Snyder Sentenced to 20 – 40 Years for 2015 Murder
The court imposed the sentence on a charge of third degree murder, handed down in a courtroom filled with 40 or so friends and family of the Renovo man and the victim. There was a heavy security presence for the proceeding.
Snyder, wearing orange prison garb, read a prepared statement asking the court for leniency, saying he had “blacked out” when he strangled his wife during an argument. Judge Salisbury however told Snyder he did not accept the blackout theory and said he later showed no remorse for his wife’s death.
Snyder sat with his head bowed and his hands clasped as the court sentenced him. After imposition of the sentence Snyder, now 36, was escorted from the courtroom, after which those in attendance were allowed to leave section by section He did not look back into the courtroom as he departed.
Snyder had been charged with the Easter Sunday 2015 murder of his wife. He subsequently agreed to enter a guilty plea to a reduced charge of third degree murder.
Snyder was the husband of a previously missing Renovo woman whose body had been found in Halls Run a week after she disappeared. The police affidavit of probable cause containing the first degree murder charge was filed in May of 2015 as part of an ongoing state police investigation; it alleged she had been strangled by her husband.
Snyder had been arrested April 10, 2015 and charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Armed with the results of the autopsy on Snyder’s wife, police then in May of that year filed first and third degree murder charges and false reports, in addition to earlier charges of abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence.
The autopsy report on Mrs. Snyder, completed in May of 2015, said that she “died of manual strangulation.” The report follows an interview with the husband on April 11 in which he told police, according to their affidavit of probable cause, the couple had been arguing at their Fourth St. Renovo home.
Snyder claimed to police his wife took a swing at him and hit him in the chest. During the argument, according to the police document, Snyder said his arms were around her neck as they fell to the ground; he then let her up, he said and “she tried to hit him again.” The defendant said he grabbed her again and they were on the ground, “his hands…around her neck” and she stopped moving. According to the police affidavit, “The defendant advised that he thought the victim had just stopped fighting but he then realized that she was not breathing.”
At that point, the police document said, Snyder took his wife to the basement and put her in a sleeping bag, then took her body to his vehicle and transported her to Halls Run and placed her at the edge of the water. He told police he threw her driver’s license into Halls Run and left the area, later placing the sleeping bag in a dumpster behind Socky’s Restaurant in Renovo.
She had been missing until April 11 when police said they were investigating the discovery of a female body in Noyes Township near South Renovo; that body proved to be the missing woman.
According to authorities, Snyder on April 10 of that year had told police he took his wife’s body from their Fourth Street, Renovo home to the Halls Run location, later telling police she was missing. After his apprehension in New York state, police said, he said he also had created a ransom note. In his April 10 interview, police said, he told them she had died from a drug overdose. A day later he changed his account and told of their fight which resulted in her death.
