True Crime Campfire - Episode 18: Clara Schwartz: When Nerds Attack Pt. 2

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

Join Katie and Whitney for part 2 of this bizarre story of manipulation and murder. 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. So, campers, when we left you at the end of part one, quietly charismatic Clara Schwartz was regaling her friends about what a terrible, abusive nightmare her father was. You know, he expected her to go to class and whatnot. How dare he? And she'd started working on her boyfriend Patrick, asking him if he'd be willing to kill her dad for her. A storm was brewing in this group of kids who, despite all their fantasies, had never done anything more dramatic than put on their elf ears and hang out at the Renaissance Fair. Clara was determined to get what she wanted, no matter who she had to step on to do it. This is part two of When Nerds Attack, the murder of Dr. Robert Schwartz. Now, as I said earlier, she created this role-playing game called Underworld that they all played via instant message.

This was 2001, so early-ish days of the internet. She based the world on a bastardized version of Norse mythology. She assigned all her friends' roles in the game, so her boyfriend, friend Patrick was Path, a barred assassin, protector of Lord Chaos. Katie, by the way, was Aurel, which is such a pretty name. She would take over if Lord Chaos was incapacitated, which is kind of hilarious, given that Katie Inglis had about as much personality and assertiveness as a log, but okay, and this made Katie feel important, and that was one more way that Clara could manipulate her.

So that was probably a smart move on Clara's part. By the way, this naming people thing is a way to separate someone from their own identity. Colts often give their members new names, and how she called her dad, OG, seems like a good way to dehumanize him, not only in her eyes, but in the eyes of her friends. Yeah, that's actually really good. Both of those are really good points. So it might be a way to kind of dehumanize her dad, to just call him old guy. And certainly she didn't want to call him dad or daddy. Those are affectionate names. And as you say, yeah, Colt. Colts. Cults will rename people and everything. So that's not really interesting. So one night Clara, Katie, and Patrick went to Applebee's, like you do, to celebrate all three of their birthdays, which were close. Clara had just turned 19. And Clara had been telling Patrick over and over that she wanted him to do something about her father. He needed to live up to his title of protector. And at one point during the meal, Katie overheard Clara say to Patrick,

when are you going to do something about my father? And Patrick said, I need to see him once more. kind of a weird little snatch of conversation and they ordered steaks and when they arrived Clara took a bite of hers and she made a face and she said to the waitress this is rare fucking raw this is not what I ordered bring me

another one like a freaking Roman emperor you know I imagine she waved her hand in the air so the poor waitress goes off okay to get her another steak cooked the way she wanted it brought it back steak number two Clara tried it and this woman spit it out onto the table like an animal

and said, fucking rare. Wow. Wow. And the story is so interesting to me because it's so clear in this entire story that Clara feels very entitled. She seemed to feel that the world owed her big, and this is just more evidence of that.

So this poor waitress brought her a third steak. Just imagine, perfectly good steaks, just probably getting thrown in the trash. It just kills me. I hate food waste. Oh, God. So she tries the third steak, and again, spits it out.

this is bullshit. So waste in perfectly good food like a freaking animal. And, well, animals don't waste food, but you know what I mean? Like spitting it out on the table. And at this point, she told the server to just forget it. And the waitress, who I'm sure was very grateful to be done with this awful, awful woman, walked away, hopefully to go back to the kitchen and laugh about how much saliva

Clara had just ingested. So she had Patrick taste it. And Patrick said, oh, nasty. There's something wrong with. it. And then he said, I shit you not. I think it's a drug specifically targeted for assassins. I think it's a drug specifically targeted for assassins. What? Okay. And Patrick was an assassin in the game. Now, how this made a damn bit a sense given that this was Clara's stake, I don't know, but we are not dealing with stable

individuals here, clearly. No, no, no, no. Clara said, it's obviously been poisoned. And Mike tasted it, tried it. Obviously, he wasn't buying the poison theory. And he said, it's fine to me. But, oh, no.

