True Crime Campfire - Episode 17: Clara Schwartz: When Nerds Attack Pt. 1

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

December 10, 2001. Leesburg, Virginia. Neighbors find the body of Dr. Robert Schwartz, a brilliant DNA researcher, lying in a pool of blood on his living room floor. He had been stabbed more than 25 times with a very large blade, and an X was carved into the back of his neck. Dr. Schwartz was, by all accounts, a quiet and mild-mannered scientist. Who could possibly hate him enough to do this? The investigation into this beyond-brutal murder would soon take a turn no one could have predicted. Detectives would soon find themselves delving into the lives of a group of fantasy-obsessed teenagers, the leader of which was the victim's own daughter. Join us for a wild-but-true story of vampire assassins, dragons, poison, and plotting.Sources:Book: I'd Kill for You by M. William Phelpshttps://caselaw.findlaw.com/va-court-of-appeals/1204421.htmlhttps://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-oct-16-na-sword16-story.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2003/09/09/va-scientists-killer-gets-life-sentence/97617817-bcd2-43e9-a806-168d8a18173c/Follow us, campers!Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Nerds have always gotten a bad rap. But we like nerds. We are nerds from way back. Our feeling is, whatever your passion, in life, be it Star Trek or Star Wars or video games or werewolves or whatever, you should fly your flag with pride. Do what makes your weird little heart happy. It's what we're doing with this podcast. But campers, here's the thing. It doesn't happen very often, but once in a great while, you get yourself a bad nerd. Once in a while, a nerd strays from their lawful good alignment, and when that happens, watch out. This is when nerds attack, the murder of Dr. Rock. Robert Schwartz.

Okay, so campers, we are in Leesburg, Virginia, December 10th, 2001. Colleagues of Dr. Robert Schwartz, a renowned biophysicist and DNA researcher, were concerned when he didn't show up for work and didn't call in. This was hugely out of character for Dr. Schwartz, and his work friends knew he lived kind of out in the boonies. And they thought, you know, what if he'd fallen or something and couldn't get to a phone? So one of his work friends contacted a neighbor of Dr. Schwartz, and the neighbor agreed to go check on him. He picked up another neighbor on the way, and they drove over there. And Dr. Schwartz lived in an old farmhouse known as the Stone House.

The neighbors knocked on the front door. There was no answer. They peeked in a couple of windows, but they couldn't really see anything. So they decided to go around to the back door, which they knew Robert often left unlocked. Again, how many times do we have to say it? You guys. Lock your doors. Dang it.

Lock your doors. Please lock your doors. No matter where you live. I don't care if you live in Antarctica in one tiny little house where there's no neighbors for 5,000 miles. It takes two seconds. Just lock your doors. So anyway, they went around to the back door. and when they went inside, they found a nightmare.

Dr. Robert Swartz lay in a pool of blood in his living room, and the neighbors could tell he had been stabbed repeatedly. It was just a gruesome, bloody scene. So there were no signs of forced entry, and whoever killed their neighbors seemed to have been invited in. And Dr. Schwartz had clearly fought for his life. One of his hands was cut really deeply. It looked as though he had,

This is just cringe-worthy, grabbed onto the blade of the weapon that had killed him in the process of trying to defend himself, and the killer had dragged the blade across his palm. Just, oh, God, that just makes me, I'm sorry, I even have to tell you that. Robert had been stabbed so hard that the blade had hacked into the hardwood floor under his body in several places, like gone all the way through his body and into the hard floor, which is just, wow, that is some force behind that, right? That's power. Yeah, absolutely. He'd been stabbed more than two dozen times. Now, I bet that you true crime aficionados who are listening, I bet a certain word has just blossomed into some of your brains.

Because when you hear about that many wounds, like way more than is necessary to kill somebody, you think, Katie, what's the word? Overkill. Overkill, absolutely. And overkill usually means rage. And rage usually means that a killing is personal. that's not always the case. And it irritates me how a lot of times on true crime shows,

you will hear people say it like this is just universally true, that if you see overkill, it means that the victim knew his or her or their killer. That's not necessarily true because sometimes you see it with serial killers and, you know, spree killers and people like that who just have a lot of rage, you know, generally at everybody. But very frequently anyway, when you see overkill, it means that the killing is personal. And the fact that there was no forced entry and that nothing appeared to be stolen also bore that out. So this looked personal to investigators. And there was an especially creepy element to this just horrendous stabbing.

On the back of Dr. Schwartz's neck, the medical examiner found a distinct X slashed into his skin. It looked very deliberate, like the killer like Zorro or something was signing his work. And they thought, you know, what is this? is this an occult symbol? Is it evidence of a ritual murder? Is it an initial? What is this? Was this intentional? It certainly looked that way. And detectives weren't sure, but it was something to investigate. The whole thing was just shocking and baffling. Who would want to kill this 57-year-old, well-respected scientists who had, by the way, created the first online DNA database and been given a lifetime achievement award by his colleagues in the field? So this was a distinguished scientist,

Not somebody that you would think had a lot of enemies, right? Very strange. So investigators went to tell Dr. Schwartz's kids. To find the two sisters, Clara and Michelle, they went to James Madison University where the sisters were both students. Now, Michelle's reaction and the son Jesse's reaction was immediately frantic, devastated, sobbing. You know, they took it big, as you can imagine. Clara, on the other hand, the younger sister, her reaction was a bit flat, and that was in stark contrast to both of her siblings. Now, again, everybody processes grief differently, so you can't draw any definitive conclusions for that, but they noticed it.

That her reaction was kind of like, huh? Like, Dad was murdered, huh? But let's put a pin in that for the moment and talk a bit about a few folks that are going to be key players in this story. We'll start with a guy named Kyle Holbert. So Kyle had had a tough life by anybody's standard. Since he was six years old, he'd spent much of it in and out of mental institutions and foster homes. When he was 12, Kyle's father had realized that he couldn't handle him because of his behavioral and psychiatric problems, and Kyle had become, sadly, a ward of the state.

And Kyle faced challenges that most kids don't have to face. His mental health issues had shown themselves when he was very young, and by the time he was 18, when our story begins, he'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. So this meant that he heard voices. He saw hallucinations that seemed as real to him as the real world, stuff like dragons and demons. And he sometimes thought of himself as a dragon. In fact, he referred to his birthday as his hatching day, which is kind of new and interesting. I've never heard anybody say that before, right? And once he turned 18, Kyle was, as they call it, emancipated as a ward of the state. This happened.

on September 4th, 2001, which was, interestingly enough, a week before 9-11, his social worker argued for it, said, look, Kyle's on his meds, he's not psychotic, he's 18 now, he's legally an adult, we have no real basis for keeping him. The state argued against it, as interestingly enough, did Kyle's dad, who had kept track of his son over the years and knew about his behavioral issues. Kyle's dad believed he was dangerous, and he warned the judge that if he emancipated Kyle, it would not end well. As a matter of fact, his dad said, you let Kyle out and he's going to kill somebody. Okay, for a moment, imagine your Kyle and your dad shows up to like just keep you in prison. This is a super villain origin story. It really is, right? Like a Batman villain or

something. Yeah. And Kyle tended to get aggressive when he was frustrated. And I'm sure that was a big part of the basis for his dad saying this. He had once thrown a desk at a teacher at school. And another time he'd been arrested for making a threat to, quote, make a big hole at his school, which his guidance counselor had taken as a bomb threat, and this was all because the bus didn't show up to pick him up that day, according to him. So, miss the bus, blow up your school. That seems reasonable, right? Yikes. But the judge released him anyway, now that he was a legal adult, and for the first time in his life, Kyle had freedom, which included the freedom to be in charge of his own psych meds. The state gave him a three-month supply, but it was up to him to take it, and very quickly he

started forgetting, which was not great. Take your meds, y'all. Just, I mean, okay, if you can't make your own neurotransmitters, store-bought is fine, as they say. Right. I love that meme. If you can't make your own store-bought is fine. It's true, absolutely. Barefoot contessa psych style. Should be no shame in that whatsoever, but Kyle was frequently forgetting to take his meds. When Kyle didn't take his meds on schedule, the hallucinations and paranoia started to creep back in. One psychologist who has treated Kyle has described him as the type of schizophrenic that can fly under the radar. So he can function, but he has ideas that aren't rooted in reality. And sometimes those can take him over and he can kind of lose the boundary between reality and fantasy,

which, as you can imagine, can be really dangerous for various reasons. But to Kyle, his hallucinations were absolutely real. and even today, back on his meds and under routine psychiatric care, Kyle has trouble admitting out loud that some of his memories aren't real. He knows it in his head, but he can't really bring himself to believe it, to believe that he never really had a tiny pet dragon that sat on his shoulder and went everywhere with him. To believe that an old god named Nicodima never came around to advise him, that he'd never battled with vampires, all of those things that, you know, were just completely real,

to him at the time. He gets it intellectually, but in his heart of hearts, he really kind of still believes it, which I can't even imagine that. I've had my own mental health struggles, you know, with like anxiety and depression and stuff, but I can't even imagine not being able to tell what's real and what's not. Yeah, that would, that's absolutely like just one of the most terrifying thoughts is you can't trust your own, your own memory. Because we tend to trust ourselves. Absolutely. We need to trust ourselves, you know. And when you're hallucinating, I guess, you know, you can't. And that must be really hard to deal with.

