I'd Kill for You

by M. William Phelps

  Bottom line with all of this was that Kyle Hulbert could have easily taken what Clara Jane Schwartz had said and interpreted it as her telling him that she wanted her father killed. Still, it did not mean that Clara never asked Kyle to do it. And if he had gone out on his own to murder, based upon a threat to his friend, why hadn’t Clara, after she realized what Kyle had done, gone running to the police? Why didn’t she plead with them that her friend had taken it upon himself to kill her father after misinterpreting a game she had involved him in?

  One school psychologist described Kyle as a “bright young man and very verbal and articulate.” She said that was half of the person she evaluated. The other half was a person who “presented himself in a very mature way and then ... would do things that were childlike—like one of the instruments that I administered involved use of manipulatives, blocks. And he would spin the blocks in a really childlike way that’s typical of real little kids.”

  “Thinking and thought problems” were something most of the experts talked about when referring to Kyle.

  As each talked through his or her testimony, it really wasn’t clear whom this testimony was helping: Clara or the state?

  One shining moment for Clara came when one psychologist described Kyle telling her: “I hear things that other people don’t hear. I see things that other people don’t see. I have strange thoughts. I have strange ideas. I collect things that I don’t need.”

  Another expert testified that Kyle often misinterpreted what other people told him, and he based a lot of his decisions on those misinterpreted thoughts. There was probably some truth to the statement, but the perfect way it came out—and seemed to help Clara—made it sound contrived and conceived in a back room somewhere. And like a lot of the testimony that each expert witness provided about Kyle’s mind-set, it didn’t have an organic ring to it that made any difference in Clara’s argument of Kyle acting alone. It just wasn’t there.

  However, what everyone waited on was: Would Clara herself, the ultimate narcissist, take the stand, look jurors in the face, and tell them that Kyle Hulbert took what she had said and misconstrued it all? She loved her father, despite what he had done to her. She cared for the man and did not want to see him dead, no matter what anybody said.

  CHAPTER 95

  IN THE END, Clara herself did not testify. How could she? If she denied anything, all the prosecution would have to do was open a page of her journals and diaries and point out how much she despised her father and had wanted him dead. No, Clara could not take the stand on her own behalf because her entire argument was a contradiction.

  Maybe her entire life, for that matter.

  By October 11, a Friday, Clara’s attorneys wrapped up her defense, which hadn’t amounted to much more than an attack on Kyle. What more, really, could her attorneys do? If the jury believed Kyle acted on his own, Clara walked. If not, she was going away for a long time.

  After a long Columbus Day weekend break, everyone was back on Tuesday, October 15, 2002, the lawyers prepared for closing arguments.

  The judge gave jurors twenty-five instructions and handed the first closing argument over to Jennifer Wexton, whose opening line seemed to summarize the case: “The truth just fits,” Wexton intoned. Then she made a thunderous admission, telling jurors that she had plagiarized that sentence—that those words were not hers. She had not written them in some creative night of coming up with the right way to capsulize this case. Those words—“The truth just fits”—were spoken out of the mouth of the defendant, Wexton said, when she looked at Greg Locke during one of his interviews and explained how it all came down to Kyle and her.

  From there, Wexton went back to her opening theme: “Clara Schwartz wanted her father dead.”

  The guy wound up dead.

  Case freakin’ closed.

  Clara had put that energy out into the world, told people it was her wish, asked people to do it for her, and, by gosh, the job got done. She’d found the right stoolie.

  Another important point that Wexton made, and quite smartly, was that “the commonwealth didn’t pick these two gentlemen (Patrick and Kyle). Clara Schwartz did. . . .”

  Closings are about reminding jurors of the facts that support your case. The perfect closing should be short, to the point, and entirely focused on the facts as they were rolled out during the course of the trial. The way Wexton and the commonwealth saw it, Clara Schwartz had sunk herself with her own words: in her journals, to Greg Locke, and to friends.

  Wexton spoke of a concentrated plan on the part of Clara and Kyle, adding at one point, “The plan was that Kyle was going to take responsibility because he could be judged legally insane.”

  Then Jennifer Wexton appealed to the jury’s intellect, placing them in a position of either being another victim of Clara’s or a group of common, intelligent people able to figure her out. It was a bold move, in many ways—a call like this could backfire.

  “By your verdict today, you can show her that she’s not smarter than you are. . . .”

  CORINNE MAGEE WAS up next. She focused her closing for Clara’s side on Kyle and his ability to manipulate and bend the truth to support his lifelong claim of being mentally incapable of making the right choices in life. Magee started off by reciting a line from Kyle’s confession in which he apologized to the Schwartz family for what he’d done, “especially my sister in spirit, Clara Schwartz.” Then Magee asked if that sounded like the words of a plan between them to kill her father. If they had plotted this together, why would Kyle apologize?

  Perhaps it was a fair question.

  Magee asked that jurors put all of the statements made by the prosecution and by Kyle into context and see for themselves how they could be construed differently under different circumstances. It was all about functional background. How did Clara fit into the framework of an alleged plan by her? The evidence, Magee hammered on, supported Kyle hearing things from Clara and taking it upon himself to make her proud of him by taking out her father on his own volition.

  “The commonwealth wants to lead you leaping to an illogical conclusion,” Magee said. “They want you to believe that because Clara Schwartz had difficulties with her father, who expressed hatred to her father ... and because Kyle . . . eventually murdered her father ... that therefore Clara Schwartz must have gotten Kyle to agree to kill [him]. . . .”

  Magee finally said Clara was “only guilty of not believing Kyle. . . . She did not see the logic behind Kyle’s actions, and, no, she never will forgive him.”

  CHAPTER 96

  THE JURY WAS excused after the commonwealth’s co-counsel had a brief moment to offer a final closing statement. It was quick. Then the judge told jurors it was up to them to decide from here what course this trial would take next.

  Within four hours of deliberations, the jury indicated it had reached a unanimous verdict. Because it had taken only a few short hours to come to this conclusion, it did not bode well for Clara. Innocent verdicts take time. People argue. Debates take place. Theories are hashed out. Conclusions are drawn.

  But it appeared after a vote in the jury room, the jury had reached agreement.

  Clara Schwartz was found guilty on all counts.

  The jury recommended thirty years for murder, eight years for conspiracy, and five years for each solicitation count, for a total of forty-eight years. This was rather lenient, considering they could have sent Clara away for life.

  There was a preliminary sentencing hearing right after the verdict, in which Schwartz’s family members talked about what life had been like since he’d been gone and now one of their own was convicted for his murder. Most people there to support Robert Schwartz’s memory cried—with the exception of Clara—as Jesse and Michelle talked about the good times with their father and how much they were going to miss him.

  Judge Thomas Horne would ultimately decide Clara’s sentence, but not until early 2003.

  That December, several weeks after Clara’s trial, Mike Pfohl pleaded g
uilty to second-degree murder (a mistake on his part) and was himself now awaiting sentencing.

  Then, on September 8, 2003—after Judge Horne had sentenced Clara to the forty-eight years on February10, 2003, and Mike to eighteen years on July 8, 2003—Kyle Hulbert walked into the same courtroom, shackled and chained, ready to hear his sentence for admitting to murdering Schwartz in the first degree, the most severe murder charge on the books.

  Judge Horne “did not hesitate,” Kyle recalled, “as I stood there in front of him.”

  The sentence: life without parole for Dr. Schwartz’s killer.

  Kyle said he started laughing when he heard this.

  The rest, he claimed, was a blur.

  Two of those voices that were still hanging around at the time, Kyle explained, “must be getting a kick out of this.”

  Why did it sound like he just said I had a life sentence? Kyle thought. There was no way this could be. He had been told, according to his recollection, it would be twenty years, tops. If he fought it and went to trial, he’d get the entire judicial book tossed at him.

  Which had just happened, anyway.

  “I’m trying to process this,” Kyle recalled. “As I stand there in utter shock, still laughing.”

  As Kyle stood, one of the deputies who had escorted him into the courtroom placed her hand on the switch to zap electricity through the belt that kept Kyle’s hands latched. He was wearing a shock belt device and laughing at the judge who had just given him a life sentence. There was no telling what would happen next.

  “I guess they didn’t expect me to start laughing at being told I was going to be locked up for the rest of my life.”

  And just think, Kyle concluded, “Katie was sentenced to twelve months!”

  Indeed, Katie Inglis got a year after pleading guilty to being an accessory.

  CHAPTER 97

  DURING CLARA’S SENTENCING, Michelle testified at the hearing. Something she said resonated with those involved. It was as if Michelle had come to terms with it all by the time Clara was about to hear her punishment. Michelle had figured it out, and yet the pain was worse now than it had ever been.

  “It’s been nothing but a nightmare since the first day I found out,” Michelle testified. “It’s hard enough it was my father, but on top of that to have my sister committing such a horrible crime.”

  Before Judge Horne officially sentenced Clara, who had been quiet throughout the entire judicial ordeal, he asked her, “Do you have anything to tell this court, Miss Schwartz?”

  Clara paused. Then, looking down, she said: “Nothing that hasn’t already been said.”

  The judge reaffirmed the jury’s recommendation of forty-eight years.

  Clara’s appeal came back on April 19, 2005, and the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the conviction.

  She sits in prison now, at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, outside Troy, Virginia, waiting for the day, November 2, 2051, when she can walk out—this after her conviction on all counts was affirmed by the Fourth District of the United States Court of Appeals on March 9, 2010.

  It’s over for Clara Schwartz. She has never spoken publicly about her case.

  Why? you might ask.

  Because, one can only guess, Clara has already said all that needs to be said.

  AFTERWORD

  THE GREAT PRAGMATIST and brilliant Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, during a commencement address he delivered at Harvard University on June 8, 1978, said, “Truth is seldom pleasant. It is almost invariably bitter.” When one begins a commencement address along those lines of thinking, his audience had better take a deep breath, sit back, and check their egos, because the rest of what this man is going to say is not going to be comfort food. Yet, it is probably what those before him should have said, but they likely did not have the guts.

  When dealing with murderers and crime victims’ families (I even hate to put the two in the same sentence), this same model Solzhenitsyn suggested during that commencement could be taken. Because when we talk about crime, the public’s response to crime, the players involved, the facts as opposed to the supposition and rumor surrounding each and every case, we’re dealing with the same set of criteria: everyone will have his or her truth. It might sound different or come out more astutely from one as opposed to the other; but when all is said and done, it is that truth that matters. That underlying veritas (truth) found in every case I have ever studied, written about, or profiled on my Investigation Discovery television series, Dark Minds. When you look at a case in hindsight and you’ve been given the opportunity to step back and study what everyone said and did, how the investigation transpired, what the guilty parties have said since their convictions, a new veritas emerges, rising to the surface like a scuba diver coming into focus from the black depths of the ocean. It’s there—and yet only if you’re willing to look beyond the fog and bullshit and accept it for what it is.

  In this case—the vicious, brutal murder of esteemed biophysicist and DNA researcher Robert Schwartz, noted for his work on DNA sequencing—that truth was never more present and attentive. It was always directly in front of every player involved in this case. And those who could see it—well, look, they chose to do nothing about it besides let it manifest and transpire before their eyes.

  “It won’t happen to me.”

  How many times have we heard that?

  As I began to call on people for this case, to ask if each was willing to enter into a dialogue about that truth, take a clear look at it now years later, I was met with mixed results. Some wanted to speak to me with an open mind and a willingness I admire, respect, and expect. Others wished to shun me, not return calls, not even give me the admonition of a “no, not interested”—one I think I have earned after writing twenty-five books. I contacted some people several times; others only once. It seemed to me—and the fact that a few didn’t even want to acknowledge me—that there was something missing from the truth. Whenever a certain portion of people involved in a case doesn’t want to talk, there is a truth within the story that these participants generally wish to ignore or leave undisturbed. Thus, this only made me want to dig in more, plant my stubborn heels deeper into the framework of this case, and begin to look at everything underneath a new, clearer light.

  WHEN THE PRISON computer called my number, alerting me that a call from “an inmate in the Virginia prison system” is looking for me, there’s a recording that Kyle made himself, letting the person on the other end (me) know who is calling. In other words, the prison computer calls your number for Kyle; you pick up; the phone says, “You have a call from [and the inmate’s voice inserted here]. . . .” We might assume that, in this case, I’d hear, “You have a call from Kyle Hulbert.”

  But not when dealing with Kyle Hulbert. Nothing is that basic and simple. Picking up the phone, I was shocked and quite struck by this gem of a message from Mr. Hulbert: “You have a call from ... ‘I am the Kyle.’”

  I thought this was a bit odd, as well as another thing I’ll leave unsaid.

  “I am the Kyle.”

  It sounds so, well, egocentric. So superficially hubristic.

  I queried Kyle about it one day.

  He laughed.

  “Interesting you should ask. A friend of mine a long time ago once told me that Kyle is not just a name, but a state of mind. And so I took that and ran with it. I enjoy my individuality. And so, as far as I am concerned, I am the only Kyle. All Kyles that came before me and all the Kyles that might come after me are mere imitations of who I am. That’s all. It’s really that simple.”

  O . . . kay . . .

  I look at Kyle Hulbert’s life and what happened and I cannot stop myself from thinking that he could have easily been one of those people we see on the news all too often—the culprit walking gingerly into a school and spraying rounds of bullets at innocent men, women and children. I’m not an expert in this field, mind you, and my analysis here is based on my research into murder and murderers and my
conversations with experts, but Kyle fits into this “ticking time bomb” type of person walking out of a mental institution with nothing in place to guide him and no place to go. Kyle had resources available, as many of these same people do—no doubt about it—but why didn’t he use any of those resources?

  It’s a question we need to look at closely. True, Clara might have found a puppet to complete her task of executing her father because she didn’t have the guts to do it herself; but how many Kyles are out in the world as we speak, thinking about violence as a means to an end? Where are they? What are they doing right now? Where do they live? We had one not too far away from where I sit and write this—Newtown, Sandy Hook. Three words that explain all that needs to be said about how that turned out.

  Another part of this for me was the idea that Kyle could have been lying. Did he and Clara (from the very beginning, as some have suggested) plan and plot this, thinking they could get away with it based on Kyle’s history of mental illness? This theory has to be considered.

  “There’s a certain amount of fallibility in my recollections, you have to understand that,” Kyle told me.

  When I told Kyle that those pornographic images found on Schwartz’s laptop had been downloaded only weeks before the murder, Kyle became very quiet. I had not heard him like this—ever. And we had well over twenty hours of telephone conversations, along with letters to and fro.

  “You there?” I asked. “Kyle?”

  Crickets chirping.

  “What do you think about that?” I asked.

  “She set me up. She. Set. Me. Up. I didn’t know that until you just told me.”

  During the course of our interviews, Kyle explained that he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

  “And part of that is chronological displacement, or the misunderstanding of the order of things—a day here or there doesn’t matter to me. Timelines don’t matter. What doesn’t change is the events that took place.”