She called Jesus’ disciples “extreme followers” and felt that because they had drunk “his blood” and eaten “his flesh” during Communion, they were all “vampires and cannibals.”
She wondered how satanic people worshiped and claimed she was going to look into it soon.
The traitor, [Judas], was the only cool one, she wrote of Jesus’ followers.
Clara hated God and became increasingly interested in the occult, noting in her journal: I have now started to turn satanic.
CHAPTER 23
HELLO, LOVE . . . DRASGON666 instant messaged his girlfriend, MYGMU.
Hello, Clara tapped back.
Clara rarely left her dorm room now. Her antisocial behavior was evident to her sister, Michelle, who spoke to Clara about it on several occasions. Michelle lived on campus, too, at Rockingham Hall, an old Howard Johnson motel that had been converted into dorms. Highway 81 separated where she lived from Clara (who also lived in Rockingham Hall, but another facility), yet the locations were close. “Maybe a five-minute walk,” Michelle said once.
Michelle tried to keep tabs on her little sister, but it was difficult, she later admitted. Clara wasn’t interested in what Michelle did on campus, at parties, and during get-togethers, along with any number of “normal” college activities. And meeting new people, especially friends of her sister’s, was totally out of the question for Clara.
“She was rather difficult to get hold of,” Michelle later said. On top of that, maybe more important to their schedules, Clara “kept rather odd hours,” her sister added. Clara liked to stay up all night long, instant messaging and playing Underworld.
As Michelle saw it, Clara “was mostly interested in her computer and staying in.” Michelle would frequently say, “Clara, get out, enjoy the school and campus.... It would be a good idea for you to be more social and interact with students, establish some friendships.” Clara would blow these suggestions off as unimportant within the structure of the life she led.
That computer, as Clara integrated herself at JMU during the early days of November, became not only Clara’s outlet and friend while in the dorm, but her way to communicate with the minions she’d collected to take part in the Underworld.
How are you? DRASGON666 (Patrick) asked.
Don’t ask, Clara tapped back.
Clara went on to explain that she was not in the best mood. She was debating at that moment “whether or not to cut off everyone” because she said she couldn’t “handle this world.”
Here was Clara again using that manipulative skill she was beginning to master: drawing the people around her into her depressive web of “poor me.” Clara was an expert at getting the people in her life to sympathize with her feelings and emotions (if they were actually real). In doing that, she was able to use the sympathetic nature most people had against them—or at least to her advantage. Only the best sociopaths can maneuver this ground as perfectly as Clara was able. It takes getting into a person’s head, essentially, and mimicking his or her every move. You see, even if Clara did not experience empathy—as most sociopaths don’t—she made it appear as if she did by taking on the emotional mask of those around her.
One of her best Internet buddies had been banned, Clara went on and explained to Patrick during their instant-messaging encounter that night. The girl couldn’t talk anymore via instant messaging, and this deeply troubled Clara. She had no control over the situation, which was far more corrosive to Clara’s intellect than the simple act of the friend not being able to instant message.
Patrick explained that his car was not running well and he didn’t know when it would be fixed. He felt bad (so he claimed) because this was why he hadn’t been around the dorm lately.
This was disappointing to Clara. And again she used this little fact of life—a broken-down vehicle—against Patrick, trying to gain control over him.
OG thinks you’re cheating on me using the excuse of “I’m fixing my car. . . .” I told him he’s wrong, she tapped.
Patrick was likely stepping back, trying to figure out his next move: Should he carry out Clara’s request of killing the OG or dump her?
They got to talking about a friend of Clara’s who wanted to borrow some money. Then they moved onto the subject of poison, which was a topic these days Clara was interested in more than mostly anything else. At one point, she asked: If a guy puts hemlock in a drink and drinks it, will police think it’s suicide or murder?
She paused.
Patrick didn’t answer right away.
Odd question ... not sure whether I was imagining something or whether it was a vision. . . . Clara added.
Well ... [according] to modern law, suicide is murder I, does it make a difference? Patrick wrote back.
But suicide you can’t prosecute, Clara keyed.
This instant-messaging session then took on an odd tone. Unmistakably, here, at this moment, Clara was not talking about the Underworld or a specific thread within any RPG they might have been involved in playing. She and Patrick were talking about life in general, their day, and then Clara brought up this idea of making a murder appear to be a suicide. Sometimes their conversations fluctuated between the Underworld and reality, and it was apparent that Clara enjoyed the process of being Lord Chaos, the mastermind, far more than she enjoyed being herself. She felt empowered by the fact that she could sit in her dorm room and pull the strings of so many people by simply tapping out orders onto a computer screen.
This was very stimulating to a girl whose life was essentially melancholic and boring and uneventful, otherwise. It was as if she’d created her own turmoil and dysfunction to enrich her days. Still, during this particular instant message, Clara initiated a conversation about murder and how to cover it up. She was not talking about a game.
Clara continued, asking: If OG died and I had no way to get home, would your parents let you take the van down to get me?
Yes, I think they might let me do that, Patrick answered.
Then she asked, if the OG was dead, could she count on Patrick and his parents for a place to stay?