And, yeah. So after he was released, Kyle didn't have a permanent base of operations. The state was providing him with a modest disability check every month because of his mental illness, but he still planned to try to find work. And he divided his time between various friends' couches, shelters, and a tent that he pitched in the woods. So he was kind of untethered and purposeless, and that was bad for Kyle. Kyle thrived on drama.

He needed it in the way that some people need oxygen. oxygen. And this is his own words. You know, this is coming from him. And he needed people around him to pay him attention and admire him. So looks wise, Kyle was tall, thin and kind of lanky. He had long brown hair and really intense eyes. One girl he dated briefly said he reminded her of Joe Perry from Aerosmith. And I'd say I can sort of see it like a, you know, like a generic version of Joe Perry. Yeah, he is to Joe Perry what like the Renaissance Fair is. to Disney World. It's fine, but it's not Disney World.

Like the Walmart Great Value version of, or the parallel universe version of Joe Perry. Yeah. And he was really into swords and knives, and he considered himself a vampire. Ooh, sharp objects with a thirst for blood. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, and he dressed goth, but he hated that label. He hated any label because, you know, Kyle is just Kyle. Kyle is just Kyle.

We don't like labels. Don't call me a goth. How dare? I mean, I completely am one, but just don't call me one, right? And he had delusions of grandeur. And today he admits he has a narcissistic personality, which probably means that he's been diagnosed and he has enough self-insight to see that the diagnosis is correct. Right. He loves being center of attention, and he's really good at drawing people into his orbit. I'm just thinking of Kyle dressed in all black with chains going, this isn't a phase, mom. This isn't a phase, mom. This is. is who I am. Oh, God. I'm flashing back yet again to my obsession with the beat poets in college and, oh boy, I must have been a nightmare. I spent a lot of time at Hot Topic in high school. I will not lie about that. Hot Topic was a little bit after my time. Like, I maybe set foot in there toward the end of my college years. And I still have a Care Bears T-shirt that I bought there in, like, 2001. So anyway, so I want to just backtrack for a second and say,

again, he considered himself a vampire. So let's just sit with that for a second, campers. Kyle considered himself a vampire. Bless his heart. And when he said that he was a vampire, he was not screwing around. He liked

going to goth clubs and soliciting quote-unquote donors. Young women who were willing to let him cut them and actually suck their blood out of their bodies. Do you want hepatitis, Kyle? Because that's how you get hepatitis. but actually he claims he only drank blood from what he called clean girls who could prove

they'd been recently tested for blood-borne pathogens so i guess do whatever creams your twinkie man it's not my cup of tea but whatever okay this shouldn't be anyone's cup of tea whitney it's unsanitary i'm trying to be non-judgmental but yeah it skeaves me out pretty bad i'm not gonna lie Like, yeah. And also, blood tastes so gross. I've never understood the blood drinking people because, like, catch me flossing my teeth wrong and I'm like, oh, God, please, give me a min. It's just the yuckiest gross. It's just pennies. And it's horrible. I think it's the perception more than the actual taste. It's gross. It's gross. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say it's gross. But Kyle was into it. And Kyle was serious about this shit. Like to the point where he would lecture people. who went out to the vampire goth clubs and treated it in his words like a Halloween party. Oh God.

So he lectured one girl who came up to him and offered him her pricked finger at a club. And he said, and I quote, Are you fucking kidding me? My animal nature is very important to me. So I guess a pricked finger wasn't enough of a soul connection for Kyle.

