Thief and murderer: Saundra Adams is facing up to 25 years in prison for killing Edmund Schreiber during a break-in at the victim’s home

An upstate New York woman has admitted to strangling a 92-year-old World War I Purple Heart Medal recipient with his own neckties during a break-in more than 34 years ago.
The family of Edmund Schreiber is feeling “fantastic” because Saundra Adams is finally being brought to justice, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said Thursday.
Adams, now 51, pleaded guilty in a Buffalo courtroom the day before to a reduced charge of manslaughter. She faces a maximum of 25 years in state prison when she appears Nov. 6 for sentencing.
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Saundra Adams, charged in Buffalo NY for 1983 necktie murder of 92-year-old Purple Heart WWI veteran, Edmund Schreiber

92-year-old Edmund Schreiber was Adams’ neighbor. She used to run errands for the World war I veteran who was hit by machine gun fire in both thighs during a battle in France in 1918. Schreiber, who served in the Army’s 28th Infantry Division, received a Purple Heart after the war for being wounded.

 As her past reached out to haunt her. Saundra Adams looks forlorn during her arraignment, September 7, 2016

“Mr. Schreiber survived World War I, but he did not survive those who, during the night of June 23, 1983, invaded his home, attacked him, and took his life,” acting Erie County District Attorney Michael Flaherty Jr. said last year.
But for some reason on that night a 17-year-old Adams and an accomplice broke into the war hero’s home in Buffalo, living on the same street as she did. The suspected accomplice is deceased.
A neighbor and workers at a nearby senior citizens’ center became concerned when Schreiber didn’t show up for lunch as usual. They went to his home and his body was found on his bed, covered with blankets and pillows.
His hands were tied and eight of his neckties were wrapped around his throat to choke him to death.
Adams initially denied the charges. During Adams’ arraignment last September, Assistant District Attorney Thomas M. Finnerty noted that the house was ransacked, indicating the break-in started as a burglary, and that a fingerprint found on a dresser in the bedroom matched Adams’.
“The defendant has falsely denied being in the bedroom and being inside the home on multiple occasions,” Finnerty said. “She has never offered an explanation for how her DNA wound up on his ties.”

Williams today admitted killing Edmund Schreiber, a World War I hero, was strangled with 6 of his own neckties in 1983.

The case had been unsolved for decades, but DNA found on some of the neckties and fingerprints collected from furniture in the bedroom linked Adams to the killing.
“They got her fingerprints because they’re all over the house,” her father Ernest Adams told the Buffalo News last year. “My daughter cleaned the house for him. She’d go get groceries for him. She ran errands for him.”
Saundra Adams, a mother-of-two, was attending Bryant & Stratton College in Buffalo and working in the college library before she was charged.
Schreiber’s two granddaughters plan to attend Adams’ sentencing on Nov. 6.
“They were very relieved,” Flynn said. “They really just wanted to know what happened” to their grandfather. The family finally got closure in the death of Edmund Schreiber who was wounded on the battlefield during World War I, murdered in his own home 34 years ago, but is finally getting justice in 2017.