He said he wasn’t sure about “that one.”
Clara went on to tell Patrick she thought his parents would likely allow it if she had “exhausted all other options.” Then she asked: If the police got involved and they discovered a guy dead b/c of hemlock ingested, would they immediately suspect murder or suicide?
With no immediate reaction from Patrick, Clara made a few inconsequential comments and then, changing the subject, wondered about Katie not being loyal to them, adding how Katie was better friends with another girl she “probably favors” over them.
Patrick answered both questions: As long as there is no trace of hemlock, murder, but if there are traces with his fingerprints, suicide ... and she favors us.
Then came what sounded like a murder plan truly taking shape. Clara talked about the OG committing suicide one night in “mid-December” and her family (siblings) being “left to sort it out” after he left a note the night before stating what he was doing.
Then she followed up with the message: Well, it was dated the night before.
You could almost hear Clara laughing that same sort of villainous laugh of Dr. Evil’s from Austin Powers as she wrote this. To Clara, it seemed so perfect. She had figured it out. Here was her RPG and her life standing up, side by side, becoming one.
For a kid who later said he didn’t want to get involved in the murder of his girlfriend’s father, and later claimed to be playing only a game, Patrick sounded as though he was now, suddenly, thinking seriously about this when he tapped back his answer: That would work, and it would qualify as suicide, as long as there is no trace of anyone but him. . . .
Then Clara gave a direct order in the form of an Underworld narrative she’d created by saying how she thought maybe that Path or someone [should] put a gun to him . . . [tell] him to write the note . . . then . . . put it in the drawer of the desk and point a gun at him while he poured the
vial in his milk and drank it ... watched him die and then left.
They signed off.
Clara shut off her computer.
Today was a day where I’d die if I had a gun, Clara once wrote in her diary. She had a strange way of interweaving these writings with bizarre drawings of triangles, lines running through them, circles, upside-down crosses, and words that made little sense, but only to her. Later, in that same entry: I’m a mascist [sic], sadist, vampire, atheist, Satanist and cannibalist [sic]. . . .
CHAPTER 24
NO ONE IN her life could later explain where Clara might have developed such a dark, cold outlook. There was a touch of gloom in everything Clara wrote, everything she did. She rarely—if ever—penned an entry about sunshine, blue clouds, a nice day, a beautiful sunset she witnessed, or a boy she might have had a crush on. All those common, schoolgirl fantasies that kids consume their days with never interested Clara Jane Schwartz. For her, the world was a shadowy canvas of darkness; the people around her were mostly all enemies if they did not adhere to her set of standards, beliefs, wants, and wishes.
Back on February 1, 1998, during the early evening, an incident occurred (according to Clara) that explained a lot about why she viewed the world in such a dark, petty window of gloom and doom. She wrote about it in her journal, a terrible memory (if true) of a very frightening, real moment.
I’m so scared, Clara wrote while sitting in her room. The door was locked. It was 7:30 P.M. She was in bed already. What happened . . . was a living hell.
Clara and the OG had sat down for dinner, she claimed. Her brother was “working late again.” She hated those nights when her brother worked late because that meant Clara would be alone with the OG. Her brother, back then, lived at the house.
“Clara?” Robert Schwartz called out. (This was according to Clara’s recollection.)
Clara came out of her room and went down the stairs. “Yes?”
“Set the table.”
The OG had a white-and-brown cotton throw rug (blanket) that, as Clara told the story, he “insists” on having on the back of the brown chair, a piece of furniture that sat “parallel” to the television. This was the OG’s personal space in the house, apparently. No one messed with it. In constant disagreement with her father, Clara did not like the throw rug being placed there, so she always put it somewhere else. It bothered her to have it on the chair. She had a unique, albeit straightforward way of recounting this in her diary—same as a lot of things she would outline and discuss over the years, in what was a terse, stale written language she’d occasionally use: pillow => throw=> footstool.
Order. Class. Clarification. That was Clara’s way. Everything had its place. There was a place for everything. It all had to be with her approval, to her satisfaction. All centered on only her thoughts, feelings, and life. By contrast, Clara’s things (personal belongings, her dorm room, room at home) were left scattered and filthy. She was a slob, in that respect.
Clara took the throw rug off the chair and moved it before setting the table.
When the OG walked into the room, the first thing he noticed, she later claimed, was that the throw rug was missing from its proper place on the chair. Clara gave no reason why she would antagonize the guy, knowing what she knew—especially since placing the rug where she had was a big no-no.
As soon as the OG realized what she’d done, he “rushed” (ran up to) her and stated rather sharply: “Put that thing back where it belongs!” According to Clara, Robert Schwartz was enraged. In fact, within Clara’s description, one would assume the OG spoke through clenched teeth, seething with resentment and hatred at her outright insubordination.
Rules were rules. You live in my house—you abide by its rubrics.
“It doesn’t belong there,” Clara challenged. “It belongs in the blanket chest.”
“If you put it there,” she claimed the OG yelled, “I’ll fix you forever!”
“But—”
“Do it, Clara. Take care of it!”
“Chill out. Can’t it wait until after I finish getting enough silverware for dinner?”
