HARRISBURG — Attorney General Dave Sunday announced that a Lebanon County Judge has denied a convicted murderer’s request for relief regarding the brutal 2020 killing of a 12-year-old boy.
The Office of Attorney General represented the Commonwealth in arguing that Kimberly Maurer had adequate representation during her 2022 trial, and that the process was fair, leading to an appropriate verdict based on overwhelming evidence of Maurer’s guilt.
Maurer and her husband resented 12-year-old Maxwell Schollenberger, so they locked the boy away from the world, abused and starved him.
Following her conviction at trial, Maurer was sentenced to life in prison, plus 10 to 20 years.
”The acts in this case are so cruel and depraved that they are difficult to believe. Our office argued, and the presiding judge agreed, that this motion for relief was the defendant’s latest attempt to avoid accountability for the deliberate and intentional torture and killing of a pre-teenage child,” Attorney General Sunday said. “Our criminal justice system worked just as it should in this case, and the defendant appropriately will spend the rest of her life in a prison cell.”
Lebanon County Common Pleas Judge Bradford Charles presided over the Post-Conviction Relief Act motion, which followed a failed appeal attempt to the state Superior Court.
Judge Charles, in an opinion issued this week, called the motion “offensive,” and Maurer’s “latest effort to escape responsibility for her heinous deed.”
In May 2020, the child was found dead in his Annville Township home. Investigators found the child had been living in a room, locked from the outside, with its windows shuttered to prevent any light from entering. The child weighed only 47 pounds, was severely malnourished, and had head trauma.
At autopsy, a forensic pathologist ruled the child’s death a homicide caused by blunt force head trauma, which complicated his malnourishment and starvation.
Scott Schollenberger, the child’s father and Maurer’s husband, is also serving a life sentence.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Schmidt represented the Office of Attorney General in the recent post-conviction motion.
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