Were the deaths of a Pennsylvania pastor's two wives coincidence or murder?

When "48 Hours" first told you about Pastor A.B. Schirmer, the story ended in a cliffhanger. Schirmer stood accused of killing his second wife -- but there was no question about the death of his first wife.

Could he have killed her, too? A lot has happened since we first aired this story. Now, we have the answers no one expected.

It was October 2008 when Rose Cobb learned of her brother's death. "It was a horrible, shocking, traumatic thing to have somebody not only shoot themselves, but shoot themselves in a church," Rose Cobb said in tears. "I couldn't believe it." Joe Musante died in the church office -- sitting at the pastor's desk--a single gunshot wound to the head.

He left behind his wife of 18 years and two children. "My brother was dead and I didn't know what happened to him," said Cobb. Soon Cobb learned there were a lot of things she didn't know.

When she arrived in the tiny town of Reeders, Pa., for her brother's memorial service, she noticed how quiet things were at Joe and his wife, Cindy's, house. "And I asked Cindy about that. I said, 'How come there's nobody here?'" she said.

"That's when she told us what was happening." Cindy told Cobb what everyone else seemed to know: that she had fallen in love with her boss, A.B. Schirmer who was the family's pastor. "First I asked her ...

'Are you having an affair?' And she said, 'Well, that depends on what you mean by an affair. And then she explained that is was emotional," Cobb explained. "What did you make of it?" Schlesinger asked.

"Well, I mean, I guess I just felt like she just was so in love with him," she replied. It was the last thing Cobb expected to be talking about to her brother's widow on the eve of his memorial service. "She was very giddy," Cobb explained.

"Giddy. Yeah, very childlike. "It's a strange timing for that sort of thing," Schlesinger commented.

Cobb was learning a lot about her sister-in-law's new boyfriend, Arthur Burton Schirmer, who most people called A.B. Cindy told her that three months before Joe's death, Pastor Schirmer's wife, Betty, died after a car crash. "I said, 'what happened?' And she said, 'Well you know ...

a deer ran out in front of the road. He swerved to miss the deer and - and hit the bridge or something like that, and she ended up dying,'" Cobb explained. Rose was suspicious of all the deaths surrounding Pastor Schirmer.

She dug deeper and learned Betty was Schirmer's second wife. His first wife, Jewel, had also died suddenly. "She said, 'Oh, she fell down some stairs.' You know something about a sweeper or something," Cobb said.

Really? She dies from falling down the stairs? And then the second wife dies from being in a car accident where the deer never even hit the car?

It's like what happened?" "It just struck me as funny that so many bad things was happening to him," she continued. And imagine what Samantha Musante had to deal with. When she discovered her mother was having an affair with her pastor.

"She was my best friend. She took me to all the horse shows and she loved horses just as much as I did," she explained. "I kinda felt betrayed that I found something like this out." Samantha was just 16 when she found those text messages between her mother and Pastor Schirmer.

"Were they that explicit that you knew what was going on?" Schlesinger asked Samantha. "There was no doubt. It wasn't 'I love you in Christ' type of text message," she replied.

"Not something that you'd expect your employer to be sending you." "Or your pastor, presumably," Schlesinger added. "Yeah," said Samantha. She was afraid her father would be crushed.

Joe was struggling with his own troubles and had turned to the church for comfort. "My dad had struggled with alcoholism his entire life. He finally decided he had to get it together so we started going to church," she explained.

Joe was a carpenter and worked hard repairing the church--not realizing his own home was falling apart. Samantha did what she could to end the affair. "I ended up sending A.B.

an email from a fake email account, telling him that, you know, someone knew about what he was doing and that he should stop," she said. But Samantha's plan didn't work. Cindy and A.B.

figured out who sent the email. "They took me into his office and told me that I was wrong, that nothing was going on and how dare I accuse them of an affair," she explained. "What did you say to them?" Schlesinger asked.

"OK," she replied. "You're talking to your mother and the pastor of your church and they're telling you something, and who are you to disagree?" Samantha didn't really believe them. But she kept quiet until her father started asking questions.

Samantha told her dad she was pretty sure Cindy and A.B. were having an affair. "And then he said, 'Does she love him?' And I just said, 'I think so.' That's probably one of the most horrible things that you can hear," said Samantha.

Asked how her father reacted, Samantha told Schlesinger, "He didn't have a lot to say but I can tell he was devastated." Joe confronted Cindy and she promised to end the affair. But he soon discovered Cindy was making secret phone calls to the pastor. The day before Joe died, Cindy took the kids to her sister's house and refused to allow anyone to answer Joe's calls.

"My dad had called several times. My mom told me I shouldn't answer my phone," said Samantha. The next morning, Samantha checked her messages.

Her father had left a voicemail. "He said, 'If you love me at all, please call me back,'" Samantha said of the message. "That was the last time that I heard from him." That same morning, Joe Musante was found dead, slumped over the pastor's desk.

Joe had built that desk with his own hands. "I didn't trust what was going on. Did he really kill himself?" Cobb asked.

As Cobb saw it, Joe was now the third dead body linked to one shady pastor. She alerted the bishop to A.B.'s affair and Schirmer was forced to resign. But Cobb also felt she had to call the police.

Detective Jim Wagner of the Pocono Township Police Department was assigned to investigate. "There were just ... too many red flags to ignore," said Wagner, who also believed there was more to this story.

"I suspected that it was very possible for Joe's death to be at the hands of Mr. Schirmer and or Cindy because it made it very convenient for them to be together." "Joe discovered that his wife and Mr. Schirmer were having an affair.

And how convenient that Joe was now gone," said Det. Wagner. To the Pennsylvania State Police, Joe Musante's death had looked like a suicide.

But Det. Wagner wanted another look at the evidence. And it seemed to hold up.

"There were no blood stains out of place... There was glass fragments found on the bottoms of his shoes which are consistent with him breaking the glass, entering and stepping in the glass," he explained. And it turned out, Pastor A.B.

Schirmer and Musante's wife, Cindy -- the two people who might have had a motive to kill Joe -- had airtight alibis. "A.B. was an hour away and his alibi checked out and Cindy also had an alibi and she was with the children," said Det.

Wagner. Wagner agreed with state police: Joe Musante's death really was a suicide. "They said he killed himself and I accepted that he did," said Rose Cobb.

There was no longer any question about how her brother died, but Cobb had a lot of questions about the other deaths that surrounded Pastor Schirmer. "I thought it was strange that a man loses two wives in a relatively short period of time," Wagner said. "It certainly needed to be investigated thoroughly." So Detective Wagner turned his investigation to the death of Schirmer's second wife, Betty, who died about three months before Joe's suicide.

"How was Betty's death classified?" Schlesinger asked Wagner. "It was classified as an accident due to a motor vehicle collision. And the coroner determined that no autopsy would be necessary.

And Betty's Schirmer's body was cremated the very next day," he replied. The case had been closed....