They were already off and running on the poison theory. And Clara said, what I've got to figure out is how my father got in touch with this cook and was able to pull it off. So, the theory here, if I understand it, is that somehow her dad or a trained assassin working for

him had infiltrated the line cooks at Applebee's. Just, holy shit. So the most hilarious thing about this to me by far is that they all decided to go to TGI Fridays for dessert. So I guess Dr. Schwartz didn't have an inn at TGI Fridays. Just, I shit you not. You guys, we're not making this up. No, it's so good. These freaking nerds from hell.

and there are pages and pages of instant message conversations between Patrick and Clara about killing OG about hemlock, about suicides that could be made to look like murder, about holding a gun on Dr. Schwartz and making him write a suicide note and then forcing him to drink milk laced with hemlock, etc. And by the way, where do you think you're getting hemlock, you fucking weirdos, whole foods? Hemlock.

Of course, it can't just be like rat poised. or anti-free, like something pedestrian like that. It's got to be something gothy and dramatic and tweets. Obviously. For God's sake. But Patrick wasn't a killer. He played along sometimes and is very

possible that he did consider killing Dr. Schwartz for Clara at some stage. But from chatwogs between the two of them, it seems pretty clear that by the time Kyle Holbert entered the picture, Patrick was at least thinking about looking for an exit ramp from this relationship with Clara. And who can blame him?

because she is, she's a lot of work. During one instant message session, she chided him for not being around for a few days, and he made what sounds a lot like a very, very fake excuse about his car being in the shop. Yeah, sure, Patrick. And she chided him for dropping the ball in his role as protector, you know. So Patrick, it turns out, wasn't a perfect tool.

Kyle Holbert was a different story. So despite his at the time untreated schizophrenia, Kyle had a strong personality, and he always felt an active, very protective of his friends. He was somebody who was in many ways vulnerable due to his mental health issues and the instability of his life situation, but he didn't seem to feel that. And he admits that he has a narcissistic personality and a deep need to be admired. In fact, he now says he realizes that the only person he knows whose ego rivals his own is Clara Schwartz. But we'll get to that. And as you said, Kyle quickly became the...

the leader in this new group of friends, almost immediately, in fact, or at least that's how it looked. In actuality, as we'll soon see, Clara was the one pulling the strings. She just did it quietly and subtly. So Kyle and Clara began spending a lot of time together, and they got really close, really fast. Clara sought him out every chance she got. She'd take his hand as they walked places together, which was rare for her. She wasn't a touchy-feely person, and she wrote in her journal that she despised it when her friends tried to hug her or touch her. So that was really rare for her and I think for her this was a way to make Kyle feel needed and protective and just as always a way to manipulate him for her to act out of character like that.

And when Kyle told her I had a rough childhood, Clara uncharacteristically said, tell me. This was out of character for her again because she didn't usually show much interest in other people's lives. she was too busy talking about herself. But she listened very carefully to Kyle's stories. And he told her all about the foster homes and institutions. He told her about his psychiatric issues. And he told her about the rival vampires that were after him and anyone with him. He called them the others.

And he claimed that he could smell them when they were around, which is interesting and kind of gross. I imagine they smelled like pennies. Yeah. This was likely very real to him, given his schizophrenia and the fact that he was off his meds. Kyle was not a fan of drugs, like illicit drugs, so he didn't, you know, use LSD or, you know, anything like that. He didn't need that on top of the other issues that he had was his feeling. Kyle didn't believe his hallucinations and delusions were hallucinations and delusions.

He saw them as visions of real events. He believed that he could enter and exit the Seeley Court, which is the fictional land of the fairy or a cartoon world, places of good versus evil. So very clear-cut moralities in these places that he believed he could inhabit. Kyle told Clara he knew about the Seeley court and the world from Magic the Gathering before he'd ever heard of them, since he was five. This is why he believed all of this was real. And Clara saw Kyle's belief in these fantasy beings, his belief in good and evil, dramatic battles, and all that. And of course, his paranoia as an opening.

She had a live one on Kyle. She assigned him the role of protector in the underworld game. The most important role to protect Lord Chaos. So, so manipulative. So effective for a guy like Kyle who got off

on being needed. The others could step into and out of the fantasy world of the RPG, but Kyle couldn't. Kyle believed in this shit. It dovetailed with his apocalyptic visions. Clara soon began opening up to Kyle, telling him things she said she'd never told anyone else. Kyle told her he'd been bullied.

Clara said she had two, viciously. Kyle was outraged on her behalf. Kyle had been sexually abused at 12, and he shared that with Clara one day. Once he told her about this and expressed his strong feelings about authority figures who take advantage of children like that, Clara shared her own story. Again, it should be said that there has never, never been a shred of evidence or corroboration for any of this. We have no way of knowing for sure, but we admit to having doubts about whether any of this ever happened, given what Clara's siblings have said about their dad and what Robert Schwartz was like as a dad. She also told Kyle she was receiving death threats.

And he'll never guess who from. Gee, I wonder. Yeah, that's a thinker. What was going on behind the scenes, of course, was that Dr. Schwartz was aware of how bad Clara was crashing and burning at JMU. She was barely going to class, not doing her work, and her grades were reflecting that. Dr. Schwartz was telling her that if she didn't want to go to class and apply herself, he wasn't going to subsidize her anymore.

She was going to have to drop out of school and get a job to take care of herself. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. Now, Mike and Katie had heard all of her, my dad is a monster stuff, ad nauseum. And Mike especially was tired of hearing it. he just wanted to bone Katie and play magic and not have to worry about any of this stuff. He was a simple man, Mike. Yeah, right?

But Kyle was a new set of ears, and Clara laid it on thick. In hindsight, Kyle now realizes that Clara didn't seem like someone who had been through the severe abuse she claimed she had. He didn't see that clearly at the time, but now he does. She didn't do drugs. She didn't drink heavily. No self-destructive behavior. No signs of PTSD. but at the time he didn't see that.

He was attracted to her. More intellectually than physically, they gave it a go sexually a couple of times, but it was half-hearted. He had no physical attraction to her, and he was involved with another girl at the time. He had what he now calls a superficial interest in women. He had a specific type, and Clara was not it.

Plus, she was still dating Patrick House, though she never told Kyle that or talked about their relationship. to Kyle. For a while that fall, Clara was working both Patrick and Kyle separately. But soon, Patrick had enough. He was starting to realize that Clara might actually be dead serious about wanting her dad killed, and he didn't want any part of it. He came around less and less, and Clara focused her efforts on Kyle. Clara also capitalized on Kyle's belief in the supernatural. She hinted she had powers. They met right after 9-11, and one day Clara brought up the terrorist. attacks. She said, you know, 9-11? Which, you know 9-11? Yeah, you know the, like, yeah,

that thing that happened like really recently and that was devastating. Yeah. Yes, I know it. And Kyle was like, uh, yeah, what about it? And Clara said, I did that. I have a list of the chemicals used in making the planes crash. I think Lord Chaos may have been responsible. Oh, wow. So gross. That is so gross that she used such a terrible. tragedy to further her stupid little agenda. It's just shame on you, you narcissist little prick. Now, there's an important contrast between Kyle and Clara. Kyle was genuinely struggling with mental illness, often unable to tell hallucinations

and paranoia from reality, and he really did have residual effects from trauma he'd suffered during his years in foster care. Clara wore her gloom and doom in uncorroborated abuse stories like accessories and used them to manipulate him and Patrick. Kyle didn't see that, though. He thought he and Clara were genuinely connecting. Her confiding in him fed his ego and his need to be needed. And I think that blinded him to what was really going on. Namely, that she was playing him like a grand piano. Kyle was a mark for Clara from day one. And the first time Kyle met OG, Clara's dad did nothing to undo the bias.

Dr. Schwartz reacted to Kyle as many parents would if their daughter brought home a guy like Kyle. Eragon attitude, bad hygiene from not washing his clothes very often, and Kyle kept glaring at him. Another time, after staying up all night, Kyle asked Mike to drive him to Clara's dad's house, where he knew she was staying. It was 7 a.m. when he knocked on... Oh, hell no. Uh-uh, not on my watch. Don't you dare.

show up at my door 7 a.m. Your house better be on fire. Donking on the door. Yeah. That's crazy. And woke him up asking for Clara. I mean, obviously a parent's not going to love that. Of course not. As the weeks and months went by and Kyle became less and less reliable about taking his meds and following up with his doctors, his mental health got worse. One night, the group gathered in Clara's dorm room to watch a movie. Everyone but Kyle fell asleep. He sensed the others were closing in, the bad vamps. Kyle picked up his sword, which he always carried with him. And he now knows this was a hallucination, but author M. William Phelps says that you couldn't tell. It's hard for him to admit that it's not a real memory. He still believes

vampires are real. It seems real to him. And he says he started to fall asleep but was startled awake by a noise outside. A voice saying, get up. He could smell the others. And he felt a battle between vampires was about to go down. And always the protector, because I think his ego fed on that, not necessarily because I think he was such a kind, hard guy. He didn't want his friends to be in the middle of it. So he picked up his sword and went outside. Maybe this battle would be the final step to his becoming a full vampire. He wasn't quite there yet, despite all the blood drinking and whatnot. I blame that girl from the goth club. Yeah. With the pricked finger. She held him back.

100%. Yeah. That stays on your record for a long time, I think. Exactly. So he wandered onto a construction site on campus. And according to Kyle, he fought an epic battle with some of the bad vamps that night. It was all very dramatic and Buffy the Vampire like. And he ended up staking the main bad vamp while the others ran away. And as he had him down on the ground with a wooden dowel sticking out of his chest he said stay out here where the sun will get you in the morning your kind will know better now than to fuck with me oh god and then he just went back to the dorm room and fell asleep well okey dokey okey dokey the morning after the vampire battle kyle and clara went to the store to get a snack and a drink i know after a good vampire battle i always want

and apple juice and graham crackers. Of course. And as they were walking to the corner store for their snack, they were fire trucks right where Kyle claimed to have staked the vampire the night before, which, of course, did nothing but reinforce his delusion. He confessed everything to Clara. And this must have been a total delight to her. Oh, yeah.

And she jumped right on board. Note, if she'd actually given a shit about her supposed new best friend, she would have recognized that he was in the midst of a serious mental health crisis. She would have tried to get him some help. Instead, she played right into his delusion, enthusiastically. You protected me, Kyle, she said. She's the worst. Oh, God.

And then she said, my dad once tried to poison me with a lemon. I'm sorry, what? Okay. Okay. And then she waved her hand over her drink and said some incantations under her breath. She said, taste this now. Kyle tasted it. And he says the drink tasted like blood, which I assume blew his mind.

And Clara said, someday I'll teach you how to do that. Wow. And I would like for her to teach me how to do that because obviously she did not turn Kyle's drink or her drink into blood. So this was all in Kyle's mind, which means that she had a pretty powerful, you know, power of suggestion. going on there, which is really interesting and creepy. Right. And this also shows that these kids had way too much time on their hands. Oh, my God, right?

How about getting a job? How about getting a hobby that's not this? Like literally anything but this. So as fall moved towards winter, Clara worked on Kyle. One day, she just came out bluntly and said, I want the OG dead. Kyle said, that's a big thing. I'm not sure I can do that for you. Clara said, well, let's put that away for a future time.

And Kyle went like, sure, we'll talk about another time. So matter of fact. Let's just put a pin in that for now. We'll reschedule this discussion for later. Jeez, Louise, that is disturbing. And the friends wanted to rent a house together, but none of them had much money. and Clara told them you know if the OG dies

I'll inherit about $400,000 and she also told him she was worried the OG was going to cut her out of his will so yikes right and one night Clara called over to Mike and Katie's where Kyle was staying she was looking for Kyle and Katie told her

he wasn't around because he was too wrapped up in his new girlfriend Clara hadn't thought he was very serious about this girl and this seems to have worried her like uh oh we can't have him you know, putting his attentions elsewhere. Because right after this call, Clara really ramped up the pressure on Kyle. She called him crying constantly, laid the abuse stories on, just thicker than cake frosting.

See, now I want cake. Why do I have to say that? She had code language that she used during the instant messages, and this is just so nerdy. I can't even stand it. The word for kill was Tay. So she would say, the OG is going to tae me. I don't know where she came up with that. What an uncrackable code.

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That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. I suspect she did this to prevent getting caught if police ever searched her chat logs after her dad's death. And one night she told Kyle that the OG had tried to tay her in the family pool by pulling her down under the water. Again, that'd be just an uncrackable code

for the cops there, Clara. You and your 196 IQ, was it? So more signs of her manipulation. She tried to get Kyle off instant message as often as possible to talk about the OG and the possibility of killing him. Again, most likely thinking about not wanting to leave like a cyber trail of evidence. I think you mean the possibility of taeing him. Yes, the possibility of taeing him. So when Thanksgiving of 01 rolled around, Clara asked her dad if she could invite Kyle to dinner.

And Dr. Schwartz said, sure, sure, you know, you can bring your friend to dinner. And as Kyle always did, he brought his name. knife. And at some point during the visit, Dr. Schwartz looked over and noticed that Kyle was carrying this knife concealed under his jacket. And as you can imagine, this made him uncomfortable. And he told Clara, look, I don't want you to bring that guy over anymore. He kind of freaks me out. And I wonder, based on this, if he sensed on some level the danger that he was in, which is not uncommon at all, as I'm sure you guys know, in murder cases. Victims often verbalized to somebody before the murder. You know, I think somebody is trying to kill me, or if anything happens to me, look at this person or whatever.

So, I mean, maybe I'm just projecting that, and maybe that wasn't what he meant. But it definitely freaked him out, and he said, I don't want that kid around anymore. And shortly after this, this is off the chain. So Clara was still at her dad's. I think it was like maybe the day after Thanksgiving or sometime that weekend. So she's staying, you know, at the Stonehouse with her dad and her siblings. And Kyle and Mike and Katie roll up to pick her up to go out to McDonald's or something. She came running out, and she had a pork chop wrapped in like a dish towel.

And she was like, drive, drive. And she said, the OG has poisoned this. He's trying to tame me again. And she handed this pork chop to Kyle and said, taste this, taste this. And when Kyle tasted it, it was absolutely disgusting. He said it burned his tongue. So what I strongly suspect is that she put something on it. Right. Or maybe had wrapped it up a few weeks earlier and had just been keeping it under the bed or something.

Yeah, it's disgusting, I know. And handed it to him, and this was her evidence, you know, that O.G. was trying to kill her slash taher. And Kyle, I mean, it was disgusting. So, of course, this just reinforces all of this for him that his friend is in danger. And again, he's getting further and further from his last dose of meds. His hallucinations and voices and stuff are ramping up and up. and as fall turned into winter Clara ramped up the pressure and ramped up the pressure on Kyle and it was really starting to wear him down and when he got stressed his mental health deteriorated further he remembers having a vivid hallucination one night

of the OG abusing Clara and when he came back to himself he was crying and one of his advisor gods was in the room so he had these voices that were like immortal powerful beings that advised him and this God said to him killing him would be a violation of your desiderotum

but Kyle said it would do his desideratum no good to let his friend keep being abused either and possibly murdered so he was conflicted Clara's problems were filling out just about every waking moment of his life now and Clara also said by the way that one of her siblings had tried to kill her too now I know that's bollocks I know that didn't happen

that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever but that's what she told him so Kyle finally decided okay I'm going to scare him I'm going to go and just put the fear of God into this man so he'll never hurt Clara again

and that's what his original plan was he was just going to go and threaten them basically and say don't ever touch my friend again or I'm going to the police or whatever but then Clara called him in a panic one night and she said that OG was planning to take her and her siblings on a trip to the Virgin Islands over Christmas and for some reason and she was just absolutely convinced,

she said, that his plan was to kill her in the Virgin Islands. And she was just hysterical. He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me. I'm never going to come back alive. And Kyle reassured her like, look, there's not going to be any trip. Just stay here with me. You don't have to go.

You're safe. And he had spoken to a friend of his about the situation. This was an older friend that he looked up to. And the guy had told him, look, you need to go to the police. But Kyle didn't want to do that. he was afraid of alerting the OG that they were on to his plans to kill Clara, number one. Dr. Schwartz was a chemist, and Kyle figured he has access to all kinds of poisons, and some of them might be undetectable. But I think what this was really about is that Kyle had a deep need to be the big man.

Sure. He had a deep need to be the protector. He himself admits this that this was important to him. So I think that probably had more to do with why he didn't call the cops than anything else. just for the love of God call the cops please if you're ever in a situation like this they're imperfect

we acknowledge that very much so but please don't try to handle a situation like this yourself well this is that's exactly what happened with the puppet master and the Prince of Darkness Bill Bradfield oh absolutely 100% if you've listened to season one of our show which if you haven't you should because it's bananas but same situation

so now we come up to December 8th 2001 it was rainy muddy cold gross day and Kyle didn't have a car so he relied on Mike foal to drive him everywhere and Mike was by the way certain to get really tired of this and tonight was no exception Mike and Katie agreed to drive Kyle over to the stone house which is where Dr. Schwartz lived so on the way out he grabbed his sword she always had with him when he went anywhere at one point by the way he had gotten a for carrying it in a mall which not smart no and yeah like that's just a huge weapon that you just have in your hand in a shopping mall like that's gonna make people nervous anyway so kyle says that his plan was just to confront robert schwartz about the abuse so kyle knocked on the door he told dr swartz he needed something that clara had left in her bedroom upstairs and dr swartz said okay, you know, you can come in and get it, probably against his better judgment. Once inside, Kyle confronted Dr. Swartz with all of Clara's stories about abuse and poison and the pork chop and everything. And Dr. Swartz was just completely stunned.

And his reaction was to laugh, just at the complete absurdity of it, I'm sure. This was probably not the ideal response, because this made Kyle furious. They got into a heated argument. Kyle claims that Robert Schwartz told him to get out, and when he didn't immediately move to leave, he says that Dr. Schwartz pushed him toward the door, and Kyle just snapped. And he claims that after the initial stab,

he just blacked out and doesn't remember the rest of it. Okay, but an armed kid, adult man, actually, he's not a kid. An armed adult shows up at your house and starts babbling and I imagine threatening you if the conversation got heated. You can be forgiven for getting physical, I think. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you're in your own home and somebody's yelling at you and has a sword and is accusing

you of a bunch of stuff that you didn't do. And yeah. So, and I'm sure Kyle was scary as hell that night. 100%. And really intense. I mean, he was intense at the best of times and he was probably doubly intense right now. And by the way, while Kyle was stabbing Dr. Schwartz 29 times, and Katie, we're just making out in Mike's car.

Just waiting. Are they characters in a slasher film? Keep it in your fucking pants. They were all... Those two kids, they were like bunnies. What? Just all day, every day. Mikey just at each other all the time. They must have had a great sex life.

I guess? All day every day. What the hell? I don't know. It's just ghoulish to me that that's what they were doing while this poor man was losing his life. So, anyway, they're in the middle of that, and kind of... came back to the car all disheveled and his sword and his coat were bloody and they could clearly see that he very quickly took off his trench coat and shoved it into the trunk of mike's car and he said nobody was home which i shouldn't laugh it's not there's nothing funny about this but like it's so unconvincing like okay then why are you covered in blood if nobody was home imagine he's covered in icing and he's like oh the cake wasn't there that's right that's the comedic of it It's like, oh, he wasn't home, but I've covered in his bodily fluids. No reason for all this red liquid all over me.

