Killer Chemistry on ID is examining the murder of Tiffany Maher, a professor at Northeastern State University, who was killed in her home by Joshua Schneider in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
On May 31, 2013, friends of 38-year-old Maher asked the police to perform a welfare check at her home. The officers found Maher’s partially burned remains in her bedroom.
The killer had attempted to hide the murder by setting fire to the home, but the flames had died out.
An autopsy was inconclusive about the cause of death, but the coroner said the conditions were consistent with strangulation. Schneider had also killed Maher’s cats and stolen a number of items, including a karaoke machine with CDs, a small computer, a Kindle Fire e-book reader, a DVD player, and a television.
The police learned that Maher had met and arranged to meet Schneider through a dating website.
The cops embarked on a nine-day manhunt for the killer, which included a car chase through Tulsa, OK. Schneider managed to give the police the slip, and he abandoned his car in a wood with his two-year-old daughter inside.
Police closed the net on Joshua Schneider after Tiffany Maher killing
Schneider went on the run with his girlfriend, Heather Black. She eventually turned herself in and told the investigators that Schneider told her he was on the run because of Maher’s killing.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelSchneider was captured a week after the car chase by agents from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The agents used dogs and a helicopter to track the killer to a wooded area south of Tulsa.
In May 2015, Schneider was convicted on charges of murder, arson, and larceny. He was given three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
At a memorial for Maher, a friend told reporters, “[Maher] was so fearless. She did so many things in this community. She liked to karaoke. She liked to knit. She’d go to drumming circles. She did monologues here at the university.”
Joshua Schneider appealed against sentence in Tiffany Maher murder
In 2016, Schneider appealed against his sentence, claiming his Eighth Amendment rights had been violated because the punishment was “so disproportionate and excessive.”
However, the following year, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the murder conviction and his sentence.
This case was previously featured on Grave Mysteries on ID.
Killer Chemistry airs Saturday at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.