Kyle had studied anatomy charts to find the best places to cut for maximum blood and minimum risk, which is nice of him. I mean, if you're going to be doing this to people, definitely try to do it safely, right? But he viewed this as a spiritual, sexual connection and a pricked finger was not going to do it for Kyle. So to him, this girl was just a poser. Okay, but any time from now on that anyone upsets me, this is the line I'm using, my animal nature is very important to me. Listen, plebe, my animal.

nature. So, and I feel sorry for this girl, because I'm sure that, bless her heart, it was 2001. She probably just read a few Anne Rice novels and was trying a little something, bless her heart, and Kyle had to get all up in her biznotch and call her a poser. So, you know, I feel bad for her because she probably just went home and decided to try CrossFit instead, or whatever the 2001 equivalent of CrossFit was. I don't remember it's too long ago. Okay, so this guy and all of his, vamping around reminds me, actually, of a true story. Oh, please tell them. From my middle school days.

Oh, my God, I can't wait. So I knew these two girls. We will call them heathers. Oh, perfect. They had the same name, but this is not their real name. So one of the heathers was very clearly like the dominant Heather, and then the other one was a follower. Right.

And dominant Heather, we were at a sleepover one night, and she would, she would, she did this thing where she was like crying and talking in her sleep. And looking back now, I could tell she's faking it. But at the time, it was really freaky to me because I was like 12 or whatever and my friend was in distress. And she, when she woke up, she was like, there were things you don't know about me, Katie. Oh, boy. Here we go. And I was, I was, well, and again, I was 12 and concerned for my friend. So I was like, are you, like, are you okay? And she's like, there's things from my passed before I moved to the city we were in. Oh, boy. And I was like, oh, okay. And then, like, I don't know, a couple weeks later, her and the other Heather are acting like super weird.

And finally, they, they, they gather me in and tell, and my other friend, and they're like, okay, we had to get permission from the council. Oh, for God's sake. I'm sorry. From the council. Yeah, I see where this is going. But, and they're not. really that okay with it, but we promise to protect you. But Heather and I are shape-shifting demons. No freaking way. Yeah. Yeah. And they kept this thing up for like a year. Like, of course, like, fuck off, Heather. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Okay. You're really young. So was this like in the middle of the twilight craze? No. Twilight was end of high school for me. Okay. So this was pre-Twilight. These are creative kids. But there were still those like Laurel K. Hamilton books and stuff. Right. And I think so they, the way they were talking, it was a lot like the, um, oh, Philip Pullman, the Golden Compass series. Oh, I love that series. Such a good series. But like one of them could shape shift into a snow leopard and the other one. I don't remember what she could shape to shift. Well, at least they chose cool stuff to shape shift into. Points for creativity, heathers. But they were like, we're, we're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We

we're immortal or something and then and looking back I'm like why would an immortal ever want to go back to middle school like that would be probably literally last on my list after prison no thank you yeah that's always the hilarious thing about like twilight to me too is like yeah I'm sure this like hundreds of years old immortal is going to go back to high school and and by the way and hit on girls Ew. Gross. Gross. Gross.

Gross. Yes. So Heather, the less dominant Heather has, you know, has a family and kids and is a fairly, like, normal person. And then the dominant Heather, the one that I think was the one that orchestrated all this is not doing so hot. I don't know what she's doing. Oh, yeah, because I had to know.

Like, it's one of those things that, you know, when you're in middle school and there's so many things you just block out of your memory. And it hit me like a lightning strike like a couple years ago and I had to look them up immediately. Yeah. So did it just peter out or did they confess to you they were lying or did you just figure out that they must be lying and just kind of distance yourself from them or what, how did this wrap up? I figured out they must be lying because I was gullible, but I wasn't that gullible. And it kind of just, I just kind of distanced myself from them because I was like, these aren't the kind of people I want to associate with. Right, right, right. Yeah. Oh, that's hysterical. Well, maybe she's doing badly because the council is punishing her. Maybe she's in trouble for telling.

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So if you're ready to podcast like a pro and get paid while doing it, check out spreeker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R dot com. So that's, that is astonishing, and I'm so grateful that you shared that with us. You're all welcome, campers. Anywho, after he'd been out on his own for a few weeks, one day Kyle went to the Maryland Renaissance Fair. This was a really good Renaissance Fair. I used to live in Baltimore. I used to go to that Renaissance Fair.

As a matter of fact, I was probably at that Renaissance Fair this year. year while these people were here. I was probably there that year, which is kind of amazing when I think about it. And this was just right up his street. Kyle was into Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons and Medieval Weaponry, nerd alert.

