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One of the most infamous crimes in Pleasanton history has been revisited in a television program with the 10th anniversary of the double murder on the horizon.
“Married with Secrets,” a series on the Investigation Discovery network, examined the case of Ernest Scherer III, who is serving two consecutive life sentences in state prison for the murders of his parents, Ernest Scherer Jr. and Charlene Abendroth, in their Castlewood Country Club home on March 7, 2008.
The couple’s bodies were found a week after they’d been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, stabbed and slashed.
Scherer III, a struggling professional poker player looking to cash in on a lucrative inheritance, was arrested a year after the murders and it was nearly another two years before he was brought to trial and ultimately convicted in 2011.
Scherer Jr., 60, and Abendroth, 57, were well known in the Tri-Valley.
Abendroth was an accounting and lecturing professor at Cal State East Bay. She was also an active member of the Mormon Church.
Scherer Jr., who dabbled in poker but made a living in real estate investments, was actively involved in the Republican Party and was a former San Ramon Valley school board member who was recalled in the 1990s and, up until his death, remained involved in politics.
The episode, aptly titled “Gambling With Death,” premiered last Friday but is available on YouTube and will be available to stream on the ID network website soon. Pleasanton Weekly publisher Gina Channell was among the sources interviewed for the episode.
This isn’t the first time the murders were profiled on national television.”Dateline NBC” and “48 Hours Mystery” were among the programs to feature the case in the past.
