It was a scene of biblical cruelty, but it did not take place two thousand years ago in Jerusalem – it happened in the spring of 2025 in the Arizona desert. An elderly pastor, William "Bill" Schonemann, 76 years old, was found dead in his home in New River – his arms stretched out and pinned to the wall like a crucifixion, a crown of thorns on his head. The man who confessed to this appalling crime is now in custody: Adam Christopher Sheafe, 51 years old, pale, with sunken eyes and a vision he calls “Operation First Commandment” – a campaign against what he sees as religious lies. Sheafe has admitted in several interviews to murdering the pastor in detail. But his confessions are not expressions of remorse – they are the transcript of a self-proclaimed prophet who believes he is on a divine mission. Pastor Bill, he said, was only the beginning. Fourteen more clergymen were on his list. Driven by a delusion disguised as “God’s will,” Sheafe intended to travel across the United States, from Arizona to New York, to kill all those who, in his view, were “leading the flock astray.” “I drove out at two in the morning,” he said. “I went to Bill’s house – and I executed him.” The nature of the crime was no coincidence: Sheafe pinned the old man's arms to the wall behind the bed, placed a crown of branches and thorns he had gathered in the woods on his head. It was a macabre act of symbolic retribution – a staging meant to project his rage at Christianity into the world. “What you preach is the opposite of what God said,” he explained as his motive.
Investigations show that Sheafe had started stalking clergymen long before the murder. On Easter Sunday, he had followed a priest in Phoenix home from the service but aborted the murder when two women entered the scene. “I don't want to kill anyone except the shepherds who are leading the flock astray,” he stated. Schonemann was his first target – in what he called his “Garden of Eden,” Arizona, his birth state. After the murder, Sheafe fled to Sedona. There he planned to kill two more priests – near the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross. But police were already on his trail. It wasn’t a homicide task force that stopped him but a simple manhunt for a burglar. Sheafe had previously been involved in a series of thefts – a seeming contradiction to his image of a divine warrior. After a car accident in Sedona, he abandoned his stolen vehicle at a trailhead and vanished. He was only captured days later in the course of a search. In his car, investigators found conclusive evidence linking him to the murder of Pastor Bill. That he is speaking at all is due solely to the fact that he wants to talk. He wants to be understood – not in a legal sense, but a biblical one. When Whitney asked if he feared being crucified himself, he calmly responded, “Good luck with that.” And added, “I want the death penalty so everyone sees – you can’t kill God’s son.” By that, he doesn’t mean Jesus – he means himself.
His list of further targets reads like a grotesque mission map: Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle, Detroit, New York, Charlotte, Mobile, Beaumont, El Paso. Four of them, he says, he planned to kill in Arizona alone. He called it “the cleansing of Israel” – where “Israel” in his language does not refer to the actual state but to the world as revealed to him. A construct made of faith, rage, and delusion. Psychological evaluations are still pending. It is unclear whether Sheafe suffers from psychosis – or whether his worldview rests on a stable but radicalized foundation. His words do not sound confused, but rather like carefully forged dogma. “It’s not in my heart to kill people,” he said at one point. And shortly thereafter: “But it is God’s law to remove evil from Israel.” The religious dimension of this case leaves many perplexed. Investigators speak of a “hate crime,” legal experts of a “ritualized murder,” congregations of an “attack on the foundation of faith.” Retired FBI agent Martin Hellmer called the case “one of the most heinous crimes I’ve ever heard of.” The congregation of Pastor Bill is in shock. In his church, the New River Bible Chapel, candles have been burning every evening since.
And yet, the Sheafe case is not just the story of one individual – it is a mirror of the ideological atmosphere that has long become political reality in Trump’s America. Since his return to the presidency in 2025, Donald Trump has not only reactivated the “Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” – colloquially known as the faith office – but expanded it into an ideological power center. Led by radical Christian figures such as Pastor Paula White, Tony Perkins, and Ralph Drollinger, this office promotes a religious-nationalist vision that is exclusionary, authoritarian, and deeply anti-pluralistic. The line is clear: Christianity equals national identity; other religions equal moral decay. Anyone who doesn’t conform is a “false prophet” or “demon.” When the state actively supports the narrative that certain churches have “strayed from the true path,” it lays the ideological groundwork for violence. The language of this movement is sharp, moralistic, and dehumanizing – and it finds its distorted, bloody echo in people like Adam Sheafe.
Trump repeatedly states that “the church must be taken back” – that “the shepherds have betrayed the flock.” Churches that advocate for refugees, social justice, or LGBTQ rights, he calls “far-left fake churches.” For someone like Sheafe, that’s not rhetorical exaggeration – it’s a divine command. When Sheafe says he wants “to be crucified to show that you can’t kill God’s son,” it is more than religious hubris. It is the distorted reflection of a martyr rhetoric that has been projected into the world for years from Trump’s religious orbit. People like Sheafe do not see themselves as murderers – but as instruments of divine cleansing. All the louder echoes the silence from Washington. No statement from the White House. No tweet, no sympathy, no condemnation. It is a silence that feels like an echo – or worse: like tacit approval. When a president turns the cross into a political weapon, we should not be surprised when individuals begin to take it literally.
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