And at the fair, he met a group of nerds who would change his life forever. And again, as per our intro, when we say nerds, we say it lovingly, we are nerds. Okay? I just said I was probably literally at that exact Renaissance fair that year. I love Dungeons and Dragons. Oh, yeah. And I love Renaissance fairs. That's all. I had a Lord of the Rings themed wedding. So do not come at me, okay? Do not. We had Tolkien quotes on our

invitations, okay? Oh, my God. Yep. Why didn't you invite me? Because I didn't know you yet, love. We can build a time machine and you can be one of my bridesmaids. Actually, I think I was being told the story of the demons when you were getting married. Oh, God. Yes, please take every opportunity to I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just like, oh, no, I would have been 12. Oh, yeah. You could have been the flower girl. Oh, that's cute. Oh, my God. Oh, how cute. Okay. So let me give you the rundown on these nerds. The first was Katie Inglis. Katie had blonde hair and what I'd describe super sensitively as crazy eyes. She really does, too. We'll show you pictures in the case thread on our Facebook page. She had kind of a pouty look about her, not at all in a sexy way, more in a childish, I kind of want to shake you to wake you the hell up kind of way. And Katie was a born follower. The day she met Kyle at the Renaissance Fair, she glommed onto him immediately.

She left Mike, who was her boyfriend, and their other friends, to follow him around the fair. She came on to him and ended up going to third base with him behind some porta-potties. Oh, boy. Oh, boy, howdy. Nothing classier than getting fingered behind some porta pots by a guy in a cat mask. Ooh, doggies. That's a good time at the Renfair. Right?

What the fuck, Katie? You're bringing shame on our name. Shack the guy in the grossest possible place at the Renfair. I know. That's true romance. Go do it over near the, like, jousting area or something where there's some class involved. Right by the porta-potties. Katie didn't usually say much unless someone asked her a question.

Kyle's impression of her early on was that she didn't have any original ideas of her own. Katie was the best friend of Clara Schwartz, the youngest daughter of our victim, Dr. Robert Schwartz. They'd known each other since middle school. Mike, who I mentioned previously, was Mike Foal, Katie's boyfriend, and he was madly in love with her. He was kind of a sad kid. He struggled with depression off and on and made a couple suicide attempts. He actually once got a letter from his shrink that said that the doctor was concerned that Mike was vulnerable to psychosis and schizophrenia. And Mike ignored it.

Well, that's just unfortunate. Yeah, not a great move. Turns out mental illness doesn't just go away. If you ignore it, you should. It really doesn't. Nope. Get help. Yeah. Mike's main pride and joy was his used Honda Civic, which he bought with money his grandmother loaned him. He took meticulous care of it, and he was usually the driver whenever the group went anywhere. What Mike mainly had going for him in his life, though, was the car and his relationship with Katie Inglis. When he met Kyle Holbert at the Renfair, he latched on him right away and almost immediately began deferring to Kyle as the new leader of the group. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. I mean, most people don't have that kind of charisma where they could just waltz right in and almost on day one minute one just become the new de facto like center of the group.

That's pretty bananas. now Mike and Katie had this thing this is unfortunate it's gross again no judgment kind of a little judgment in this case but whatever Mike and Katie liked having sex in front of their friends and apparently the others weren't like huge fans of this and would get up and leave the room but Katie and Mike would still do it's where the judgment comes in it's not that like if it's consensual, go ahead and be an exhibitionist if you're doing it in front of people who like to watch. But if you continuously keep inflicting this on people who every time you do it, say, ew, and leave the room, stop it. Not cool. I guess hopes does bring eternal. Like they thought

like this time. This will be the time that everybody's like, woo-hoo! And the clothes just come off and everybody joins in. The next nerd in our party is Patrick House. Some of the group found Patrick a little odd, and that is saying something coming from this crowd. He used to talk a lot about how he'd once cast a spell that killed 13 people who were trying to kill him. Okay. Sure you did. Sure you did. That's just a perfectly normal thing to say, right? Yeah. Yeah. Did he also turn into a rat and become the beloved house pet of the Weasley family, only to be returned to his master, Lord Voldemort 12 years later? I'm asking for a friend. A friend with a Harry Potter tattoo.

He'd probably look well. I don't know. Maybe he's one of those, I don't like labels people who wouldn't want you like sorting him into Slytherin or wherever he would belong. I don't know. Probably not. He's, I killed 13 people with a spit. That's a Slytherin thing. I don't think a Gryffind or a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff would be killing 13 people.

