{"id":1583,"date":"2026-06-05T21:35:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:35:28","slug":"plea-deal-reached-for-man-who-confessed-to-killing-new-river-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1583","title":{"rendered":"Plea deal reached for man who confessed to killing New River pastor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<section>\n<p><b>PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 A judge has accepted a plea deal for a man who previously confessed to killing a New River pastor last year. <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1581\">Hiker in extremely critical condition after 40-foot fall at South Mountain<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As part of the plea deal reached in court Friday morning, prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for Adam Sheafe in connection with the murder of Pastor Bill Schonemann. Sheafe is set to be sentenced on August 14. <\/p>\n<p>Schonemann, 76, was found dead inside his home in a crucifixion position in April 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Sheafe, who is representing himself, previously pushed for the state to skip court proceedings and execute him. But that changed after his father, Chris Sheafe, and stepmother died in a single-engine plane crash in Marana earlier this year. The couple had been returning from the University of Arizona\u2019s Final Four game.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>After their deaths, Sheafe emailed prosecutors asking for a plea deal that would send him to prison for life in exchange for pleading guilty to all charges. That was initially taken up during a court hearing in April before being continued until Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Sheafe has said he killed Schonemann as part of his radical religious beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI drove from there (Phoenix) to Bill\u2019s house, like two in the morning on a Sunday night, and I executed him,\u201d Sheafe said.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1579\">Phoenix woman among 2 wanted in homicide of Maryland mother<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h6>RELATED: Suspect admits to crucifying pastor at New River home, had others on hit list<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Investigators have said Sheafe had a list of other pastors across the country he wanted to kill.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about Schonemann\u2019s innocence, Sheafe said, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse than breaking the first commandment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <\/i><i>Please click here to report it<\/i><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <\/i><i>it to us here<\/i><i> with a brief description.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1577\">Triple digit stretch for Tucson<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A judge has accepted a plea deal for a man who previously confessed to killing a New River pastor last year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Plea deal reached for man who confessed to killing New River pastor - Tucson Moving Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=1583\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plea deal reached for man who confessed to killing New River pastor - 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