Waynesboro couple to appear in court on charges of inducing perjury

By Cleve Wiese

Published: June 3, 2008

A Waynesboro couple accused of pressuring one of their son’s friends to commit perjury in the wake of a fatal Dec. 12 car crash near Crimora are scheduled to appear in court today.

Emil and Gloria Steidel are both facing felony counts of inducing another to perjure for allegedly persuading passenger Zachary Carpenter, 20, to make a false statement a month after the accident indicating that their 18-year-old son Jason Steidel was not behind the wheel. Another passenger in the car, Timothy Moran, 19, died after being ejected from the vehicle.

A joint preliminary hearing for Emil and Gloria Steidel is scheduled for 2:15 in Augusta County General District Court. A May 13 hearing was continued after Emil Steidel failed to appear.

The Steidel’s have said Carpenter left them an emotional answering machine message in January confessing that an 18-year-old female also in the car at the time of the wreck was the driver, not Jason Steidel, as he had initially maintained. The following day they drove Carpenter to the office of an Augusta County magistrate and waited while he composed and signed a sworn statement to that effect.

Carpenter reversed course a short time later, returning to the magistrate to claim that Steidel was the driver after all and that the Steidel’s had pressured him into signing the previous statement.

Felony charges against Jason Steidel of driving under the influence and involuntary manslaughter were certified to a grand jury April 10.

The Steidel’s point to the fact that Carpenter made no mention of their alleged coercion when he appeared before the same magistrate to file an unrelated complaint less than 24 hours after his statement exonerating their son.

Carpenter has said that the Steidel’s manipulated him into making the statement by questioning his loyalty as a friend.