A Florida woman originally accused of killing her terminally ill mother in Cape May County was sentenced to a years’ probation Friday for stealing the woman’s Bible and lying about it.
“For the last three years I have been forced to keep silent while my life, my children, my home, my name, my family and my freedom were taken from me,” Josephine Scheid told the judge before he imposed sentence.
Scheid, 38, was charged with murder Nov. 8, 2019, more than a year after her terminally ill mother died.
Scheid, who is known as Jo Jo to her family and friends, has insisted her mother died of the cancer that put her in hospice care at her daughter’s home.
But many in Scheid’s family still believe she killed their beloved matriarch, a theory Scheid claimed her sister-in-law and ex-husband pushed due to their hatred of her.
Scheid said her sister-in-law, Jeni Scheid, used the vulnerability of those who loved her mother to convince them it was murder.
Jeni Scheid, her husband and two daughters all spoke Friday, talking of the hurt they say was caused by Josephine Scheid.
The family has been broken by this, D.J. Scheid said of his mother’s death.
“Driving a wedge between us all that only gets pounded deeper day by day,” he said.
He painted his sister as a master manipulator.
“I think my mom said it best,” he said then quoting a text he said his mother sent him.
“If you want to see Jo Jo for who she really is, stand in her way,” he said his mother wrote. “There’s nothing she won’t do or people she won’t hurt to get what she wants, and that includes me.”
Josephine Scheid countered that it’s her sister-in-law who was the true villain in this case, aided by Scheid’s ex-husband, a disgraced police officer who she says used the situation to take their children and escape paying child support.
Gabrielle Michaelis-Cifoni, 58, died Oct. 31, 2018, and was cremated.
That December, the New Jersey State Police Homicide South Unit received information that the Belleplain woman’s death was suspicious.
On Sept. 23, 2019, the chief state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, finding the cause of death was intoxication due to hydromorphone, alprazolam and lorazepam, according to the release.
But Josephine Scheid’s attorneys argued that the drugs in the woman’s system were all prescribed to her, and given to help with her pain.
“My mother was a strong and beautiful woman,” Scheid said. “A pioneer, if you will, in the very male-dominated field of college mathematics.”
But instead of being able to mourn her, Scheid said she has been forced to fight for her freedom, her children and her name.
“I don’t have so much as a T-shirt of my mother’s to cuddle and comfort me on those days when the pain of losing her is too much to bear and I just want my mom,” she said.
Scheid admitted to taking the Bible while she was on release, saying she was trying to protect the family heirloom from her sister-in-law, who she claims wanted to take it to Las Vegas to sell on the show “Pawn Stars.”
The Bible was one her grandmother had held onto when they escaped the Nazi’s in Belgium, Scheid told the judge.
Judge Bernard DeLury said he was bound by criminal law, and pointed out that Scheid already had done more time in jail than the two third-degree charges would have warranted.
He then sentenced her to two one-year terms of probation that will be served concurrently.
DeLury also granted the defense’s request that the plea cannot be used in any civil litigation.
“Any civil litigation should rise and fall on the evidence and not upon happenstance of the defendant’s guilty plea,” he said.
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