A woman from Missouri has now been taken into custody after officials claim she sent out another message threatening to blow up a local church. Folks, there are a lot of mentally unstable individuals out there in our world right now, and it seems the vast majority of them have some sort of demonically inspired hatred for Christians and the religion of Jesus Christ. What’s up with that?
According to TheBlaze, “On January 26, an employee with Grace Life Church in Pevely, Missouri — located along the Mississippi River about 30 miles south of St. Louis — received a disturbing text message from an unfamiliar number. According to a sworn probable cause statement from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the message said: ‘I will make your church go bye bye. [It] wouldn’t be the first time I cause a building to go bye bye.'”
“The message also allegedly promised that the sender would be in the church’s parking lot on the following Sunday, the day of the week when the church and its parking lot are most likely to be full. The church’s website indicates that Grace Life offers three separate Sunday services: at 8:30, 10:00, and 11:30 a.m.,” the report continued.
The employee who got the message “suffer[ed] a large amount of emotional distress, to the point the victim hired private security,” the affidavit went on to say. When investigators found out about the nature of the threat, they immediately identified a potential suspect. Surprisingly, it was a woman: Ann Marie Schmidt, 46, who authorities believe made a threat against the same church on a previous occasion.
“On January 27, deputies arrived at Schmidt’s residence and conducted a Mirandized and recorded interview’ with her there. During the course of their conversation, Schmidt allegedly admitted that she had sent the threatening text through a messaging app on her phone. When investigators then searched Schmidt’s phone, they found the messaging app and determined that the ‘assigned phone number in the text messaging application matched the phone number the text message was sent from,’ the affidavit stated,” TheBlaze said.
The affidavit indicated that Schmidt had “made a similar threat” against Grace Life Church less than a year ago. Then, on April 23, Schmidt sent out a message “with similarly used verbiage” threatening to make the church go “bye bye.” In November of last year, Schmidt was slapped with a charge of second-degree making a terrorist threat, a class E felony, in connection with the threat.
“Schmidt was then arrested in connection to the January threat and charged with first-degree harassment, another class E felony, which carries up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine. She has been booked into the Jefferson County Jail and is currently being held without bond. She is expected to appear in court on Wednesday for a bond review,” The report stated.
“Law & Crime reportedly sent requests for comment to Stephen Michael Vighi, Schmidt’s attorney, as well as an attorney for the church, but neither attorney had responded,” the report concluded.