Hughesville Woman Charged with Thefts
Five days after her 16-year-old son was killed in a double-fatal single-car crash in October 2005, Marilyn Irene Myers set up a memorial fund in her son’s name to help raise scholarship money for other students.
Donations from the community to the Seth Myers Memorial Fund reached several thousand dollars, but state police now allege that the 41-year-old Muncy Township woman illegally withdrew about $5,200 from the fund to pay personal bills, police said.
Trooper Jennifer Jackson, the lead investigator in the case, also has accused Myers of stealing $6,377 from the Hughesville Wrestling Booster Club while she served as its treasurer in the first six months of last year.
Investigators allege that Myers “made out several of the club’s checks to cash,” but failed to record the transactions in the club’s books.
“She allegedly used the money to benefit herself personally instead of using it for its intended purpose,” Jackson wrote in an affidavit.
Much of the evidence for the criminal case was obtained from Myers’ bank records that Jackson seized with a search warrant.
When Myers was asked last month what she did with the money police allege she stole from the booster club, Myers explained that “she had just been diagnosed with asthma, and did not have much sick time built up at work. She stated she needed the money,” Jackson said of Myers, who is an operating room nurse at a regional medical center.
During questioning, “Myers indicated that she knew what she did was wrong by taking advantage of the booster club and her son’s memorial fund,” Jackson said in the affidavit. Jackson said Myers was the trustee for her son’s memorial fund.
Myers, of 5435 Rabbittown Road was arraigned Wednesday afternoon, Jan. 7, before District Judge C. Roger McRae in Muncy on felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property and two counts of theft by failure to make required disposition. She was released on bail.
As she left McRae’s office, she declined comment when a reporter asked her about the charges.
Seth Myers was killed when his car crashed into a tree as he was traveling at a high rate of speed on Wolf Run Road in Wolf Township on Oct. 19, 2005, state police said. A passenger, Derrick Sweeting, 17, of Muncy, also was killed. The two were pronounced dead at the scene.