But Mike and Katie got nervous. I mean, they clearly saw the blood, and they're thinking, did Kyle actually do what Clara has been talking about for, like, months? And then, so Kyle gets in the car, and they start the car, and now they can't get the car out. The car is stuck in the mud. So, again, there's nothing funny about this murder. it's a horrible murder but holy shit like how dumb so dumb you possibly be they got the car stuck in

the mud it was the rocking of the car oh probably yeah the car was a rocking and it just sort of sidled it down into the mud so it's keystone killers time kyle kyle again covered in blood kyle went to one of the schwartz's neighbor's house to call a tow truck it's night time it's rainy and muddy and cold and Kyle goes to a neighbor and says hey can I use your phone calls a tow truck and the tow truck driver shows up he's immediately struck by the strangeness of this scene these kind of oddly dressed kids and there's this heavy tension in the air among them and then Katie bless her little heart used her credit card to pay which just oh my god wow that's dumb with your name on it good job like right down the road from where this bloody murder you at least suspect a bloody murder has just taken place and Kyle just stood right there and let her do it so it's not like he said hey maybe cash maybe we should go to an ATM

no credit card okay so when the murder hit the news the tow truck driver remembered the odd call from the odd kids that night and called the cops this led them to Katie Inglis who of course as kids always do sang like a canary with about an ounce of pressure like it was like they sat down like Katie we have some questions for you you know like yeah that's how be under no illusions about that okay if there are any

teenagers listening and you're perhaps one of those kids whose mom has just told you Britney you can't see Mike anymore your little shitty teenage mustache boyfriend that you think is the love of your life you know and you're 15 years old please girl trust me when I tell you number one you will get caught instantly if you you try and murder your parents. Correct. You will have no money and no means of supporting yourselves. You will get caught within a week, probably sooner.

And the love of your life with the stash, he will roll on you instantly. It happens every time, okay? We've seen enough of those cases, and parents just don't tell her she can't see him anymore. It never works out. Just let her realize on his own what a chode he is. Yeah. Because she will. She's not going to marry her high school boyfriend.

Just don't worry about that. Just let her realize for herself. That's my not having any children of my own. My parenting advice for you listeners. Yeah, don't tell Brittany she can't see her teenage mustache boyfriend. It's just not going to end well. Now if he's an adult. So that seems to always be the motive.

Yeah, I mean, if he's also 15 or whatever. So anyway, Katie Inglis gave it up immediately. And they searched Mike's house where Kyle had been staying and found his sword, which by the way, I can't believe I forgot to tell you this. He called Nightshade. nerd alert he named the sword nightshade and nightshade was freshly cleaned and hidden which was weird because he took that thing everywhere so why was it hidden

mike and katie at first tried to pretend that they didn't know what kyle was going to do that night but eventually they both admitted yeah we knew and of course eventually they rolled over on clara as well and forensically they found dr schwartz's DNA on nightshade, and on Kyle's trench coat, plus they searched Kyle's computer and found dozens and dozens and dozens of IM logs. So all those chats about taeing the OG, yeah, those were there. So good job, guys. Again, Keystone Killers. And, you know, it's interesting, everybody involved in this confessed, and Mike and Katie actually apologized.

except Clara. Clara was not going to give an inch. She said all her talk about the OG was just fantasy. It was just part of the underworld game. She didn't mean anybody to take it seriously. Kyle must have done this on his own. How terrible. He's a terrible person. And you know he's very mentally ill.

Wow. And he feels very protective of me. He must have thought I was serious, but he should have known I wasn't. And she maintained her allegations against her dad. But of course I didn't want him dead. So she was not going to give it up. But Kyle pled eventually. He was like, all right, you know, I did it.

