Slain pastor remembered as gifted and compassionate

HIXBURG -- Mark Niederbrock was remembered yesterday as a gifted and compassionate pastor who dearly loved his congregants and ministered in their homes and hospital rooms.

"He just really came to know God, and there was no turning back from there," said Bert Cloud, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Disputanta.

The Rev. Joseph McCutchen officiated at the graveside service at Walker's Presbyterian Church in Appomattox County, where Niederbrock had been pastor about six years.

McCutchen told more than 150 people that Niederbrock would have wanted them to keep their faith, despite the horrific nature of the crime that took his life and three others.

Niederbrock was found slain in the Farmville home of his estranged wife, Debra S. Kelley, a Longwood University professor, along with their daughter, Emma Niederbrock, 16, and her friend, Melanie Wells, 18, who was visiting from West Virginia.

Authorities have arrested Emma Niederbrock's boyfriend, Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif., who shared an interest with her and Wells in horrorcore music, a mix of violent lyrics and hip-hop music.

At a Sunday service a few weeks ago, Mark Niederbrock expressed his concern about her exposure to the music, church members Billy and Barbara Dickerson said.

Emma Niederbrock "had more control of the family -- pretty much whatever she wanted to do happened," church elder Luther Glenn said.

The Dickersons said Emma sometimes came to church with her father and that they both went on a 13-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail with other church members about three years ago. Emma kept waiting for her father to catch up.

"Emma was a sweet child," Barbara Dickerson said. "She loved her daddy; her daddy loved her."

McCutchen, a retired pastor of Farmville Presbyterian Church, said the crime was so strange as to be unbelievable. "The universe in which we live is not rational and the world is not fair, but the one consistent thing we can depend on is the love of God," he said.

The killings took from Jan Niederbrock her only child and her only grandchild. The resident of Champaign, Ill., attended yesterday's service.

"I loved Mark dearly, and he loved me dearly," Jan Niederbrock said quietly, seated in the church sanctuary after the service. "He was my rock."

Born in Benton, Ill., Mark Niederbrock met Kelley in Champaign while he was pursuing a bachelor's degree in photography and she was pursuing a doctorate in sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jan Niederbrock said.

Emma Niederbrock was 2 years old when they moved to Virginia.

Mark Niederbrock attended Farmville United Methodist Church and was baptized in 1997, said Cloud's wife, the Rev. Regina Anderson-Cloud, pastor of Sycamore United Methodist Church in Prince George County.

He was working as a graphic artist but decided to enter the ministry, Anderson-Cloud said. He graduated from the Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond in 2006.

At Walker's, Mark Niederbrock made about $600 per Sunday. He had been living off Hixburg Road less than a mile from the church since he and Kelley separated about eight months ago.

Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .