Living in the Washington, DC, area for most of her life, Wexton graduated with honors from the University of Maryland at College Park. In 1995, she earned her law degree from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. Tall and blond and unassumingly attractive, Wexton could handle any type of situation she found herself facing while fighting for the state inside a courtroom. In the coming years, she would go on to fill a substitute judge seat and then, after a special election, earn a seat in the state senate with a blowout victory over two veteran Loudoun County career politicians.
In October 2002, not a year since Dr. Robert Schwartz’s vicious murder, Jennifer Wexton found herself facing off against Clara Jane Schwartz, who’d had some time now to sit in jail and think about the defense she wanted to mount. By then, Clara had convinced even herself that she’d had nothing to do with her father’s murder. It was October 7, 2002, and Clara was twenty years old. Waiting for the first day of her trial to start, she wore a blue sweater and black skirt. Her long, thick dark hair was braided and coiled around her shoulder as if she had a pet snake with her. Effectively, Clara was on trial for the crime of parricide—or the act of a child murdering one (or both) of his or her parents. It is a crime committed mainly by males. Experts claim, however, when females get involved, they generally contract the murder out and rarely do it by their own hands.
That dark and gloomy Wiccan witch from a year ago, with the despondent and melancholic look of utter despair on her face, was nowhere to be found in Judge Horne’s courtroom. Clara’s lawyers had clearly schooled her: “Look upbeat and positive. Don’t slouch! You are fighting for your life here.”
Wexton explained out of the gate during her opening argument that Clara initially had tried to convince Patrick House, her boyfriend at the time, with her deceptive, manipulating skills, to kill her father by poisoning the man. But after meeting with resistance from Patrick time and time again, and then meeting Kyle Hulbert at the Renaissance Festival, Clara realized she’d found herself the perfect murder weapon.
The perfect piece of clay to shape and mold.
The perfect assassin.
“Clara Schwartz wanted her father dead!” Wexton reminded jurors. “She’d hated her father for a long time.” After a bit of detail regarding Clara’s college life at JMU, Wexton reiterated, adding an important point: “Clara Schwartz wanted her father dead—but she wasn’t going to do it herself.”
Indeed, that was what this trial came down to: the idea that Clara, although she talked about it often and supposedly feared for her life and considered herself an expert sword fighter and high priestess of the Underworld, did not want to commit the ultimate act of evil herself. She wasn’t gutsy enough.
“She was going to find someone else to do it for her.”
Wexton then quoted from one of Clara’s many online conversations with Kyle that the prosecution had transcribed and would enter into evidence: “‘All I ask is that it not trace back to me.’”
The Underworld game Clara had created was next. The prosecutor talked about how all of the players Clara had recruited were there for one purpose: to protect her from those other players and bad people from hunting and hurting her. Wexton made jurors understand that Clara had kept track of this elaborate game on her computer and in her journals. Her writings had become nothing more than a “tool” allowing Clara to talk about her father’s murder under the guise of a fantasy, weighing who was willing to take it to a reality level and who was unapproachable. In other words, she had created this world in order to hide the true meaning of wanting her father dead and looking for someone to employ for that task.
Wexton told jurors, however, that Clara did not want to discuss the murder online. Clara told Kyle once: “I hate talking about this kind of thing on here. . . .”
Wexton mentioned Patrick by name again. As soon as Patrick figured out that his girlfriend was serious about wanting her father murdered and how “Clara made it clear to him that it wasn’t a game [and that she] . . . wanted Patrick to kill her father,” he ran as far away from her as he could.
Closing out her rather brief opening, Wexton said that Clara hated her father with a fevered passion, and the true motive for the murder was that age-old reason of having “stood to receive a large inheritance when he died.” The weekend that Kyle had been invited by Clara to camp on the grounds of their secluded stone farmhouse in the woods after the Thanksgiving holiday was for one purpose only, Wexton added near the conclusion.
“So he would recognize Robert Schwartz” when he later went back to the house to kill him. Clara wanted to be certain Kyle didn’t make a mistake and kill the wrong person.
Over and over, Wexton used that phrase: “Clara wanted her father dead.” It was the theme, no doubt, that the prosecution would carry into the trial as witnesses were brought in to prove it.
“Clara Jane Schwartz wanted her father dead, but she didn’t want it to trace back to her,” Wexton said finally. She then looked over at Clara, who sat, stone-faced, staring straight ahead, not at all interested in what was being said about her. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, the murder of Dr. Robert Schwartz has traced back to his daughter Clara, and that’s why we are all here today.”
CHAPTER 85
THE DEFENSE LAWYER James Connell stood and asked jurors to understand one thing about his client: Clara Jane hadn’t created this Underworld game to hide the murder of her father under the cloak of a fantasy, but rather as an “innocent escape” from what was an extremely solitary social life of being alone and depressed and out of touch with her classmates.
“Clara Jane Schwartz is no cheerleader. She’s not the most popular girl in the school,” Connell stated. Then, oddly, he added: “She’s not the brightest girl in school. She was not everybody’s first pick for party invitations. . . .” It was because of that societal desolation and alienation, he said, that Clara “turns to this fantasy world.”
And so their message was clear: Poor Clara Schwartz, an outsider not liked by many. She was a girl who felt alone in the world. Not fitting in where others did. Misunderstood. Reserved. Depressed.
Next, in a dramatic turn of phrase, Connell explained that during the “fall of 2001, the silly, dark world of Clara Schwartz collided with the dark and dangerous world of Kyle Hulbert.”
Now came the gist of their defense: Kyle Hulbert took it upon himself to commit this murder after listening to a friend describe the horror of being abused by her father. Clara, by gosh, had no idea that she was dealing with a mentally ill psychopath who would take what she said and spin it into a murder plan. She never asked this boy to do it. She never beat around the bush about wanting him to kill her father. She never paid him to do it. That was all speculation and insane innuendo on Kyle’s part now that he faced the potential of going away for a very long time.
“Because of his mental illness,” Connell said, Kyle “misinterpreted conversations with Clara” in which she had never wanted her father to be killed.
What about Clara soliciting Patrick first, however? How would they explain that little problem?
Connell was saving that for his cross of Patrick, apparently, because he didn’t broach it here during his opening. He stuck to Kyle. Like when Kyle talked to her about killing her dad, for instance, which he clearly had online, Clara’s argument was that she never took him seriously. She believed that they were dabbling in the Underworld and Kyle understood this.
“Ladies and gentlemen, at the end of this trial, the evidence will show you two things,” Connell concluded, holding up the peace sign to indicate the number two. “Number one! Clara Jane Schwartz did not kill her father. And number two! Clara Jane Schwartz did not intend for her father to be killed.”
Done.
Time to get it on.
CHAPTER 86
AS TESTIMONY BEGAN, Jennifer Wexton got to work with witnesses called for a specific purpose: to lay the foundation of the state’s case. The day itself was long on legalities and bench conferences. After
a few minor witnesses needed to establish place and time, near the end of that first day, October 7, Wexton put up the neighbor who had found Dr. Schwartz. This offered the commonwealth the opportunity to inject a bit of veracity and realism into the situation right from the start. Photos of Dr. Schwartz lying in a pool of his own blood were displayed, and the brutality and violence behind the crime became material.
The neighbor spoke of how he and the construction worker found Schwartz. As he testified, photographs of the house, the X carved on Schwartz’s neck, and the massive amount of blood spilled during the murder were shown to jurors.
Buzzing around the room was a whisper that Clara’s sister was up next. Someone had seen her enter the building. Many wondered—with Michelle torn between sibling loyalty and the love she had for her father—what she would say. Michelle was smart, far more intelligent than Clara. She had a feeling that Clara was involved. That interview with Locke and Clara that Michelle sat in on turned out to be very telling for a sister who had always considered Clara a bit eccentric and dark. One couldn’t walk out of that conversation without feeling that, at the least, Clara knew beforehand and afterward, and did nothing to prevent it or report it. Still, what would Michelle now say about her sister?
Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Owen Basham, Jennifer Wexton’s co-counsel, began by asking Michelle to describe the sibling family tree for jurors; then he worked his way straight into Kyle Hulbert’s presence in Clara’s life. He asked Michelle if she recalled meeting Kyle during that Thanksgiving weekend, which was one of the state’s key moments in this crime.
Michelle said she had met Kyle that weekend.
“And who else was present that weekend at home?” Basham asked.
“My father was home. My sister was home. And my brother traveled up, but he spent most of the weekend visiting friends in the area.”
“And did you have the occasion to see and meet Mr. Kyle Hulbert that weekend?”
Michelle spoke with confidence. You could tell by the way she used her voice that there was no doubt in her mind that what she was saying had happened the way she said it had. Jurors picked up on this.
“Yes, sir, I did.”
Basham asked her to explain.
“I remember him dressed in a black trench coat down to his feet.... I think his hair might have been wet.... He [had] a sword with him.”
Michelle went on to talk about how Kyle had pulled the sword out and showed it to her and Dr. Schwartz. She described how Kyle “touched the blade and ... said it was dull.”
A few questions later, Basham asked Michelle to describe an instant message she received from her sister on December 8, 2001, the night of the murder.
Michelle spoke of a quick back-and-forth with Clara that night. Clara made a point to tell her that their father was coming down to JMU and that she was in her dorm at the time of the instant message. These both seemed like odd details to add. The conversation had taken place somewhere near eleven that night. Michelle said she wasn’t prone to getting instant messages from her sister: “Only when she needed something.” With that declaration, jurors understood the reason why Basham had asked about this was because the prosecution wanted to show how Clara was creating an alibi for herself by letting several strategic people know where she was and what she was doing.
As Michelle continued, the day got short on time and the judge recessed until the following morning. After being asked, Connell said his cross-examination of Michelle was going to be lengthy, so why start and stop? Maybe just tabling it till morning was best.