I'm going to go ahead and come clean. And he ended up getting a deal. He was sentenced to life without parole instead of death. Mike pled and got 18 years. Katie got the lightest sentence at one year, which is kind of odd given that they were both there. Right. But, you know, Katie got a year. Clara Schwartz was the only one

to stick to her guns and go to trial and of course her defense was it was all Kyle, he did it on his own I told him about my dad abusing me and he took this upon himself and they hammered home how mentally illy was and everything which I think is particularly horrifying that she latched onto

and used his mental illness right away as a tool for her own ends and then she has the damn nerve to get up there and have her whole defense be, oh, this guy's very mentally ill, you know. Right. And by the way, may I just say, I'm sorry, I just want to say it before I forget that, you know, people with mental health issues are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

And I don't think that gets said enough because there's such a stigma surrounding mental illness. And I really do think that part of that stigma is that people with mental health issues are dangerous and scary. and Clara's defense very much capitalized on that and I think that's disgusting given that she used that against him she used that to manipulate him and then she used it against him

to try to get herself off which is just horrifying she perfectly laid down these breadcrumbs for him to follow straight to the door of her dad's house and I couldn't agree with you more about the mental illness thing

not only is it a provable fact but every part of Kyle's story is so goddamn tragic Oh, absolutely. It's really sad. And if one thing had gone right in his life, it would be a completely different story. Absolutely. And he did actually have some bright spots, you know, growing up. I mean, the facility where he was for a lot of his child was actually a nice one. You hear a lot of horror stories about, you know, mental institutions and stuff. But the people there loved him and he had a kind of a caseworker who he was really close to and was kind of like a maternal figure for him. And he had one foster mom who was just wonderful to him and everything. And then, of course, he had one at least.

really terrible experience as well but it wasn't all darkness and he was obviously very very smart and charismatic and his story could have ended very differently right and clara had to come into his life and decide that he was worth nothing more than a tool for her own use sure and this is what manipulative people who do not have empathy for others do so yeah i'm not a big fan of uh Ms. Claire Schwartz. So, fortunately, Clara was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and sentenced to 48 years in prison. Her appeals have thus far been denied. She's 37 years old now, which is interesting. So, Camper's, was Clara paranoid? Her diaries reveal a tendency to think people didn't care about or understand her.

She tended to believe the worst of people. But was she paranoid on a clinical level? As in, did she have a paranoid personality? I don't think so. And I'll tell you why. I don't believe that she believed her dad was planning to kill her at all. I think her manipulativeness shows us that. I think that nonsense with the pork shop shows us that. And the...

I just don't buy it. The steak. She had a thing with meat. She sure did. It's so weird. And also the day after Kyle's vampire battle shows. that she saw a perfect target and she jumped on it. Yeah.

Oh, for sure. And I just think that that manipulation to me says she knew exactly what she was doing. She was, you know, selling a bill of goods. I don't think she believed she was in any danger. No. So I think she was a very negative person and a very gloom and doom person, a very misanthropic person. Oh, and sure. A paranoid personality, no.

The fact that she couldn't help mention. what she was going to inherit and her fear of him writing her out of the well. And the fact that she frankly was so lazy, she wasn't going to class, which, I mean, despite being very bright, I mean, some of her high school teachers have said she was very smart and everything, but she just didn't want to go to class and she didn't want to work. Right. And her dad was telling her, look, I'm going to make you get a job. If you're not going to go to class, I'm not going to just pay for you to just mess around

with your friends and play this video game or this role-playing game, which is completely reasonable. Absolutely. I mean, she's 19 years old. She's grown. So either go to class and apply yourself or get a job. And Clara was not having that. Right. So hell of a story. Right, campers. Yeah, this is a crazy one, I think. Nerds are usually harmless folks like us who just want to pursue our passions and play our games and go to our conventions and cosplay as our favorite characters. Right on. But once in a while, nerds attack. so be careful out there fellow nerdlings we love you we too we'll have another one for you next week as always but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again

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