Clara sometimes kept her hair in a ponytail. She liked the easy care of it. On this night, she claimed in her diary, that ponytail became a leash the OG grabbed and, she wrote, yanked . . . hard enough until my back is backwards curved. She was in severe pain, struggling to right herself, trying desperately to break free from his firm grasp.
All over the placement of a rug?
They struggled a bit, back and forth, and Clara got away. She ran into the living room and wound up inside the kitchen, where the OG was now waiting.
He was pacing, on the verge of blowing a gasket.
“I am going to call the police and report abuse,” Clara claimed she yelled.
“Yeah, right. This isn’t abuse. Call the fucking police! See what they consider child abuse. This isn’t abuse. Call the police. Call. The. Fucking. Police.” The OG was now insisting that she phone law enforcement, since she had warned him she would. The message was clear: If she was going to threaten him, she had better be damned sure to follow through on it.
Clara didn’t move.
The OG walked over to the phone, picked it up, and held it in front of her, as if handing the phone to Clara. “Go ahead. Call the fucking police.”
“No,” Clara said. Inside her head, she thought: He’s going to fucking kill me.
“No? Oh yeah, I knew you wouldn’t,” the OG said, placing the phone back into its cradle. “I knew you were fucking chicken.”
“Look, if you don’t watch out, my friend will fucking kill you,” Clara blurted out.
After she said those words, Clara wrote: He lost it.
Screaming, the OG ranted, “Yeah . . . yeah . . . I am gonna now call the police! You’ll be arrested on the count that your friends told you they were gonna kill me, and you are the only reason I am still alive.”
Clara stood stunned.
“After dinner, I am calling the fucking police. Now you sit down and you explain it to me what they said, because you’ll have to do the same when the police get here.”
After all that, Clara claimed, she and the OG sat and ate together. Later on that night, Clara wrote in her diary that at some point during dinner she confronted the OG about what he “did to me when I was nine” (sexual abuse, the suggestion seemed to be) and how her mother had explained it to her before she died. Clara concluded her soliloquy to the OG by saying, “I still trust what Mom said.”
“Mom didn’t know what she was talking about!” Clara claimed the OG screamed. “She was an asshole, an idiot.”
Intimidation. Manipulation. Contortion. That is the way Clara Schwartz later described her father and the life they shared together—that is, if what Clara wrote was truthful in any respect. Yet the question one might have was: Had all of this been part of Clara’s fantastical role-playing game? Did she create this sort of villainous character in her dad because she needed an enemy for her Underworld? Was he not the most loving guy who put a lot of pressure on his youngest daughter because he believed she was screwing up her life, so she then took it upon herself to turn him into a monster?
At this time (1998), during what became a pivotal year in her life at home, Clara was going through a witchcraft stage. Her world was all black—everything—clothes, moods, and writings. Clara and some of her friends would cut each other and taste the blood. Her life at home became an extension of this unwelcoming world she craved—a journey of living with a man whom she viewed as a tyrannical disciplinarian who was out to get her in any way he could: Fuck him. I’m so fucking scared . . . so fucking scared. He’ll kill me. He’s over the edge. He took a suicidal jump over the cliff. He’s gonna murder me. . . .
Clara was sixteen years old then, obviously confused, and viewed her situation at home as an abusive prison. Her mother had died. Her siblings were not there for her. Her friends were disappointing and disloyal; they routinely let her down. She felt terribly alone and even desper
ate. In that same diary, near this period, she concluded one section, writing: Help me. I hit a valley and I wanna die. Is there no end to this hell I am in? . . .
“My wife and I had long discussions about what we were observing,” Clara’s uncle, one of Robert’s brothers, later commented. He was referring to that period just after Clara’s mother died. “But what we were seeing was somebody who at least confused us most of the time when she talked. . . .” Clara, he went on to note, exhibited “multiple levels of conversations” where she would try to explain herself and break off into “as many as ten topics at the same time, so much so that we were totally confused as to what she was trying to get across to us.”
Her uncle would question Clara in the form of: “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, that?” Clara would respond. “That’s fantasy.”
All of it left the uncle and aunt “questioning . . . what she was talking about in terms of what she perceived to be reality and what she perceived to be fantasy.”
There was a part of Clara she had not shared with anyone—an even crueler side that spoke of a girl who had not cared less about the death of her mother. According to Clara’s sister, it was Clara who found her mother dead at home when she got up for school one morning and everyone else had left for the day. But instead of calling 911, or dialing up the OG and telling him his wife had died, Clara took a look at her mother’s corpse, made herself lunch, and left for school without telling anyone.
“She went to school ... to leave my father to find my mother,” Clara’s sister later said in court.
This behavior from a girl who claimed her mother’s death was the catapulting, emotional moment when her life began to spiral downward!
AFTER THAT JOURNAL entry of I wanna die, Clara talked about entering “Phase 4,” which was where, she claimed, “the demons” took over.
When speaking with those demons, while lying in bed at seven-thirty at night, allegedly scared for her life as the OG was downstairs raging and mumbling anger-fueled rants she could not comprehend, Clara confided in those demons, whom she saw as her only true friends.
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