WHEN MICHELLE RETURNED on October 8, James Connell began his cross-examination by asking where Clara lived on campus, as opposed to where Michelle lived: close by. He established how Clara and Michelle had never really seen much of each other because they, essentially, lived separate lives, with different friends and different interests and hobbies. Then Connell brought Michelle back to that Thanksgiving weekend and a conversation she’d had with Kyle. Michelle said Kyle had told her he was “born holding a Guns and Roses album” and had been “abandoned at birth by his parents.” She claimed Kyle wouldn’t stop talking, so she kind of zoned out and stood and listened. She felt right away that she was talking to a liar—a kid who was making things up to make himself appear cooler, more important, and the center of attention.
Michelle called all of her sister’s friends “a little strange,” but said she never made blanket “judgments about people.” She quickly realized and sympathized with a generalization she’d made that Kyle, especially, had been “affected” by his life of living in foster care.
Connell tried to trip Michelle up about times she had testified to during her direct testimony as being different to what she remembered now, but it meant nothing in the scope of Clara’s case. It only proved that Michelle might have said two o’clock when she actually meant one.
Big deal.
Regarding that interview with Locke that Michelle sat in on, Connell laid out how the family had discussed going into the LCSO and that Clara, particularly, had “agreed that it was a good idea to go to the interview.”
“She never said [that],” Michelle testified, “but she didn’t show any hesitation. I believe that she was pretty open to it.”
So much for Connell trying to make it appear as though it was Clara’s idea to go in and give the LCSO any info that investigators needed, as if fully cooperating.
Connell then brought in how, back in July during a preliminary hearing, Michelle testified to the fact that Clara actually said it was a “good idea” to go down for the interview. So, why was she now saying she didn’t recall Clara saying those exact words?
“Yes, the family agreed it was a good idea,” Michelle made clear.
“Including Clara, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
Establishing that fact, Connell spent very little time discussing the content of the actual interview with Locke that day, likely because most of it would destroy Clara.
A few more inconsequential questions, and that was it. Basham checked his notes one last time, whispered something to Clara, and told the judge he was finished with Michelle.
CHAPTER 87
THE KILLER HIMSELF walked into the courtroom next. There was no disputing this fact: Kyle Hulbert killed Robert Schwartz in a premeditated act of utter violence. It was a murder so bloody and savage that he had blocked the worst moments from his unstable memory. Kyle was not denying that he committed the murder. The Commonwealth of Virginia wanted him to destroy Clara—rip her story to shreds. Refute, piece by piece, the tale of the poor little confused and depressed girl, who misunderstood the mentally insane psychopathic vampire, and bury Clara for good. Many inside the courtroom believed Kyle would do that exact thing; while others were on the fence, not really knowing how far Clara had her hooks in this guy. Was she still able to control Kyle’s thoughts and behaviors?
So the question remained as Kyle, dressed in his prison johnnies, that gaunt and chiseled look of a man who didn’t eat much, made his way to the witness stand. Would he take down the high priestess of the Underworld, Lord Chaos herself, and tell jurors she had pressured him and manipulated him, asking repeatedly that he murder her father? As a result, Kyle only did what was asked of him by a smarter, more calculating witch.
Basham approached the admitted murderer. He asked him to state his name, date of birth, and Social Security number.
Kyle did what he was told.
“Mr. Hulbert, do you know the defendant in this case, Clara Jane Schwartz?”
Here was Kyle’s chance to swat Clara in the face. He cleared his throat. He sat up and moved in close to the microphone so everyone could hear what he was going to say. Then, without much flourish or drama, Kyle uttered: “At this time, I respectfully choose to invoke my right afforded me under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and respectfully decline to answer this question or any other questions you may have.”
According to Kyle, “I wanted to testify. My lawyer
told me to plead the Fifth.” The main message Kyle wanted to get across in testifying—had he not listened to his lawyer—was that Mike, his “brother” and best friend, “did not have anything to do with this. He wasn’t aware. He didn’t do any of this. But my lawyer wouldn’t let me.”
It seemed really odd. Kyle claimed that his lawyer told him that answering one question meant that he would be subject to answering any question they had for him.
“And that was a road he didn’t want to take,” Kyle said later.
Yet, Kyle was screwed, no matter what he said. He’d admitted killing Schwartz. What would it matter what he now said? He couldn’t be punished any more than life in prison.
Kyle sat back in his chair inside the witness-box. He had pled the Fifth! He didn’t want to incriminate himself by telling on poor Clara. In doing so, Kyle would have to say he was the murderer. Apparently, he was preparing a defense for himself and didn’t want to muddle that. The idea of trying Clara first might have just backfired on the prosecution—although, to their credit, they never tried to cut a deal with the Devil and ask Kyle to testify on their behalf. Hell, they had Katie for that.
Basham asked if this was going to be Kyle’s response to every question.
Clara stared at her former friend and minion. If one looked close, there was even a slight crack of a smile on her face, Kyle later said, as if she had gotten her way once again.
In lieu of Kyle clamming up under his God-given right, Wexton argued to have his lengthy, detailed confession read into the record in open court for jurors. It would be just as good as Kyle sitting there and telling jurors what had taken place inside the Schwartz home. Maybe even more powerful because it was written days after the murder.
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