No. And I love Slytherans. I have my best friends of Slytheran, but I digress. Patrick was dating Clara Schwartz, and he was basically, aside from his oddities, an intelligent guy who liked role-playing games and didn't look for trouble. He was out to have a good time, for the most part. Now, finally, we come to Clara Schwartz, our murder victim's daughter. Clara was, if not the obvious leader of the group of friends, at least the center of them. Everything sort of revolved around her and the RPG she created for them all to play over instant messaging,

which she called Underworld. They played it a lot, and Clara was so absorbed in it that she stayed in character a lot of the time. Nerd! Oh, you're going to love this. She called herself Lord Chaos, the leader of the underworld. Lord Chaos. You have to say it like that Lord Chaos. Lord Chaos.

She was responsible for saving the world from evil wizards who wanted to destroy her and everyone else. she didn't present herself gregariously, but she drew people to her in a quiet way. She was intense, dark, and mysterious. And she most definitely cultivated that. She was really pale with dark hair, and she wore dark clothes. Now, she didn't make attempts to style herself up. She wasn't like a goth princess the way some young women are with like A-plus makeup skills and pretty black clothes. I'm jealous of those girls.

I'm just going to admit it Those like gorgeous goth girls I just look at them like wistful Yeah One day maybe No no Lord Chaos favored thrift store stuff

In his book I'd kill for you Which was one of our main sources for the case Author M. William Phelps described her look as frumpy Oh that's nice M. William God these these male authors are killing us. They just love it, man. It's so funny. Any opportunity to say a woman wasn't pretty, we get it, man. And interestingly,

female true crime authors tend to go the opposite extreme where you get these descriptions of people that you think are going to turn out to look like, you know, Christy Turlington and then you look at a picture, like, oh, it's a pretty girl. But the description was like, you know, she was a rare flower in a world of thorns. Like, okay, she was pretty. We get it. everybody settle down with the descriptions. Just put the flipping pictures in the book and we got it. We get it. But Kyle Holbert noticed right away that Clara looked you right in the eye when you spoke to her.

She never faltered and looked away. You got the sense if you were paying attention that she was always watching people, trying to figure them out, taking mental notes. Gears were turning behind those eyes. Okay, that's creepy, number one. And number two, This is interesting to me because, you know, Clara, she's certainly not an unattractive girl at all. She's just a normal looking girl.

But obviously she did not, she didn't take pains to present herself in a flashy way. She didn't style herself up. She didn't present herself in a, you know, traditionally sexy way. And yet, she drew people to her. She had this magnetic charisma. And even the charisma wasn't loud. You know, when you think of a charismatic person, a lot of the time you think of, somebody who's gregarious and loud and funny and boisterous. But Clara had this quiet,

aloof, sort of chilly charisma. Yeah, she was unassuming. Yeah, but powerful. Like she had a power about her personality that would just draw people to her. And I think that's really interesting. And it also shows that charisma is incredibly powerful, whatever form it takes. And there are different flavors, if you will, of charisma. And even if somebody, isn't, you know, much to look at because they choose not to style themselves up in that way. They choose not to lean on that as a way of drawing people in. They can still be incredibly magnetic. And I just find that kind of fascinating. People have different types of charisma. You know, some people are just smoke shows and they play that up and they're loud and boisterous. And then

you've got Clara over in the corner and she's making you wonder, what's going on in her head? She seems interesting. That was the way she went about it. Yeah. And, there's no doubt that she was intelligent, but she also claimed to have an IQ of 196. And given that this is higher than both Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, and especially given how toweringly stupid she's about to be in the execution of her role in this crime, I'm going to have to go ahead and say bullshit. Bullshit. Yeah. And, okay, even if it is true, IQ doesn't actually mean. anything aside from your ability to learn.

Anyone that bragged about their IQ is either a liar, a con artist, or both. I cannot agree more with this. Like, okay, and I'm not bragging because just hear me out. I have a high IQ. Yeah. And please believe me when I tell you, I am a dumb ass. Like, I cannot read a map. I have massive amounts of trouble with basic math.

Like, I mean, like, basic math. Like, I have to think for a second. And, like, if you ask me to, like, what's eight times seven? I'll get it, but it'll take me a minute. IQ does not mean much. It really just probably means you're a good test taker. Right, exactly. So, I mean, calm down, Clara.

And also, like, that's, like, 30-something points higher than Albert Einstein. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's so specific. She probably thought that would make it seem more accurate or more likely to be true. Yeah.

She thought it would add barrisome. militude to her story. One of the things you learned about Clara Schwartz was that she hated, hated her father. And this wasn't like typical adolescent stuff. This was a deep hatred. Clara wore gloom and doom like an accessory. It was something to add to her mystique. But according to those closest to her, she never actually suffered from or was treated for depression.

