TV show stirs up memories of Belvidere crime

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
By SARA K. SATULLO
The Express-Times

BELVIDERE | Town police Chief Kent Sweigert plans to spend Sunday night at home watching his television debut.

Sweigert will be featured in a crime reenactment airing at 9 p.m. on the A& E Biography channel. The episode of "Psychic Investigators" details the collaboration between law enforcement and a psychic that some say helped find the killer of town resident Elizabeth Cornish.

The show will chronicle how psychic Nancy Orlen Weber led authorities to Cornish's neighbor John Seymour Reese Jr., who previously passed a polygraph. Reese, 51, is serving a life sentence in New Jersey State Prison.

Sweigert was the young patrolman who discovered Cornish's beaten and bound body at the Blair House apartments on Aug. 8, 1987. Back then as a newbie on the force, Sweigert wasn't filled in on the psychic angle. Sunday night will be the first time he hears the entire story.

"It was a really good experience, something I can put on my belt that I did too," Sweigert said. "I'm not overexcited. I'm kind of nervous."

But he hasn't forgotten the scene that day.

"I could actually replay the whole thing in my head like a movie in a way. It was a pretty gory scene but training and experience kicks in," Sweigert. "I had enough experience to know I was supposed to control the scene."

A Canadian production crew spent about a week in October filming in Belvidere and Hackettstown. Sweigert found the crew to be so nice he said he helped them scout locations.

The crew ended up in Warren County after the psychic contacted the show about her work on the case and authorities verified her account. Weber worked for years with the Mount Olive Police Department helping to solve cases.

Cornish's sister, Peggy Goble, contacted the psychic for help finding her sister's killer. Prosecutor's office detectives agreed to work with Weber, and she told the police the killer was Cornish's upstairs neighbor John R. She described how the murder occurred and told the time of death, which differed from police estimates.

Ten days later, the autopsy confirmed Weber's determination of when Cornish died and authorities questioned Reese again.

Reese confessed to having consensual sex with Cornish but alleged Cornish threatened to accuse him of rape when he did not want to continue. He said he hit her several times with a hammer that was lying on the floor.