Court papers depict Clara Jane Schwartz as a sullen college student consumed with anger toward her father. She felt persecuted by his disapproval of her clothes and her friends. She said he punched her and poisoned her food.
Kyle Hulbert dreamed of being a warrior, a protector. After years of psychiatric treatment, his 18th birthday brought a release from social services but not from hallucinations of vampires and dragons.
They met a year ago at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and friendship came instantly. A few months later, on Dec. 8, Hulbert confronted Robert Schwartz about the alleged abuse of his daughter and stabbed him with a 27-inch sword, according to court records.
"He deserved to die," Hulbert wrote in a statement to police. "Clara is now safe."
In a trial scheduled to begin tomorrow in Loudoun County Circuit Court, jurors will decide whether Robert Schwartz, a well-known biophysicist, was killed in a plot orchestrated by his youngest daughter, or whether Hulbert, who has struggled with mental illness for most of his life, mistook his friend's angst for an order to kill.
Advertisem*nt
Clara Schwartz, 20, is the first of four codefendants to go to trial on charges they conspired to carry out the killing. Her case will provide a window into the world of the teenage outcasts who bonded through shared obsessions with fantasy and the supernatural.
In a statement to police, Clara Schwartz, who was a student at James Madison University, called herself a pagan "priestess of high chaos." Hulbert, who lived in Millersville, Md., fancied himself a vampire and a ninja warrior and was a member of a self-described coven, a group interested in witchcraft.
The pair talked on the phone, chatted through Internet instant messages and hung out with Clara Schwartz's friend from high school, Katherine Inglis, 20 -- who will be a key prosecution witness -- and Inglis's boyfriend, Michael Pfohl, 21. The group became fiercely loyal. They called each other brother and sister.
"We're social within the anti-social," Clara Schwartz told police.
Clara Schwartz, the youngest of three children, had trouble fitting in at school and even at home, friends and family said. She was a member of the history club and marching band at Loudoun Valley High School and a Civil War buff, but some classmates found her odd because she often spoke of death, suicide and self-mutilation.
Family members said Clara Schwartz suffered from manic depression, according to court documents. When her mother died in 1997 after a long battle with cancer, she had a difficult time coping and her relationship with her father soured.
Excerpts from her journal show that anger toward her father had been brewing for years. Authorities said Clara Schwartz showed Hulbert some of her writings, in which she calls her father "OG," short for Old Guy.
Advertisem*nt
"I feel the utmost hatred for him," Clara Schwartz wrote in an entry dated Sept. 3, 1998. "I hope he rots in Hell (if it exists) and I hope he suffered and understands how psychotic his actions on Earth have become."
According to notes made by sheriff's investigators, she said in an interview that Hulbert talked about killing her father but that she thought he was "venting."
"Maybe deep down I thought [Kyle] might have done it, but in my heart of hearts I thought he was just talking," she said.
But investigators wrote that she also said: "I want to go straight. In my heart of hearts I knew [Hulbert] was going to do that."
Prosecutors say that Clara Schwartz not only knew Hulbert was going to kill her father, but that she put him up to it. They allege that she searched for months to find someone to carry out the killing and, after another friend refused, found a willing partner in Hulbert.
Advertisem*nt
Clara Schwartz told Hulbert that her father poisoned pork chops he cooked for her and laced lemons she ate with sulfuric acid. Members of the Schwartz family declined to comment for this article but have said they knew Robert Schwartz as a caring father. Inglis and Pfohl were skeptical of her claims of abuse, but Hulbert believed her.
"I have always told Clara that I would protect her," Hulbert wrote in his statement to detectives. "I thought about killing him when the visions got out of control. I could no longer sleep without seeing him doing something to Clara."
Clara Schwartz's attorneys, Corinne J. Magee and James G. Connell, have said in pretrial hearings that the evidence does not show that Clara Schwartz plotted to have her father killed. They have suggested they will argue that Hulbert, because of his mental illness, misinterpreted his conversations with Clara Schwartz and acted on his own.
Advertisem*nt
Magee, who declined to comment for this article, has noted in court that Clara Schwartz told investigators she thought Hulbert was "just joking" when he allegedly talked about killing Robert Schwartz.
Hulbert, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, spent much of the last decade in psychiatric facilities and foster homes, according to family members and court documents.
Last week, a judge gave Clara Schwartz's attorneys access to much of Hulbert's mental health history. But records of the treatment and evaluations Hulbert has undergone since his arrest -- information he could use to pursue an insanity defense at his trial, which is scheduled for March -- are off-limits.
In the month before the killing, Clara Schwartz talked with Hulbert using coded computer instant messages, prosecutors have said in court. In one message that is key to the prosecution's case, Clara Schwartz explained to Hulbert that the word "tay" meant kill and wrote, "If you do, all I ask is that you not trace it to me."
Advertisem*nt
"If I was to tay him would you be mad at me?" Hulbert wrote in the November instant message, according to prosecutors. "We'll talk about it down here, take a long walk and talk," Schwartz responded later in the conversation. "I just hate talking about that kind of stuff on here."
On Dec. 6, according to testimony by law enforcement officials, Clara Schwartz sent Hulbert a $60 check via overnight delivery. She told detectives Hulbert wanted the money for gas, gloves, a "do-rag" -- so no hair would be found at the crime scene -- and a phone card. She also told detectives in interviews that she "really wasn't paying attention" to Hulbert's request, according to court documents.
Two days later, on a rainy Saturday, Pfohl and Inglis drove Hulbert to Robert Schwartz's isolated fieldstone farm house in Mount Gilead. Inglis told police that Hulbert said he had a "job to do" and went inside.
Advertisem*nt
Clara Schwartz is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of solicitation to commit murder.
Pfohl and Hulbert are awaiting trial on murder and conspiracy charges. A murder charge against Inglis was dropped after she agreed to testify for the prosecution, but she still faces a conspiracy charge.
Clara Jane Schwartz is charged in the death of her father, biophysicist Robert Schwartz.With attorney William Fitzpatrick at his side, Kyle Hulbert invokes his right against self-incrimination at a March court hearing. Clara Schwartz listens.