She didn't behave like a depressed person. She didn't display any of the clinical signs and symptoms. She just dressed the part and constantly drew her friends in to listen to how terrible her life was and how she hated her dad. And some of that is teenage stuff, but it was like to the inth degree with Clara. Yes. That's not to say she'd never suffered. In fact, Clara had lost her mom to cancer when she was a kid, which I'd imagine would be traumatic for anyone. Absolutely.

Clara was a sour kid growing up. Both her siblings, her sister Michelle and her brother Jesse, were fairly bright and resilient kids who got along well with their dad. did well in school, had goals, and went after them with enthusiasm. But Clara clashed with her dad pretty much from day one, and that only got worse after her mom died. When she hit her teenage years, she went for the black clothes and the Marilyn Manson and the sullen demeanor, and her attitude toward her dad got worse. She seemed deeply, deeply to resent the fact that he expected her to go to school, do her homework, do chores around the house, like, you know, the normal stuff that every parent expects every kid.

little rich girl. Not surprisingly for a straight-laced science guy, Robert Schwartz disapproved of the goth kids Clara brought over to the house. It's not like he told them off or forbid her to bring them around. He just didn't like him. And to Clara, any conflict was betrayal. You were either with her or against her, and almost everyone was against her, in her mind at least. In high school, she began to write obsessively in a journal, and it was 100% gloom and venom. The, her words, betrayal rate among her friends was 80%. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, 80%.

And Clara considered it a betrayal anytime a friend disagreed with her about something. So if she wanted to go to Jack in the Box and they wanted to go to McDonald's, that one in the journal, betrayal. Yeah, this is not an exaggeration. She began to resent Christians and said that she thought of satanic cults as the bright and promising future. But her idea of Satanism was silly and shallow. It seems to have been based on bad horror movies. Like sacrificing babies and silly stuff like that. Like, okay, yes, wise 15-year-old, please guide us to the future with your bright ideas.

Okay, boomer. No, seriously, Katie, clearly Clara was sent to lead us. Yeah. What would we do with daughter to lead us? Yeah. So it seems clear that Clara did experience some bullying in school, but it's hard to say how bad it was, giving her tendency to vastly exaggerate and conflate the smallest disagreement into a massive betrayal. And of course, her tendency to make shit up out of whole cloth, as we'll see in a bit. Interestingly, Clara points to her mother's death as a turning point in her life, as do her surviving family members. But I find this very compelling, and I'm interested to hear what you guys think about it. Clara was actually the one to find her mother's body the day she died.

We couldn't get an exact date on her mother's death, but we got the impression that it happened when Clara was in junior high or early high school. Yeah, I think she was 15, but I wouldn't swear to it. Something like that. Clara was getting ready to catch the school bus that morning, running late, and everyone else had already left for the day. She found her mother's body on the kitchen floor. Oh, my God. Yeah. Rather than calling 911, call her dad at work or call anyone, she ate a bowl of cereal and left for school. She didn't tell anyone there either. Robert Schwartz found his wife's body when he came home from work.

What the hell? So, we can interpret this a couple different ways, campers. It could have been shock, maybe. Or it could be an indication, one among many in the story, I think, of a developing sociopath. Yeah, and this is interesting, too, and you found this study. So not only does it show the kind of usual apathy that you might associate with a budding sociopath, but it also offers another clue. There was a study out of Wales, University of Cardiff, was it?

Yeah, yeah. That showed groups of neurotypical people and sociopaths, graphic images of death, which is charming, I know, and then pleasant images. And when shown the pleasant images, everyone in all the groups had the same reactions. So their pupils dilated. But what happened with the sociopath group? So when the groups were shown, the graphic images, only the neurotypical group had a physical reaction. So there are pupils also dilated.

That's a natural reaction. They think so your eyes will perceive more in the image. because you're having a physical reaction because of the danger you're presumably in. The sociopath group displayed indicators of mild interest. Like, hmm, I've never seen that before. Interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So they were otherwise unmoved. This shows me that she likely came upon the body and didn't see anything but like an object. She was just like, huh, interesting. Well, got to go to school. Yeah. I mean, it certainly is a theory. But, of course, we also have people in her family saying, that she sort of changed and things got worse after her mother's death. So I don't know that

we're saying it didn't impact her. Just that her reaction to finding her mother's body is I think probably a little unusual. But as I said, there are two options here. It could just be shock, a shock reaction, or it could be one possible indicator that maybe we're dealing with somebody who is not having typical, you know, empathetic reactions to something. So most of us would just find absolutely horrifying. Right. I can totally see her brain just shutting off and being like normal, normal, normal, get me back to normal. I can see that too.

