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Could a pastor’s religious doctrine be so off track that it would help lead him to hire someone to kill his wife? Before March 18, 1988, I would have answered with a definitive “no.”
That’s when the lifeless body of Elizabeth Sennett was found dead in her home by her husband, Charles Sennett Sr., pastor of Westside Church of Christ in Sheffield, Ala. The mother of two sons had been stabbed over and over with a 6-inch survival knife and beaten with a fireplace implement in a horrific scene, which was made even worse when investigators concluded it was a murder-for-hire – paid for by the pastor – and staged to look like a home invasion and burglary.
At the time, I was working the night desk at the TimesDaily newspaper in Florence, Ala.; Sheffield is just across a bridge over the Tennessee River. This murder shocked all of northwest Alabama, where Churches of Christ operate the area’s largest K-12 private school and are every bit as prominent as Southern Baptist churches.
“She fought it and she fought hard,” Ronnie May, who was chief investigator with the Colbert County Sheriff’s Office at the time, told al.com. “It was horrific to me. You feel for the victim and what they went through – and the horror she went through in her last minutes.”
According to court records summarizing the case, Sennett recruited Billy Gray Williams, who in turn recruited Kenneth Eugene Smith and John Forrest Parker, to kill his wife. He was to pay them each $1,000 in cash for killing Mrs. Sennett.
“There was testimony that Charles Sennett was involved in an affair, that he had incurred substantial debts, that he had taken out a large insurance policy on his wife,” court documents say.
At the time, I was also a student at International Bible College in Florence, which is sponsored by Churches of Christ. Seeing one of our own pastors get charged with murder was traumatic for a 23-year-old young man pursuing the ministry. Then it got even worse.
People close to the family reported that Sennett didn’t want to kill his wife; he just wanted a divorce. However, most Churches of Christ in the area taught that divorce was only “scriptural” in cases of physical adultery; if that didn’t apply, any divorce was only on paper and not “in the eyes of God.”
Since Sennett was the person guilty of adultery – and he had few other career options other than the pulpit – his wife’s death was the only way he could remain hired by the church while getting married to another person. Conscience being what it is, it didn’t work out so well.
“One week after the murder, when the murder investigation started to focus on him as a suspect, Sennett committed suicide,” court documents say.
I thought of Sennett’s tragic case while reading articles about states like Texas that are seeking to allow pastors to serve as school counselors, teachers and in other positions – even if they don’t have any credentials nor qualifications in those areas. While plenty of pastors have earned college degrees up to doctorates, others received their calling at a small local church and have never attended an institute of higher learning.
While some of the finest people I’ve ever met are pastors, as the Sennett case shows, they are still imperfect human beings, with some capable of committing monstrous crimes. A recent example involves Jonathan Elwing, a pastor from Palmetto, Fla., who is facing the death penalty after law enforcement investigators allegedly found on his cell phone images of him sexually battering a 2-year-old child. Elwing strongly protested the Southern Baptist Convention’s attempt to create a database of pastors credibly accused of sex abuse; now we know why.
What this shows is it shouldn’t just be assumed that pastors are somehow better than other people, especially in positions where they haven’t been properly trained.
The tragic Sennett case finally wrapped up earlier this year. Parker was executed for his crimes in June 2010, Williams died in prison in November 2020 and Smith was executed in January 2024 by a controversial new method of breathing in nitrogen through a respirator.
Meanwhile, the trauma continues for those left behind.
David Brown is publisher of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 828-837-5122; email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com; or on X @daviddBstroh.