his stepson Kenny and collect scrap metal to earn extra cash.

In 1960, he took a part-time job as Susquehanna County detective, based out of Montrose. It was in town a decade later that Jock Collier first met Marty Dillon, fresh out of law school and working for Bob Dean.

So impressed was Collier that he occasionally mentioned the young attorney to Kenny and his wife, Erika. The couple remembered the name. It wasn’t often that Jock spoke so highly of someone.

“This kid is sharp,” he told them. “He’s not just a regular attorney. He’s going to make it big.”

After Dillon’s death, Jock discussed his doubts about the accident with his stepson. He talked about the doctor’s gun, the high brass shot, the angle and size of the wound, and all the inconsistencies in Scher’s statement to Trooper Hairston and to him.

“Too many things don’t match up,” Jock told Kenny. “I know he did it.”

Ken Fisher couldn’t recall his stepfather ever being wrong. He knew that unless Jock was certain, he wouldn’t say anything. And Jock, he knew, was a master at reading people.

Less than a year after Marty’s death, Jock’s assistant chief of police, Dick Pelicci, was elected Susquehanna County Sheriff, and Jock resigned as chief of police and took over the county detective position full time. Kenny took Jock’s old job as Susquehanna Chief of Police.

Now that he was in Montrose even more, Jock brooded over the Dillon case. Around the holidays, especially, Jock became melancholy, talking even less than he normally did. Often he’d stop by the Fishers’ house and sit silently at the kitchen table for hours, watching his grandchildren play.

His daughter-in-law, Erika, would bring him coffee and try to get him to open up. Sometimes after a week or so of daily visits, barely speaking a few words, he’d mention Marty Dillon, or Stephen Scher, and suddenly the Fishers understood.

Oh, God, that’s what’s the matter, Erika Fisher would think.

He reacted the same way in the days following his meetings with Larry Dillon. Yet in his heart, Jock Collier trusted that the day would come when Stephen Scher would be prosecuted for murder. And just in case the doctor thought he’d been forgotten, the detective kept in touch.

Every December, Jock Collier bought a simple Christmas card and addressed the envelope to Dr. Stephen Scher at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Inside, the detective penned a simple message, always the same.

Thinking of you.

Jock Collier