Sure, absolutely. It could be kind of almost like a fugue state or something like that. So one journal entry provides a good example of the abuse that Clara claimed her father heaped on her her entire life. She wrote that one night in 1998 when she was 16, she and her dad were alone in the house. Her sister was already away at college and her brother was at his after-school job. Dr. Schwartz asked her to set the table and on the way to do that,

she moved a throw blanket of Dr. Schwartz's off his favorite chair and onto a footstool. And Dr. Schwartz saw that she'd moved it and according to Clara, lost his complete shit. Put that thing back and blah, blah, blah. And she argued with him that it didn't belong on the chair, belonged in the blanket chest, which is kind of interesting given that Clara

was a total slob when it came to her own space. like friends have said her dorm room looked like a hurricane had hit it so the idea that she would be fussy about where a throw blanket went doesn't really ring true to me but this is what she claims and she said her dad grabbed her ponytail and yanked her head back so hard it bent her over backwards and they got into a physical struggle and Clara threatened to call the police and she said that Dr. Schwartz laughed and told her to go right ahead

and then Clara wrote that she said you'd better be careful or my friend will kill you which is very interesting and might be an early seed of what was to come a few years later and he'd threatened to call the cops on her but there are no records of any calls to the police at all like that like at all from that house or from that family but clara wrote that she was quote so fucking scared he's going to fucking kill me so did dr robert swartz who she referred to as o g for old guy abuse clara obviously we were not there So we cannot be 100% sure. But what I can tell you is that Clara had two siblings pretty close to her in age.

Both of them have said there was zero abuse in that house. Neither of them ever witnessed their father behaving abusively toward Clara. They never had him behave that way toward them. He worked a lot. He was focused on his job. But according to them, he was at the heart a loving dad who wanted his kids to reach their potential. And her sister Michelle tells a story that she considers to be a good illustration. of her relationship with her dad.

She remembers him dancing around the house with her to Cindy Lopper song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which is such a sweet image, you know, and I just, I have trouble squaring up that image of Robert Schwartz with the picture that Clara painted in her journal entries and to the two young men

that she tried to talk into killing him. Jesse said his dad was always somebody he could talk to and go to with his problems, so this does not sound to me like an abuser. Now, is it possible that he could have just abuse Clara and not his other two kids. Some child abusers actually do pick a preferred victim and heap most of the abuse onto them. But I have a really hard time believing that a man who has so little control over his anger

that he would blaze into absolute insane rage over Clara moving a throw blanket would be able to confine that to one kid or that he'd be able to confine it to times when he was alone with Clara so that the other two children would never have seen one. one instance of abuse one time ever or overheard anything that i find hard to swallow it just doesn't seem realistic to me that he could have concealed it like that that said there are a couple of people who paint robert as a less than ideal father so clara's aunt joan who was her mom's sister and uncle pat who was dr schwartz's brother portray robert as a very private man who refused to let the kids get therapy after their mom's death, which obviously is not great. But his argument

was he wanted to work through the grief as a family. And, you know, I think that's absolutely wrongheaded. I think therapy is a good thing. And I think he should have let them get grief counseling, encouraged them to get grief counseling. But that's not that uncommon of you for men of his generation to think, we've got to keep things private and we can solve our own problems. Again, wrongheaded, in my opinion, but not that unusual. and he repeated the same thing to his brother Pat after Pat found Clara on the computer in what he called a quote

grotesque chat room about murder clutch the pearls oh no yeah I'm gonna have to confess to being in some of those chat rooms myself in the past sorry yeah we've looked at murder stories ourselves a few times Uncle Pat

but Robert asked Pat to bow out he said look Claire is my responsibility I don't want to discuss it Aunt Joan said Robert was impatient but neither of them said he was an abuser. So even these two people in the family who had criticisms of him certainly did not ever say he abused anyone.

But Clara told anyone who would listen about what a monster her father was. And by the time Kyle Holbert came into her life in 2001, she'd been working on her boyfriend Patrick for weeks, spinning tales of the worst possible abuse you can imagine and floating the idea that Patrick might kill him for her. So we're going to break it there for Part 1, Campers. since we release both parts of a case on the same day,

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