Shawn Cranston, Corry, Pennsylvania man charged with murder of Rebekah Byler, pregnant Amish woman who according to the suspect’s daughter may have been killed in a case of mistaken identity.
A murder case, the result of mistaken identity? Pennsylvania authorities have arrested a 52 year old man in the murder of a 23 year old Amish woman, Rebekah A. Byler who was 6 months pregnant when she was found deceased at her home last week.
Shawn Cranston of Corry upon his arraignment early Saturday morning faced multiple charges, including criminal homicide, criminal homicide of an unborn child, burglary and criminal trespass.
Cranston, 52, according to reports was arrested late Friday night without incident in the parking lot of a Dollar General store next to his home in Corry, PA. He remained held without bond at the Crawford County Jail.
@qas_movie Rebekah Byler Amish Women found Mur ered in her home #fyp #RichardRamirez #NightStalker #SerialKiller #TrueCrime #breakingnews #news #details #revealed #update ♬ original sound – News_story
Small tight knit community shunning outside world shocked
On Feb. 26, police responded to a home in Sparta Township, where they found Byler dead. Byler was shot in her head and had her throat slashed inside her home on Monday, February 26, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Bylers’ two and three year-old children were inside the home at the time of their mother’s gruesome death. Notice of the killing came when the pregnant woman’s husband and the father of the two children returned home later that day.
The double homicide took place inside a remote house, set on a long dirt road that cars rarely drive, where one is more apt to see horse and buggy, in a community still living reminiscent of a bygone era.
Sparta Township is a small township in Crawford County, just outside of the borough of Spartansburg, about 35 miles southeast of Erie, Pennsylvania. The murder has left the local tight knit community which generally keeps to itself and shuns the outside world, shaken to the core.
‘Everyone is stunned — this doesn’t happen here,’ Charleen Hajec, a pharmacist who was born and raised in Spartansburg, told ABC News. ‘Everyone is talking. It’s scary and frustrating.’
Hajec said she couldn’t believe a murder would happen in Sparta Township, which she called a ‘tight-knit community.’
‘The outside world doesn’t get in,’ Hajec said. ‘To have something this tragic … it doesn’t happen here.’
But there’s more.
A case of mistaken identity?
Cranston’s daughter, who was similar in age to the young victim, told YourErie that she believed the killing may have been a case of mistaken identity and that her father had meant to kill the previous homeowner.
The Amish couple, who lived in Byler’s home a few years ago, adopted Cranston’s grandson. Said the daughter whose identity was not revealed: ‘As far as I know, he just wanted his grandson back.’
According to the daughter, who described Cranston as her foster dad growing up, events events took a deadly turn when Byler began shouting at her father after the man breaking into the victim’s home.
She said: ‘Supposedly she started yelling at him, coming in, then that’s when boom, all it took. It’s just horrifying to think that.’
Added the daughter, ‘Like I could never picture my dad being that cold-hearted monster. Never in a million years.’
Read Cranston’s bio on Facebook: ‘I’m someone’s worst nightmare if they mess with me and mine’.
Cranston’s preliminary hearing is set for March 15.
